10 ms·

PinePhone: PostmarketOS Community Edition

193 points by ollieparanoid 6y ago

foo2020 6y ago
The RAM and internal storage seem to be too less otherwise I might have bought it.
- stamps 6y ago
  You can install an SD card.
- avery42 6y ago
  The PinePhone has 2 Gb of RAM, which is plenty for a smartphone (especially running Linux). You can put in a micro SD card to get more storage.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    How is that plenty? Is Android not Linux?
    - swiley 6y ago
      I’ve used laptops with that little ram. Don’t rub gnome or chromium and it’s fine.
    - SahAssar 6y ago
      Android and postmarketos are both linux in the same way as whales and rabbits are both mammals. It's true, but not usually the useful way to compare them.
    - 3131s 6y ago
      PostmarketOS is based on Alpine, it's minuscule in comparison to Android.
- curioussavage 6y ago
  They definitely seem low when compared to androids, but If 2 GB works as great as it does on my iphone 7 then it should be doable to get a good experience here too. 3 GB is the max ram for the chip, hopefully they come out with a version that has that, or one with a different soc that can support more. Like the other guy said with SD card you won't have an issue with storage.
- bArray 6y ago
  Do remember that this device is running a full kernel, so actually you can get the speed and memory benefits of running such. Expect some Raspberry Pi 3-eque performance.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    The biggest bottleneck in RPi performance has always been the slow SD card access times. I have hardware from the Pi 3 era that still flies because they run off SSDs.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
I think I'll try and use this as a PMP.
- m463 6y ago
  Prototype Mobility Platform? Percussive Maintenance Phone? Pimp My Pandemic?
  - zootboy 6y ago
    Portable Media Player?
    - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
      bingo
jancsika 6y ago
I thought PostmarketOS did not (yet) support making calls. So what's the point of running it on hardware designed to address the issue of running FOSS alongside a blackbox baseband? If you don't need the baseband, what's the usecase that a Chromebook form factor doesn't solve?
- jentist_retol 6y ago
  >So what's the point of running it on hardware designed to address the issue of running FOSS alongside a blackbox baseband? The exercise of maintaining an open baseline is valuable. Also, having a development platform is valuable. Some modern phones keep the blackbox baseband isolated on a non DMA bus, such as usb. In those cases, you simply don't t rust the baseband as anything but a packet forwarder, and enforce full TLS/VPN at a low level in the operation system. It is limited, though. No argument there.
- miloignis 6y ago
  As mentioned in the article and the issues linked, you can already make and receive calls & SMS and use mobile data with postmarketOS on PinePhone. I have a Community Edition PinePhone with postmarketOS and have gotten mobile data working on a data only SIM, but won't be able to personally test calls and SMS until my new SIM arrives in a few days. It's a very cool device, and while it's def not a daily driver for most people, it's a ton of fun to use and seems to be improving quickly.
  - ryantgtg 6y ago
    Does it support group messaging? I don’t see that mentioned. That was the deal breaker for me when I used Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, and Sailfish OS in the past. I loved them all! But they all had a dealbreaker or two.
    - ryukafalz 6y ago
      Assuming you mean group SMS: I suspect not, since it seems to be using mostly the same stack as the Librem 5, and that doesn't seem to yet. (This is my dealbreaker too; I have a PinePhone sitting next to me running Ubuntu Touch, but I won't be able to use it as my daily driver until that works.)
mikece 6y ago
I've been researching getting a mobile "phone" that is only ever used as a hotspot for an iPod touch which runs (1) an always-on VPN and (2) apps for SMS and VoIP voice calls. So in a way, phone that can't do voice calls sounds like a good thing to me.
- megous 6y ago
  Where did you get this can't do calls?
fit2rule 6y ago
As someone with a drawer full of these types of devices, from the neo1973 to the Creative Labs Zii Egg and Google G1, I'll definitely be picking up one of these phones when its available .. I've had a lot of fun with my PineTime watch already, as there are a number of different OS'es available for it .. in various states of functionality, of course .. but that's the fun of it. Its SO rewarding to have a device like this, that has so many open options. Write a watch-face in Python? Hell yeah. Learn Rust and carry my lab projects around on my wrist - for sure. Its like a breath of fresh air after decades of walled gardens and proprietary junk. That said, the Pine-* devices are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream. The PineTime watch back-face is not glued on, even .. but that just makes it a perfect hacker statement! Something so very satisfying about having a device so open, the case doesn't even close. ;P
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  "It's like a breath of fersh air after decades of walled garden and proprietary junk. That said, the Pine-* are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream." Perhaps "ready for mainstream" is overrated (from a user perespective). Consider that many of the supposedly "ready for mainstream" proprietary hardware products that consumers have been continually fed for decades are laden with problems. Consumer routers are the first example that comes to mind but there are problems with almost everything, no matter how slick the marketing. The sellers try to block consumers from fixing anything and convince the buyers that they need constant "updates" that can only come from one source: the seller. They are effectively trying to destroy the concept of ownership.
- blendergeek 6y ago
  >That said, the Pine-* devices are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream. The PineTime watch back-face is not glued on, even .. This is a little unfair to the other Pine* products. The PineTime has not been released. A development kit was released. Of course the backcover wasn't fully polished. The finished products from PineTime are more polished, while still retaining a degree of hackability that is unheard of in most of the modern tech world.
  - 6y ago
megous 6y ago
I've also made HDMI over USB-C work recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19gryM8n9kU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19gryM8n9kU This device will be a nice portable computer, so I can travel lightly with a phone, but use it as full blown desktop anywhere I can get hold of a monitor and an USB keyboard/mouse, without having to downgrade my user experience to Android.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  That's my dream, but I think this crop of devices isn't quite there from a performance standpoint. If I could have the hardware of today's flagships with the mobile Linux distros running on these things... The Librem 5 might be closer performance-wise; I'd be curious to see how it performs docked. Regardless though, both devices have accelerated development of real mobile Linux DEs, and I'm grateful for that. Exciting times!
  - freeqaz 6y ago
    What about using your phone as a thin client of sorts? I've used Docker-Machine on an external VPS before when my laptop didn't have enough RAM. The experience was pretty decent (npm install didn't run locally). I would run my code editor locally and sync the files to the remote box. Using my phone with external monitor/keyboard/mouse as a thin client seems fairly reasonable in 2020!
    - ryukafalz 6y ago
      That would be basically necessary for this kind of workflow, yeah. But the PinePhone isn’t quite at that level even; we’re talking hardware that’s going to feel unacceptably slow at fairly basic things like web browsing compared to even a low-spec x86 laptop. Which is not to say it’s unusable, but keep in mind this is a $150 phone and the software is still a work in progress as well. If you’re expecting to use something like this docked as a workstation... well, it’s worth tempering your expectations.
      - fsflover 6y ago
sukilot 6y ago
How will this OS be secure? Via obscurity?
- swiley 6y ago
  What exactly are you asking?
- MartijnBraam 6y ago
  through the same ways normal linux distro's are secure.
- Shared404 6y ago
  It's derived from Alpine: https://alpinelinux.org/ https://alpinelinux.org/
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Rather the opposite; it runs an up-to-date Linux kernel and an Alpine user land. An exploit against this would likely work against most servers and/or containers on the net.
KingMachiavelli 6y ago
> As for the hardware, we will be making an announcement closer to date; presently we are working on the assumption that the PCB to ship with this edition will still be version 1.2. We may, however, decide to make some further tweaks to this PCB design. We will, of course, document and inform you of any changes to PCB 1.2 there may be in the future. Hmm, it will be interesting if there are any major things than need to be fixed with the v1.2 PCB. There were quite a few things fixed between 1.1 & 1.2.
harry8 6y ago
Every time one of these comes up I shed tears for the nokia n900 and maemo which was a linux, fully-functional smartphone that worked great. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 Imagine if they'd just kept it around and upgraded it in hardware and software gently as a low-ish priority. It was already fantastic. Given security updates it's still better than any droid and less icky than any apple phone.
- Multicomp 6y ago
  I'm currently prepping a Fxtec Pro1 that will become a daily driver once Lineage OS is stable on it (thanks TDM for your hard work - once I find a book on how to mod android ROMs I'm gonna join ya). It turns out that I really wanted this N900 instead, I just didn't know it and at the time was too young to know about it. There was some sort of attempted revival product called the Neo900 but it looks like it is dead / not updated any more. [1] In the meantime, I will definitely order a PinePhone once they are in general availability and not pre-orders (sorry but Fxtec burned me so bad to get the Pro1 that I've learned my lesson RE: mobile device pre-orders), and I definitely will if Pine produces a physical keyboard for the PinePhone. [1] https://my.neo900.org/ https://my.neo900.org/
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I'm really intrigued by the Fxtec hardware, but I won't buy a phone that ships with Android. I'd buy in a heartbeat if they supported a Linux SKU of the thing. Definitely interested in adding Pine's take on keyboards to my PinePhone.
    - aerique 6y ago
      I don't know what you mean with "SKU" but SailfishOS seems to run on it: https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2467-community-build32120updated-jan-20-sailfish-os-for-fxtec-pro1/ https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2467-community-build32120u... ( https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2955-community-buildsailfishos33016-updated-may-6-2020/ https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2955-community-buildsailfi... )
haolez 6y ago
Is the hardware capable of handling an external monitor? This phone could be very useful to me if it becomes a desktop computer on demand.
- megous 6y ago
  Yes. See above.
627467 6y ago
Lately I've been thinking of the ethics of buying Apple iOS devices compared to more opened devices - most, yet, not all Android devices. In the long term, iOS device are doomed to become unserviceable my users/enthusiasts dues to its closed nature, while many Android devices seem to have it's usefulness extended in time by efforts such as postmarketOS. Is there an inherent quality of iOS devices that make them unsupportable. Any given gen of iOS device has, arguably, more devices than any given flavor of Android devices (more fragmentation in Android platform) so in theory it would be more fruitful and impactful to extend the use of iOS devices (if at all possible) yet, this is not what we see. Leading me to think that Apple deliberately makes iOS devices unthinkerable. This, to me, leads to the conclusion that buying iOS devices is unethical as the only long term alternative for iOS device is to have it recycled while android devices may retain the chance for reuse into the future.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  > Is there an inherent quality of iOS devices that make them unsupportable. When you say inherit do you mean the Apple Axx CPU can only only execute the iOS kernel and nothing else? Then the answer is no. https://fossbytes.com/linux-based-mobile-postmarketos-on-iphone-7/ https://fossbytes.com/linux-based-mobile-postmarketos-on-iph... But for all practical purposes it cannot run anything but iOS and any discussions about running an aftermarket OS is purely academic.
  - arghwhat 6y ago
    > But for all practical purposes it cannot run anything but iOS and any discussions about running an aftermarket OS is purely academic. The project you referred to had a follow-up in late april: https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/22/linux-with-wayland-is-now-running-on-iphone-7/ https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/22/linux-with-wayl.... Calling the project (or any project, really) "purely academic" with the implication that it will never evolve is nonsense. Like many other projects it's of course done for the hell of it, but so is most hobby/open-source projects, and yet many evolve into something much greater. There's plenty of reverse-engineering projects out there that have brought open life into closed hardware. The question is just whether or not there's enough people interested for it to happen.
caveman787 6y ago
I am loving this PinePhone concept and PostmarketOS it because it’s cheap, but because it’s right, safe, user owned and secure OS is what everyone who spends their money deserves.

193 points by ollieparanoid 6y ago

foo2020 6y ago

The RAM and internal storage seem to be too less otherwise I might have bought it.

stamps 6y ago
You can install an SD card.
avery42 6y ago
The PinePhone has 2 Gb of RAM, which is plenty for a smartphone (especially running Linux). You can put in a micro SD card to get more storage.
- sukilot 6y ago
  How is that plenty? Is Android not Linux?
  - swiley 6y ago
    I’ve used laptops with that little ram. Don’t rub gnome or chromium and it’s fine.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    Android and postmarketos are both linux in the same way as whales and rabbits are both mammals. It's true, but not usually the useful way to compare them.
  - 3131s 6y ago
    PostmarketOS is based on Alpine, it's minuscule in comparison to Android.
curioussavage 6y ago
They definitely seem low when compared to androids, but If 2 GB works as great as it does on my iphone 7 then it should be doable to get a good experience here too. 3 GB is the max ram for the chip, hopefully they come out with a version that has that, or one with a different soc that can support more. Like the other guy said with SD card you won't have an issue with storage.
bArray 6y ago
Do remember that this device is running a full kernel, so actually you can get the speed and memory benefits of running such. Expect some Raspberry Pi 3-eque performance.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  The biggest bottleneck in RPi performance has always been the slow SD card access times. I have hardware from the Pi 3 era that still flies because they run off SSDs.

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

I think I'll try and use this as a PMP.

m463 6y ago
Prototype Mobility Platform? Percussive Maintenance Phone? Pimp My Pandemic?
- zootboy 6y ago
  Portable Media Player?
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    bingo

jancsika 6y ago

I thought PostmarketOS did not (yet) support making calls. So what's the point of running it on hardware designed to address the issue of running FOSS alongside a blackbox baseband? If you don't need the baseband, what's the usecase that a Chromebook form factor doesn't solve?

jentist_retol 6y ago
>So what's the point of running it on hardware designed to address the issue of running FOSS alongside a blackbox baseband? The exercise of maintaining an open baseline is valuable. Also, having a development platform is valuable. Some modern phones keep the blackbox baseband isolated on a non DMA bus, such as usb. In those cases, you simply don't t rust the baseband as anything but a packet forwarder, and enforce full TLS/VPN at a low level in the operation system. It is limited, though. No argument there.
miloignis 6y ago
As mentioned in the article and the issues linked, you can already make and receive calls & SMS and use mobile data with postmarketOS on PinePhone. I have a Community Edition PinePhone with postmarketOS and have gotten mobile data working on a data only SIM, but won't be able to personally test calls and SMS until my new SIM arrives in a few days. It's a very cool device, and while it's def not a daily driver for most people, it's a ton of fun to use and seems to be improving quickly.
- ryantgtg 6y ago
  Does it support group messaging? I don’t see that mentioned. That was the deal breaker for me when I used Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, and Sailfish OS in the past. I loved them all! But they all had a dealbreaker or two.
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    Assuming you mean group SMS: I suspect not, since it seems to be using mostly the same stack as the Librem 5, and that doesn't seem to yet. (This is my dealbreaker too; I have a PinePhone sitting next to me running Ubuntu Touch, but I won't be able to use it as my daily driver until that works.)

mikece 6y ago

I've been researching getting a mobile "phone" that is only ever used as a hotspot for an iPod touch which runs (1) an always-on VPN and (2) apps for SMS and VoIP voice calls. So in a way, phone that can't do voice calls sounds like a good thing to me.

megous 6y ago
Where did you get this can't do calls?

fit2rule 6y ago

As someone with a drawer full of these types of devices, from the neo1973 to the Creative Labs Zii Egg and Google G1, I'll definitely be picking up one of these phones when its available .. I've had a lot of fun with my PineTime watch already, as there are a number of different OS'es available for it .. in various states of functionality, of course .. but that's the fun of it. Its SO rewarding to have a device like this, that has so many open options. Write a watch-face in Python? Hell yeah. Learn Rust and carry my lab projects around on my wrist - for sure. Its like a breath of fresh air after decades of walled gardens and proprietary junk. That said, the Pine-* devices are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream. The PineTime watch back-face is not glued on, even .. but that just makes it a perfect hacker statement! Something so very satisfying about having a device so open, the case doesn't even close. ;P

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
"It's like a breath of fersh air after decades of walled garden and proprietary junk. That said, the Pine-* are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream." Perhaps "ready for mainstream" is overrated (from a user perespective). Consider that many of the supposedly "ready for mainstream" proprietary hardware products that consumers have been continually fed for decades are laden with problems. Consumer routers are the first example that comes to mind but there are problems with almost everything, no matter how slick the marketing. The sellers try to block consumers from fixing anything and convince the buyers that they need constant "updates" that can only come from one source: the seller. They are effectively trying to destroy the concept of ownership.
blendergeek 6y ago
>That said, the Pine-* devices are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream. The PineTime watch back-face is not glued on, even .. This is a little unfair to the other Pine* products. The PineTime has not been released. A development kit was released. Of course the backcover wasn't fully polished. The finished products from PineTime are more polished, while still retaining a degree of hackability that is unheard of in most of the modern tech world.
- 6y ago

megous 6y ago

I've also made HDMI over USB-C work recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19gryM8n9kU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19gryM8n9kU This device will be a nice portable computer, so I can travel lightly with a phone, but use it as full blown desktop anywhere I can get hold of a monitor and an USB keyboard/mouse, without having to downgrade my user experience to Android.

ryukafalz 6y ago
That's my dream, but I think this crop of devices isn't quite there from a performance standpoint. If I could have the hardware of today's flagships with the mobile Linux distros running on these things... The Librem 5 might be closer performance-wise; I'd be curious to see how it performs docked. Regardless though, both devices have accelerated development of real mobile Linux DEs, and I'm grateful for that. Exciting times!
- freeqaz 6y ago
  What about using your phone as a thin client of sorts? I've used Docker-Machine on an external VPS before when my laptop didn't have enough RAM. The experience was pretty decent (npm install didn't run locally). I would run my code editor locally and sync the files to the remote box. Using my phone with external monitor/keyboard/mouse as a thin client seems fairly reasonable in 2020!
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    That would be basically necessary for this kind of workflow, yeah. But the PinePhone isn’t quite at that level even; we’re talking hardware that’s going to feel unacceptably slow at fairly basic things like web browsing compared to even a low-spec x86 laptop. Which is not to say it’s unusable, but keep in mind this is a $150 phone and the software is still a work in progress as well. If you’re expecting to use something like this docked as a workstation... well, it’s worth tempering your expectations.
    - fsflover 6y ago

sukilot 6y ago

How will this OS be secure? Via obscurity?

swiley 6y ago
What exactly are you asking?
MartijnBraam 6y ago
through the same ways normal linux distro's are secure.
Shared404 6y ago
It's derived from Alpine: https://alpinelinux.org/ https://alpinelinux.org/
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
Rather the opposite; it runs an up-to-date Linux kernel and an Alpine user land. An exploit against this would likely work against most servers and/or containers on the net.

KingMachiavelli 6y ago

> As for the hardware, we will be making an announcement closer to date; presently we are working on the assumption that the PCB to ship with this edition will still be version 1.2. We may, however, decide to make some further tweaks to this PCB design. We will, of course, document and inform you of any changes to PCB 1.2 there may be in the future. Hmm, it will be interesting if there are any major things than need to be fixed with the v1.2 PCB. There were quite a few things fixed between 1.1 & 1.2.

harry8 6y ago

Every time one of these comes up I shed tears for the nokia n900 and maemo which was a linux, fully-functional smartphone that worked great. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 Imagine if they'd just kept it around and upgraded it in hardware and software gently as a low-ish priority. It was already fantastic. Given security updates it's still better than any droid and less icky than any apple phone.

Multicomp 6y ago
I'm currently prepping a Fxtec Pro1 that will become a daily driver once Lineage OS is stable on it (thanks TDM for your hard work - once I find a book on how to mod android ROMs I'm gonna join ya). It turns out that I really wanted this N900 instead, I just didn't know it and at the time was too young to know about it. There was some sort of attempted revival product called the Neo900 but it looks like it is dead / not updated any more. [1] In the meantime, I will definitely order a PinePhone once they are in general availability and not pre-orders (sorry but Fxtec burned me so bad to get the Pro1 that I've learned my lesson RE: mobile device pre-orders), and I definitely will if Pine produces a physical keyboard for the PinePhone. [1] https://my.neo900.org/ https://my.neo900.org/
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I'm really intrigued by the Fxtec hardware, but I won't buy a phone that ships with Android. I'd buy in a heartbeat if they supported a Linux SKU of the thing. Definitely interested in adding Pine's take on keyboards to my PinePhone.
  - aerique 6y ago
    I don't know what you mean with "SKU" but SailfishOS seems to run on it: https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2467-community-build32120updated-jan-20-sailfish-os-for-fxtec-pro1/ https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2467-community-build32120u... ( https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2955-community-buildsailfishos33016-updated-may-6-2020/ https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2955-community-buildsailfi... )

haolez 6y ago

Is the hardware capable of handling an external monitor? This phone could be very useful to me if it becomes a desktop computer on demand.

megous 6y ago
Yes. See above.

627467 6y ago

Lately I've been thinking of the ethics of buying Apple iOS devices compared to more opened devices - most, yet, not all Android devices. In the long term, iOS device are doomed to become unserviceable my users/enthusiasts dues to its closed nature, while many Android devices seem to have it's usefulness extended in time by efforts such as postmarketOS. Is there an inherent quality of iOS devices that make them unsupportable. Any given gen of iOS device has, arguably, more devices than any given flavor of Android devices (more fragmentation in Android platform) so in theory it would be more fruitful and impactful to extend the use of iOS devices (if at all possible) yet, this is not what we see. Leading me to think that Apple deliberately makes iOS devices unthinkerable. This, to me, leads to the conclusion that buying iOS devices is unethical as the only long term alternative for iOS device is to have it recycled while android devices may retain the chance for reuse into the future.

teruakohatu 6y ago
> Is there an inherent quality of iOS devices that make them unsupportable. When you say inherit do you mean the Apple Axx CPU can only only execute the iOS kernel and nothing else? Then the answer is no. https://fossbytes.com/linux-based-mobile-postmarketos-on-iphone-7/ https://fossbytes.com/linux-based-mobile-postmarketos-on-iph... But for all practical purposes it cannot run anything but iOS and any discussions about running an aftermarket OS is purely academic.
- arghwhat 6y ago
  > But for all practical purposes it cannot run anything but iOS and any discussions about running an aftermarket OS is purely academic. The project you referred to had a follow-up in late april: https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/22/linux-with-wayland-is-now-running-on-iphone-7/ https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/22/linux-with-wayl.... Calling the project (or any project, really) "purely academic" with the implication that it will never evolve is nonsense. Like many other projects it's of course done for the hell of it, but so is most hobby/open-source projects, and yet many evolve into something much greater. There's plenty of reverse-engineering projects out there that have brought open life into closed hardware. The question is just whether or not there's enough people interested for it to happen.

caveman787 6y ago

I am loving this PinePhone concept and PostmarketOS it because it’s cheap, but because it’s right, safe, user owned and secure OS is what everyone who spends their money deserves.