I have a PinePhone running PostMarketOS. Issues (remember its alpha software): A bunch of programs did not open at all such as the image viewer, web browser and some others. Camera program opened but couldn't connect to camera. No cellular radio support means no calls, mobile data, or sms. Wifi works so you can do all the fun admin and developer tasks. USB OTG also doesn't work so USB things like keyboards, mice and USB sticks plugged in via a USB C->A adapter didn't work. Sound didn't work for me But those are all solvable problems.
I haven't booted it in two weeks but I was able to get it to build and run drawterm (plan 9 terminal emulator) without much effort save for downloading a few libraries. No input as KDE Plasma uses a different input method than x11 so until a shim or patch, x11 programs probably won't work out of the box. In the case of drawterm, it connected to my CPU server and displayed the login prompt. But tapping the screen did not bring up the keyboard so I could not log in.
Conclusion: Owning a modern open smartphone is liberating. It feels like a PC in the sense you can just download distro images, write to SD, boot from said SD and even install to mmc. Once things progress you can do all of that right on the phone so you can test new mobile OS's on the go without plugging anything in. KDE plasma feels like a real mobile OS and worked surprisingly well. Updates for the entire OS are done from the alpine package manager. Building software on the phone felt liberating. My phone has a compiler and developer tools. I really hope the Pine Phone is my daily driver within a year or so.
I think the Nexus 5 has had the most attention historically, and may work best today. They have officially stated that the PinePhone is the future though - between the fact that it is easily available (to developers now, general availability expected in a couple months), and there is enough information that we think it is possible to make everything work it will soon be the best.
Nothing is currently usable for everything. PinePhone will soon be usable for phone calls, something nothing else can claim.
Comments
Anyone using this having any recommendation of hardware?
The PinePhone is the device which receive the most attention, but I'm not sure of it's currently usable.
I have a PinePhone running PostMarketOS. Issues (remember its alpha software): A bunch of programs did not open at all such as the image viewer, web browser and some others. Camera program opened but couldn't connect to camera. No cellular radio support means no calls, mobile data, or sms. Wifi works so you can do all the fun admin and developer tasks. USB OTG also doesn't work so USB things like keyboards, mice and USB sticks plugged in via a USB C->A adapter didn't work. Sound didn't work for me But those are all solvable problems.
I haven't booted it in two weeks but I was able to get it to build and run drawterm (plan 9 terminal emulator) without much effort save for downloading a few libraries. No input as KDE Plasma uses a different input method than x11 so until a shim or patch, x11 programs probably won't work out of the box. In the case of drawterm, it connected to my CPU server and displayed the login prompt. But tapping the screen did not bring up the keyboard so I could not log in.
Conclusion: Owning a modern open smartphone is liberating. It feels like a PC in the sense you can just download distro images, write to SD, boot from said SD and even install to mmc. Once things progress you can do all of that right on the phone so you can test new mobile OS's on the go without plugging anything in. KDE plasma feels like a real mobile OS and worked surprisingly well. Updates for the entire OS are done from the alpine package manager. Building software on the phone felt liberating. My phone has a compiler and developer tools. I really hope the Pine Phone is my daily driver within a year or so.
I think the Nexus 5 has had the most attention historically, and may work best today. They have officially stated that the PinePhone is the future though - between the fact that it is easily available (to developers now, general availability expected in a couple months), and there is enough information that we think it is possible to make everything work it will soon be the best.
Nothing is currently usable for everything. PinePhone will soon be usable for phone calls, something nothing else can claim.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices