I toyed with a Pinephone last year. Most of my complains were toward the hardware, although I didn’t try every basic functionality either.
It took me a while to setup the OS because I wanted to try a few different distros and screwed up a few times here and there. Arch was the most stable of those I tried. It also comes with a built-in right to brag about using Arch, which is cool. I think that using a more recent and higher grade phone could make it usable in the day to day, as the pinephone is more of a development tool. Otherwise, give it a few more years.
Yup, I hoped that last year would’ve been long enough, but it’s still not in a state that I could daily drive it, so I ended up with a Pixel 8 w/ GrapheneOS. I’m definitely watching development, and if I find a good phone/OS match that allows me to daily drive something like PostmarketOS or Arch on a phone, I’ll probably switch.
It’s a cool project, and I sincerely hope Linux gets to a place where I can daily drive it on my phone. I already use it on my laptop and desktop (openSUSE Tumbleweed, after several years of Arch), and I would love to also use it on my phone. I’ll even help port/develop apps for it as well, but it needs to meet my basic needs first (so MMS, all day battery life, good audio, reliable calls/texts). In the meantime, I’m trying to switch to a VOIP service instead, which simultaneously makes my need for all-day battery less important (can answer calls on my computer), complicates basic phone features (not sure how VOIP call device wake-up works on Linux), and eliminates much of the issues w/ carriers (just need a data plan, and most calls will be over wifi).
If only basic phone features still worked properly with Linux, I would do just that.
I toyed with a Pinephone last year. Most of my complains were toward the hardware, although I didn’t try every basic functionality either.
It took me a while to setup the OS because I wanted to try a few different distros and screwed up a few times here and there. Arch was the most stable of those I tried. It also comes with a built-in right to brag about using Arch, which is cool. I think that using a more recent and higher grade phone could make it usable in the day to day, as the pinephone is more of a development tool. Otherwise, give it a few more years.
Yup, I hoped that last year would’ve been long enough, but it’s still not in a state that I could daily drive it, so I ended up with a Pixel 8 w/ GrapheneOS. I’m definitely watching development, and if I find a good phone/OS match that allows me to daily drive something like PostmarketOS or Arch on a phone, I’ll probably switch.
It’s a cool project, and I sincerely hope Linux gets to a place where I can daily drive it on my phone. I already use it on my laptop and desktop (openSUSE Tumbleweed, after several years of Arch), and I would love to also use it on my phone. I’ll even help port/develop apps for it as well, but it needs to meet my basic needs first (so MMS, all day battery life, good audio, reliable calls/texts). In the meantime, I’m trying to switch to a VOIP service instead, which simultaneously makes my need for all-day battery less important (can answer calls on my computer), complicates basic phone features (not sure how VOIP call device wake-up works on Linux), and eliminates much of the issues w/ carriers (just need a data plan, and most calls will be over wifi).