30 ms·

PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

296 points by danielg0 6y ago

phoe-krk 6y ago
The title should be changed to "PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available"; the article is about PinePhone, not KDE.
- d33 6y ago
  Seconded. Pet peeve: whenever I see those comments after having the title changed, I'm curious: "what was the original title?". In this case, it was: "KDE Community Edition is now available". I just feel like it's a good idea to include this context when making a comment about the bad title so that the future readers can compare.
  - boogies 6y ago
    You might appreciate https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/ https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/ (doesn’t help far future readers except when archived on Wayback or similar though).
- anoncake 6y ago
  Agreed, "KDE Community Edition" sounds like the libre variant of a hypothetical open-core KDE.
- danielg0 6y ago
  Apologies, I've edited it now. I did consider this initially, but the guidelines ask that the original title is used, and I wasn't sure if this fell under misleading.
  - phoe-krk 6y ago
    Thanks. I'd say it's "confusing" rather than "misleading"; this is because of lack of context. Reading "KDE Community Edition released" when you're on a Pinephone website is more meaningful than reading "KDE Community Edition released" on Hacker News, with only the pine64.org domain being available next to the link.
netol 6y ago
I can't believe KDE can be run in a phone, when I tried to run KDE in my desktop it always felt sluggish and unstable
- vorticalbox 6y ago
  Same I also dislike activities I would much rather hack actual desktops or workspaces I can switch between.
  - p4bl0 6y ago
    You can have desktops that you can switch between in KDE. How are activities different from workspaces? I've never really used any of the two.
    - troyvit 6y ago
      Activities are like a new set of workspaces for you to switch to. Like let's say you use your laptop for work and for fun at home. At work you use 4 workspaces and plain desktop backgrounds and conky to watch processes. Then when you punch out at work and want to relax you want just one workspace with cycling wallpapers or whatever. You can set up a "work" activity that fits those needs and then a "home" activity that is much simpler for at home. I think of it as like a third dimension for workspaces.
      - p4bl0 6y ago
        Okay so as I understand it: virtual desktops are additional space that add screen space that you can jump to ; workspaces are like a more malleable version of virtual desktops ; and activities are an additional dimension on top of that with which you can switch between different virtual desktops and/or workspaces configurations. Thanks :).
- jrepinc 6y ago
  You have probably tried it in 4.0 days. Plasma 5 is nowadays actually one of the lightweight ones and it is very fast. Especially when you consider how many features/flexibility it has compared to other lightweight desktops.
iagovar 6y ago
OT: Is Pinebook worth it to RDP with remmina? I'm currently using a fanless 13.5" Acer B115m but It's getting old and deteriorated (the screen plastic is peeling off...). I've been trying to find a replacement, but with better screen, which my main complaint about the B115m (I use it mainly outdoors with 4g, I need brightness), but most laptops use fans, which I'm trying to avoid. Had no luck in the <500€ range.
- Latty 6y ago
  The obvious thing that comes to mind for fanless laptops given recent news is the Macbook Air with the M1 chip, but clearly that isn't offering a similar thing in terms of freedom and user control of the hardware/software.
  - iagovar 6y ago
    It's way out off my budget.
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    I wish I could have something like MacBook Air (a durable stylish laptop to carry around for coding, writing and browsing the web wherever I go, full HD screen to fit more text, as much RAM as possible - to load complex editor/IDE configs) but 100% Linux-compatible and at a fraction of the price. Here is what I'm ready to sacrifice: I don't need fanless, I don't need crazy battery time (half a day is more than enough), I don't play games nor do I need videos to play in resolutions exceeding 720p (360p is more than enough for me unless I try to watch a video on coding where I need to read the code), I don't need any OS but Linux. I don't need it to be new (can be refurbished) as long as it still is easy to find in the EU (US would add import taxes). I thought PineBook Pro can kind of fit this because it seems being a RaspberryPi-like in a MacBookAir-like shell and RaspberryPi4 actually feels Ok. Can you suggest something that fits better than PineBook Pro and MacBook Air do?
    - O_H_E 6y ago
      I hear some/old macbooks does support linux quite well. I think even linus was using an Air at one point in time (still?).
oriesdan 6y ago
For the record, I received yesterday the new mainboard that will be in those phones to replace the one of my pinephone UBport edition. The boost in RAM (3gb instead of 2gb) does the trick for me, allowing to use firefox. Not to the point that the experience is even close to android, but at least usable (before that, I used elinks on the phone). The system I use (mobian/phosh) still feels sluggish, but I suspect it's more a matter of software than hardware, now. I tried yesterday KDE neon/plasma with that new board, but had problems that the screen would black out after a few minutes of use (had to do hard reboot to recover). I see in this release announcement that their build of plasma is on top on Manjaro, I'll have to try that one. It's especially interesting because someone from Plasma mobile team told on HN the other day that they support MMS.
- kop316 6y ago
  > It's especially interesting because someone from Plasma mobile team told on HN the other day that they support MMS. I'm curious about this too, as I explicitly tried plasma mobile on several distros (PostmarketOS, Manjaro, KDE Neon), and MMS did not work for me at all. It seems to work on the ofono stack, which seems to be closer to supporting MMS versus ModemManger + Chatty, but I'd love to hear from that same person again to hear their set up.
  - oriesdan 6y ago
    For reference, this was the post, in case you come around the author : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101199
  - linmob 6y ago
    IIRC (not a MMS user, it never took off in Germany) MMS requires provider/carrier specific settings (e.g. a special MMS APN) to be set, meaning that it may not work for you even though it’s properly implemented.
- swiley 6y ago
  Supposedly improvements in hardware acceleration have changed this but IME a window manager with no compositing is way faster than phosh. I use fluxbox and on that firefox scrolls in real time for example.
johnchristopher 6y ago
I love KDE, it's been my daily driver since I had to reinstall a desktop in a hurry and my awesome-wm config was too old. Dolphin et gwenview are speed killers (I love Gnome's ethos but Nautilus is a snail and is missing many features I use hourly). Can the KDE pinephone be used as handheld computer for reading PDF, taking pictures, scanning bills and invoices, media player and that kind of things ? I am not ready to rely on it for SMS and phone calls, I can't afford to miss any calls or messages.
- swiley 6y ago
  I got a landline when I switched to the pinephone and set it up to ring both. I do miss MMS messages but people who really need to get to me call or email me.
  - seniorivn 6y ago
    did you use mms in 2019-2020? where are you?
    - stinkytaco 6y ago
      If you're in the US, you are using MMS in 2020.
      - jraph 6y ago
        In France too, you might. These discussions about how strange it is to still use MMS in 2020 are starting to get old quick. Among all people, those interested in the Pinephone are probably more likely to not use WhatsApp and its friends. And there are very cheap mobile plans without much data, but on which MMS are free. Yesterday, I wrote a script to retrieve MMS "easily" on the Pinephone (in the spirit of janky-mms [1] which does not work well on my phone and of which I'm unable to read the code properly), I need to take the time to release it at some point. [1] https://git.sr.ht/~amindfv/janky-mms https://git.sr.ht/~amindfv/janky-mms
      - throwaway201103 6y ago
p4bl0 6y ago
Is is able to run Android apps? Like Signal for example? Or maybe the Signal desktop app works?
- avery42 6y ago
  Yes, Anbox is working pretty well on Arch Linux ARM [0][1], although I haven't tried Signal specifically. [0] https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases [1] https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/wiki/Anbox https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/wiki/Anbox
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Anbox is so RAM-heavy that it really isn't a realistic solution for running Signal (or OSMAnd, another app that I need on my daily driver), at least not on the 2GB Pinephone board. Yes, Anbox support is moving right along so that you can open an Android app on your Pinephone, but not in a way that you can also use e.g. the web browser at the same time.
    - linmob 6y ago
      It can work, but it's definitely no fun to use it without ZRAM and/or swap (and better not wear your eMMC out by swapping to it).
    - avery42 6y ago
      Ah, fair, I think I've only ever used it on a 3GB board with ZRAM enabled. It also looks a bit blurry on Wayland, hopefully that gets fixed soon (it looks like there's a bounty for it [0]). [0] https://github.com/anbox/anbox/issues/1270 https://github.com/anbox/anbox/issues/1270
- unpixer 6y ago
  I had no luck getting Signal for Android working in Anbox (too crashy). There are unofficial ports of Signal Desktop to aarch64 available here and there online, and there's also someone who got some sort of unholy Signal-Matrix hybrid working (https://old.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/jusbk3/update_signal_messenger_on_pinephone_success/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/jusbk3/upda...) but the whole Signal situation is very much a work in progress.
agilob 6y ago
What with app development? Can I use Dart/Flutter there? What tools are used for app development? Is there a compatibility layer or something similar to adb?
- simlevesque 6y ago
  It's Linux with KDE. You can use almost anything.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  Have a look at https://mauikit.org/ https://mauikit.org/ and https://develop.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/ https://develop.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/ - the main tech stack there is Qt
- avery42 6y ago
  Like other commenters said, it's just Linux so you can do pretty much anything. For Qt, the current stack seems to be Kirigami, which is KDE's library for convergent apps. There's also the Mauikit framework, which is built on top of Kirigami (I don't know enough to know the exact differences). For Gtk, it's libhandy, which adds a few widgets for convergent apps. It looks like Flutter doesn't support ARM yet, I found this after a quick search: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/60678 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/60678 There's also a few Electron/Webkit-based apps (especially for UBPorts), which is a nice temporary solution to get an app on the device while there isn't yet a native equivalent.
qwertox 6y ago
I could fall in love with such a phone. One where I can easily run Python processes inside screen sessions, which gather GPS and other sensor data for rapid prototyping, stream that data over a WebSocket connection, then some Bluetooth stuff in Go. Computing stuff.
- jegea 6y ago
  I own the 3GB Manjaro edition of the PinePhone (same hardware as this one, AFAIK) and, while in theory you can do everything that you describe with it, it is hardly something you could use as your only smartphone for the day. (I still love it, though, and love hacking away with it!!) However, as of today, there's a much better way of achieving what you're describing in an Android phone: Termux (1) With Termux you can use an amazing number of regular Linux/UNIX tools, interface them with phone specific functionality (like GPS or other sensors) and still enjoy having a modern smartphone in terms of apps available, performance and battery life. (Shameless plug: you can watch Termux in action in this talk from last year (2). It's centered around Ruby, but Python works just fine, too) (1) https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API (2) https://vimeo.com/482309000/1534e97efd https://vimeo.com/482309000/1534e97efd (edit: typo)
  - hobofan 6y ago
    As of today yes, but who knows about tomorrow. Termux might be facing a harsh future given the changes in Android 10.[0] Actually switching to a pure Linux phone and might be the more viable long-term solution. [0]: https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-Android-10 https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...
    - stazz1 6y ago
      "Linux Phone"... music to my ears!
    - jegea 6y ago
      Sadly true, indeed. It's a shame we're losing so much useful functionality there. Security is a worthy goal but getting rid of useful features just because Google wants to handhold Android users so much seems to me like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
peternicky 6y ago
Is there a summary of functionality for pinephone? I’m not clear if for example the degraded mms support is an issue in all variants of mobile gnu Linux distros or oif only some suffer.
- kop316 6y ago
  Since there are so many distros, it is honestly hard to keep up with (even if you are involved with the commuity). In (very) broad strokes (i.e. if you use a well supported distro), you can expect: - Calls and SMS seem stable, even when the phone is asleep - Battery life Screen on time is measured in hours, and sleep time is measured in ~1 day - Anbox is usable, but not easy to install - convergance is stable - MMS is non-functional: https://sr.ht/~anteater/mms-stack/ https://sr.ht/~anteater/mms-stack/ - GPS/location is only usable if you have a GPS signal - Camera is pretty stable (though the front camera had a green tint)
  - linmob 6y ago
    Which distribution are you using? (Asking because there are differences in feature support and reliability .)
    - kop316 6y ago
      I tried PostmarketOS, Mobian, and Manjaro. PostmarketOS edge had Plasma Mobile 5.20.3, which was considered to be the latest plasma mobile at the time.
antoineMoPa 6y ago
> $199 — 3GB RAM; 32GB eMMC (includes a bundled USB-C dock) This could basically be a daily use PC + Phone for 199$? Quite impressive.
- Ardon 6y ago
  "Daily use" might be a biiit of a stretch with this hardware, but it'll be functional. I think Pinephone 2, whenever that happens, will be a much more practical convergence device. Pine64's plans to upgrade to the RK3566 SOC in their low-power devices look very promising.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    If you are waiting for "Pinephone 2", take a look at Librem 5: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5
    - jcun4128 6y ago
      $800? The ram is 3GB so wondering what the huge jump in price is.
      - fsflover 6y ago
        https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#17-why-does-the-librem-5-cost-so-much-compared-to-the-pinephone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque... and https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/ https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/ Upd: from a consumer point of view, the answer would be "because it is innovative" [0] and it has much faster RAM and GPU [1]. [0] https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#15-how-innovative-is-the-librem-5 https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque... [1] https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-phones/6827 https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p...
        jcun4128 6y ago
shmerl 6y ago
Is it using all native driers or libhybris?
- megous 6y ago
  All drivers are FOSS and native.
  - shmerl 6y ago
    That's great, thanks!
LeonM 6y ago
Does anyone here have experience with actually using the pinephone as a daily driver? I know plenty of people that ordered one, but they are all laying on a drawer somewhere with the intention to play with it a bit. Basically how most RPi's end up. Just curious if this phone is actually competitive with android devices in the same price class.
- fsflover 6y ago
  I am using it as a daily driver. However, it does not survive a day with an average use. I use a second battery or switch it off when not using. Calls can occasionally be missed (Mobian Phosh), but you get a notification immediately and can call back. Desktop Firefox with all plugins is amazing.
- blendergeek 6y ago
  > Does anyone here have experience with actually using the pinephone as a daily driver? I do. I have been using my pmOS edition as my daily driver since the day i gott it. > Just curious if this phone is actually competitive with android devices in the same price class. That depends on your needs. It is not going to have any of the proprietary app that are on Android. So, what works? - Camera: stills only - Phone calls: Yes. Sometimes calls don't come through but it usualy works. - Messaging: SMS works, unless you need MMS. If people send you group SMS or picture messages, these are MMS. MMS not only don't work but disable the ability to receive SMS. The user must use command line tools to fix this. - GPS works. However the default pmOS maps app only works with an active internet connection. Further it does not do navigation. You can get directions but you cannot do turn-by-turn navigation on the road. There is an app that works for this called PureMaps. It works as expected. - Web browsing works great with desktop firefox even on mobile. - Convergence. The phone advertises that you can plug in a monitor. This is technically true, however it only works while the phone is running from battery power. Further using the dock drains battery extremely quickly and is therefore only recommended on wallpower. So this is still a work in progress. - Bluetooth. Bluetooth headphones work for music but not for phone calls. If you have any questions, ask and i'll try to answer. Whether its "competitive" with Android phones is opinion. For me, its way better and i am glad to have it.
fxtentacle 6y ago
Aw, it's 6" screen and 160.5mm tall ... so too big for one-handed operation. I hope they'll eventually make either a 4" 125mm size or a flip phone, because that would be exactly what I would want to use. It's for the same reason that I'm also holding on to my old iPhone SE because the new SE is too large. Like this, it's sadly more like "Linux that almost would have fit into your pocket".
jcun4128 6y ago
Well I got mine. I'm torn between "will it just sit on the counter/will I use it" as I use a Moto 5 already(low end phone with 3GB ram). Still it is a dream of mine to have everything on a phone as far as dock/develop on it. I mean I don't know if you'd ever be able to do vms but if you could run generic environments, pull down a repo/work on it, that would be pretty cool. Also will try to get more into Linux specifically I'm after some kind of i3-wm toggle for performance gain. Mostly hoping my support can help speed up the 8GB device ha. A bunch of my old phones are sitting around doing nothing. Edit: I guess maybe part of it is a "future development/emerging market" thing maybe I can develop apps people would want on Linux phones in the future. In particular Qt/some native GUI/hopefully cross platform and to get more into C++ as I'm coming mostly from JS "wHy CaNt I uSe DyNaMiC tYpInG" ha that was a struggle.
black_puppydog 6y ago
I've been trying to run my pinephone (mobian) for more things. Since I work from home, this means mostly podcasts, and the occasional call. Well... calls don't work for me, but that might be my (secondary) SIM. I'll try it with the primary soon. Podcasts... I set up gPodder (while docked, because the UI doesn't adapt to the screen) and then use mpv to actually play the episodes which... is surprisingly usable. Next I'll see if I can adapt Podbird or such. It should work, really... I also find myself late-night hacking in vim (again, surprisingly usable with onscreen keyboard, with minor tweaks) at night-time. xD In a nutshell: I love the project. It's not "there" yet, but it's making progress, and I'm finally happy again to get update notifications to my phone. Edit: also chat of course. The reason I didn't mention that is that I simply didn't think about chat as an issue. 99% of my chats are on telegram these days and that works pretty flawlessly on the pinephone, since it runs the exact same (efficient) codebase as the desktop app. In fact, just resize the (Qt) desktop app to simulate how it behaves on the phone. :)
- dskleingeld 6y ago
  regarding podcasts, I am getting a pinephone in a week or two and am building a podcast player as a side project. It is the first gui/app I have ever made and currently it cant even play anything, that is when it compiles, but if you take a look in 2 weeks I might have something (ugly and) functional. https://github.com/dskleingeld/pods https://github.com/dskleingeld/pods
  - tmzt 6y ago
    Cool. It looks empty because there's no README.md and you could mention it's using Iced as it's ui library.
    - dskleingeld 6y ago
      Yeah I will definitely acknowledge the great rust crates that make this possible
  - black_puppydog 6y ago
crowf 6y ago
Can this phone run WhatsApp? That is one of the few things that prevent me from making phones like these my primary one
- anderspitman 6y ago
  If you can run it in a web browser or generic Linux, then yes.
heavyset_go 6y ago
How well does Anbox work on the PinePhone? Does it work well with modern Android apps? What about apps that integrate with Android security like banking apps?
anderspitman 6y ago
I've been playing with my pinephone a bit (2GB postmarketOS). Overall I think it's awesome and I love having a real linux machine in such a nice package. The build quality is much better than expected. That said, Firefox is extremely slow and crashes a lot. Getting a fast stable browser seems like priority #1 to me. If these things are ever going to take off they need apps, and I think web apps (for better or for worse) are the quickest way to get a decent number of apps. I'm not sure if it's simply a hardware issue (can't expect too much for 150USD), or a software optimization problem. I don't have a cheap Android phone to compare to.
- omnimus 6y ago
  I would bet its software issue. Cheap androids are more than OK. People who only buy high-end don't realize how good cheep phones like xiaomi mi a123 are. It's mostly worse camera... they are solid metal build and don't even feel slower. I've had the pleasure with pinephone manjaro edition and its ok build. Once the software is better i will go for it.
  - linmob 6y ago
    Just a reminder: You can just write an OS to SD card and quickly try it out, and when you've found one that's quite good (I really like Mobian and ArchLinuxARM) you can settle on that. No need to stick with what your PinePhone shipped with :)
Teknoman117 6y ago
I really wish it was possible to have flagship class phones that supported open systems well. The closest any phone is that I can find is the Pro1 X, which hardware wise is a Pixel 2, but it isn't open hardware, it's just documented so that you can more easily run what you want. I'd love to see a current Snapdragon, Mediatek, Exynos, etc. chipset in one of these open phones. I'd even be willing to pay flagship prices for one.
backing 6y ago
Will KDE succeed where ubuntu didn't?
- emilsedgh 6y ago
  They have wildly different definitions of success.
boronine 6y ago
I use my pinephone as a portable privacy focused Debian server. It establishes an ssh tunnel to a VPS with a static IP and forwards port 443. This provides end-to-end encryption for my private services.
gossamer 6y ago
I was hoping this was a phone based on the old Pine email client. :-(
fnord77 6y ago
does this phone work on LTE networks?
- linmob 6y ago
  Yes. See https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone#Modem_and_carrier_support https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone#Modem_and_carrier_sup... for more info.

296 points by danielg0 6y ago

The title should be changed to "PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available"; the article is about PinePhone, not KDE.

d33 6y ago
Seconded. Pet peeve: whenever I see those comments after having the title changed, I'm curious: "what was the original title?". In this case, it was: "KDE Community Edition is now available". I just feel like it's a good idea to include this context when making a comment about the bad title so that the future readers can compare.
- boogies 6y ago
  You might appreciate https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/ https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/ (doesn’t help far future readers except when archived on Wayback or similar though).
anoncake 6y ago
Agreed, "KDE Community Edition" sounds like the libre variant of a hypothetical open-core KDE.
danielg0 6y ago
Apologies, I've edited it now. I did consider this initially, but the guidelines ask that the original title is used, and I wasn't sure if this fell under misleading.
- phoe-krk 6y ago
  Thanks. I'd say it's "confusing" rather than "misleading"; this is because of lack of context. Reading "KDE Community Edition released" when you're on a Pinephone website is more meaningful than reading "KDE Community Edition released" on Hacker News, with only the pine64.org domain being available next to the link.

netol 6y ago

I can't believe KDE can be run in a phone, when I tried to run KDE in my desktop it always felt sluggish and unstable

vorticalbox 6y ago
Same I also dislike activities I would much rather hack actual desktops or workspaces I can switch between.
- p4bl0 6y ago
  You can have desktops that you can switch between in KDE. How are activities different from workspaces? I've never really used any of the two.
  - troyvit 6y ago
    Activities are like a new set of workspaces for you to switch to. Like let's say you use your laptop for work and for fun at home. At work you use 4 workspaces and plain desktop backgrounds and conky to watch processes. Then when you punch out at work and want to relax you want just one workspace with cycling wallpapers or whatever. You can set up a "work" activity that fits those needs and then a "home" activity that is much simpler for at home. I think of it as like a third dimension for workspaces.
    - p4bl0 6y ago
      Okay so as I understand it: virtual desktops are additional space that add screen space that you can jump to ; workspaces are like a more malleable version of virtual desktops ; and activities are an additional dimension on top of that with which you can switch between different virtual desktops and/or workspaces configurations. Thanks :).
jrepinc 6y ago
You have probably tried it in 4.0 days. Plasma 5 is nowadays actually one of the lightweight ones and it is very fast. Especially when you consider how many features/flexibility it has compared to other lightweight desktops.

iagovar 6y ago

OT: Is Pinebook worth it to RDP with remmina? I'm currently using a fanless 13.5" Acer B115m but It's getting old and deteriorated (the screen plastic is peeling off...). I've been trying to find a replacement, but with better screen, which my main complaint about the B115m (I use it mainly outdoors with 4g, I need brightness), but most laptops use fans, which I'm trying to avoid. Had no luck in the <500€ range.

Latty 6y ago
The obvious thing that comes to mind for fanless laptops given recent news is the Macbook Air with the M1 chip, but clearly that isn't offering a similar thing in terms of freedom and user control of the hardware/software.
- iagovar 6y ago
  It's way out off my budget.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  I wish I could have something like MacBook Air (a durable stylish laptop to carry around for coding, writing and browsing the web wherever I go, full HD screen to fit more text, as much RAM as possible - to load complex editor/IDE configs) but 100% Linux-compatible and at a fraction of the price. Here is what I'm ready to sacrifice: I don't need fanless, I don't need crazy battery time (half a day is more than enough), I don't play games nor do I need videos to play in resolutions exceeding 720p (360p is more than enough for me unless I try to watch a video on coding where I need to read the code), I don't need any OS but Linux. I don't need it to be new (can be refurbished) as long as it still is easy to find in the EU (US would add import taxes). I thought PineBook Pro can kind of fit this because it seems being a RaspberryPi-like in a MacBookAir-like shell and RaspberryPi4 actually feels Ok. Can you suggest something that fits better than PineBook Pro and MacBook Air do?
  - O_H_E 6y ago
    I hear some/old macbooks does support linux quite well. I think even linus was using an Air at one point in time (still?).

oriesdan 6y ago

For the record, I received yesterday the new mainboard that will be in those phones to replace the one of my pinephone UBport edition. The boost in RAM (3gb instead of 2gb) does the trick for me, allowing to use firefox. Not to the point that the experience is even close to android, but at least usable (before that, I used elinks on the phone). The system I use (mobian/phosh) still feels sluggish, but I suspect it's more a matter of software than hardware, now. I tried yesterday KDE neon/plasma with that new board, but had problems that the screen would black out after a few minutes of use (had to do hard reboot to recover). I see in this release announcement that their build of plasma is on top on Manjaro, I'll have to try that one. It's especially interesting because someone from Plasma mobile team told on HN the other day that they support MMS.

kop316 6y ago
> It's especially interesting because someone from Plasma mobile team told on HN the other day that they support MMS. I'm curious about this too, as I explicitly tried plasma mobile on several distros (PostmarketOS, Manjaro, KDE Neon), and MMS did not work for me at all. It seems to work on the ofono stack, which seems to be closer to supporting MMS versus ModemManger + Chatty, but I'd love to hear from that same person again to hear their set up.
- oriesdan 6y ago
  For reference, this was the post, in case you come around the author : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101199
- linmob 6y ago
  IIRC (not a MMS user, it never took off in Germany) MMS requires provider/carrier specific settings (e.g. a special MMS APN) to be set, meaning that it may not work for you even though it’s properly implemented.
swiley 6y ago
Supposedly improvements in hardware acceleration have changed this but IME a window manager with no compositing is way faster than phosh. I use fluxbox and on that firefox scrolls in real time for example.

johnchristopher 6y ago

I love KDE, it's been my daily driver since I had to reinstall a desktop in a hurry and my awesome-wm config was too old. Dolphin et gwenview are speed killers (I love Gnome's ethos but Nautilus is a snail and is missing many features I use hourly). Can the KDE pinephone be used as handheld computer for reading PDF, taking pictures, scanning bills and invoices, media player and that kind of things ? I am not ready to rely on it for SMS and phone calls, I can't afford to miss any calls or messages.

swiley 6y ago
I got a landline when I switched to the pinephone and set it up to ring both. I do miss MMS messages but people who really need to get to me call or email me.
- seniorivn 6y ago
  did you use mms in 2019-2020? where are you?
  - stinkytaco 6y ago
    If you're in the US, you are using MMS in 2020.
    - jraph 6y ago
      In France too, you might. These discussions about how strange it is to still use MMS in 2020 are starting to get old quick. Among all people, those interested in the Pinephone are probably more likely to not use WhatsApp and its friends. And there are very cheap mobile plans without much data, but on which MMS are free. Yesterday, I wrote a script to retrieve MMS "easily" on the Pinephone (in the spirit of janky-mms [1] which does not work well on my phone and of which I'm unable to read the code properly), I need to take the time to release it at some point. [1] https://git.sr.ht/~amindfv/janky-mms https://git.sr.ht/~amindfv/janky-mms
    - throwaway201103 6y ago

p4bl0 6y ago

Is is able to run Android apps? Like Signal for example? Or maybe the Signal desktop app works?

avery42 6y ago
Yes, Anbox is working pretty well on Arch Linux ARM [0][1], although I haven't tried Signal specifically. [0] https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases [1] https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/wiki/Anbox https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/wiki/Anbox
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Anbox is so RAM-heavy that it really isn't a realistic solution for running Signal (or OSMAnd, another app that I need on my daily driver), at least not on the 2GB Pinephone board. Yes, Anbox support is moving right along so that you can open an Android app on your Pinephone, but not in a way that you can also use e.g. the web browser at the same time.
  - linmob 6y ago
    It can work, but it's definitely no fun to use it without ZRAM and/or swap (and better not wear your eMMC out by swapping to it).
  - avery42 6y ago
    Ah, fair, I think I've only ever used it on a 3GB board with ZRAM enabled. It also looks a bit blurry on Wayland, hopefully that gets fixed soon (it looks like there's a bounty for it [0]). [0] https://github.com/anbox/anbox/issues/1270 https://github.com/anbox/anbox/issues/1270
unpixer 6y ago
I had no luck getting Signal for Android working in Anbox (too crashy). There are unofficial ports of Signal Desktop to aarch64 available here and there online, and there's also someone who got some sort of unholy Signal-Matrix hybrid working (https://old.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/jusbk3/update_signal_messenger_on_pinephone_success/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/jusbk3/upda...) but the whole Signal situation is very much a work in progress.

agilob 6y ago

What with app development? Can I use Dart/Flutter there? What tools are used for app development? Is there a compatibility layer or something similar to adb?

simlevesque 6y ago
It's Linux with KDE. You can use almost anything.
jcelerier 6y ago
Have a look at https://mauikit.org/ https://mauikit.org/ and https://develop.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/ https://develop.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/ - the main tech stack there is Qt
avery42 6y ago
Like other commenters said, it's just Linux so you can do pretty much anything. For Qt, the current stack seems to be Kirigami, which is KDE's library for convergent apps. There's also the Mauikit framework, which is built on top of Kirigami (I don't know enough to know the exact differences). For Gtk, it's libhandy, which adds a few widgets for convergent apps. It looks like Flutter doesn't support ARM yet, I found this after a quick search: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/60678 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/60678 There's also a few Electron/Webkit-based apps (especially for UBPorts), which is a nice temporary solution to get an app on the device while there isn't yet a native equivalent.

qwertox 6y ago

I could fall in love with such a phone. One where I can easily run Python processes inside screen sessions, which gather GPS and other sensor data for rapid prototyping, stream that data over a WebSocket connection, then some Bluetooth stuff in Go. Computing stuff.

jegea 6y ago
I own the 3GB Manjaro edition of the PinePhone (same hardware as this one, AFAIK) and, while in theory you can do everything that you describe with it, it is hardly something you could use as your only smartphone for the day. (I still love it, though, and love hacking away with it!!) However, as of today, there's a much better way of achieving what you're describing in an Android phone: Termux (1) With Termux you can use an amazing number of regular Linux/UNIX tools, interface them with phone specific functionality (like GPS or other sensors) and still enjoy having a modern smartphone in terms of apps available, performance and battery life. (Shameless plug: you can watch Termux in action in this talk from last year (2). It's centered around Ruby, but Python works just fine, too) (1) https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API (2) https://vimeo.com/482309000/1534e97efd https://vimeo.com/482309000/1534e97efd (edit: typo)
- hobofan 6y ago
  As of today yes, but who knows about tomorrow. Termux might be facing a harsh future given the changes in Android 10.[0] Actually switching to a pure Linux phone and might be the more viable long-term solution. [0]: https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-Android-10 https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...
  - stazz1 6y ago
    "Linux Phone"... music to my ears!
  - jegea 6y ago
    Sadly true, indeed. It's a shame we're losing so much useful functionality there. Security is a worthy goal but getting rid of useful features just because Google wants to handhold Android users so much seems to me like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

peternicky 6y ago

Is there a summary of functionality for pinephone? I’m not clear if for example the degraded mms support is an issue in all variants of mobile gnu Linux distros or oif only some suffer.

kop316 6y ago
Since there are so many distros, it is honestly hard to keep up with (even if you are involved with the commuity). In (very) broad strokes (i.e. if you use a well supported distro), you can expect: - Calls and SMS seem stable, even when the phone is asleep - Battery life Screen on time is measured in hours, and sleep time is measured in ~1 day - Anbox is usable, but not easy to install - convergance is stable - MMS is non-functional: https://sr.ht/~anteater/mms-stack/ https://sr.ht/~anteater/mms-stack/ - GPS/location is only usable if you have a GPS signal - Camera is pretty stable (though the front camera had a green tint)
- linmob 6y ago
  Which distribution are you using? (Asking because there are differences in feature support and reliability .)
  - kop316 6y ago
    I tried PostmarketOS, Mobian, and Manjaro. PostmarketOS edge had Plasma Mobile 5.20.3, which was considered to be the latest plasma mobile at the time.

antoineMoPa 6y ago

> $199 — 3GB RAM; 32GB eMMC (includes a bundled USB-C dock) This could basically be a daily use PC + Phone for 199$? Quite impressive.

Ardon 6y ago
"Daily use" might be a biiit of a stretch with this hardware, but it'll be functional. I think Pinephone 2, whenever that happens, will be a much more practical convergence device. Pine64's plans to upgrade to the RK3566 SOC in their low-power devices look very promising.
- fsflover 6y ago
  If you are waiting for "Pinephone 2", take a look at Librem 5: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5
  - jcun4128 6y ago
    $800? The ram is 3GB so wondering what the huge jump in price is.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#17-why-does-the-librem-5-cost-so-much-compared-to-the-pinephone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque... and https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/ https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/ Upd: from a consumer point of view, the answer would be "because it is innovative" [0] and it has much faster RAM and GPU [1]. [0] https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#15-how-innovative-is-the-librem-5 https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque... [1] https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-phones/6827 https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p...
      - jcun4128 6y ago

shmerl 6y ago

Is it using all native driers or libhybris?

megous 6y ago
All drivers are FOSS and native.
- shmerl 6y ago
  That's great, thanks!

LeonM 6y ago

Does anyone here have experience with actually using the pinephone as a daily driver? I know plenty of people that ordered one, but they are all laying on a drawer somewhere with the intention to play with it a bit. Basically how most RPi's end up. Just curious if this phone is actually competitive with android devices in the same price class.

fsflover 6y ago
I am using it as a daily driver. However, it does not survive a day with an average use. I use a second battery or switch it off when not using. Calls can occasionally be missed (Mobian Phosh), but you get a notification immediately and can call back. Desktop Firefox with all plugins is amazing.
blendergeek 6y ago
> Does anyone here have experience with actually using the pinephone as a daily driver? I do. I have been using my pmOS edition as my daily driver since the day i gott it. > Just curious if this phone is actually competitive with android devices in the same price class. That depends on your needs. It is not going to have any of the proprietary app that are on Android. So, what works? - Camera: stills only - Phone calls: Yes. Sometimes calls don't come through but it usualy works. - Messaging: SMS works, unless you need MMS. If people send you group SMS or picture messages, these are MMS. MMS not only don't work but disable the ability to receive SMS. The user must use command line tools to fix this. - GPS works. However the default pmOS maps app only works with an active internet connection. Further it does not do navigation. You can get directions but you cannot do turn-by-turn navigation on the road. There is an app that works for this called PureMaps. It works as expected. - Web browsing works great with desktop firefox even on mobile. - Convergence. The phone advertises that you can plug in a monitor. This is technically true, however it only works while the phone is running from battery power. Further using the dock drains battery extremely quickly and is therefore only recommended on wallpower. So this is still a work in progress. - Bluetooth. Bluetooth headphones work for music but not for phone calls. If you have any questions, ask and i'll try to answer. Whether its "competitive" with Android phones is opinion. For me, its way better and i am glad to have it.

fxtentacle 6y ago

Aw, it's 6" screen and 160.5mm tall ... so too big for one-handed operation. I hope they'll eventually make either a 4" 125mm size or a flip phone, because that would be exactly what I would want to use. It's for the same reason that I'm also holding on to my old iPhone SE because the new SE is too large. Like this, it's sadly more like "Linux that almost would have fit into your pocket".

jcun4128 6y ago

Well I got mine. I'm torn between "will it just sit on the counter/will I use it" as I use a Moto 5 already(low end phone with 3GB ram). Still it is a dream of mine to have everything on a phone as far as dock/develop on it. I mean I don't know if you'd ever be able to do vms but if you could run generic environments, pull down a repo/work on it, that would be pretty cool. Also will try to get more into Linux specifically I'm after some kind of i3-wm toggle for performance gain. Mostly hoping my support can help speed up the 8GB device ha. A bunch of my old phones are sitting around doing nothing. Edit: I guess maybe part of it is a "future development/emerging market" thing maybe I can develop apps people would want on Linux phones in the future. In particular Qt/some native GUI/hopefully cross platform and to get more into C++ as I'm coming mostly from JS "wHy CaNt I uSe DyNaMiC tYpInG" ha that was a struggle.

black_puppydog 6y ago

I've been trying to run my pinephone (mobian) for more things. Since I work from home, this means mostly podcasts, and the occasional call. Well... calls don't work for me, but that might be my (secondary) SIM. I'll try it with the primary soon. Podcasts... I set up gPodder (while docked, because the UI doesn't adapt to the screen) and then use mpv to actually play the episodes which... is surprisingly usable. Next I'll see if I can adapt Podbird or such. It should work, really... I also find myself late-night hacking in vim (again, surprisingly usable with onscreen keyboard, with minor tweaks) at night-time. xD In a nutshell: I love the project. It's not "there" yet, but it's making progress, and I'm finally happy again to get update notifications to my phone. Edit: also chat of course. The reason I didn't mention that is that I simply didn't think about chat as an issue. 99% of my chats are on telegram these days and that works pretty flawlessly on the pinephone, since it runs the exact same (efficient) codebase as the desktop app. In fact, just resize the (Qt) desktop app to simulate how it behaves on the phone. :)

dskleingeld 6y ago
regarding podcasts, I am getting a pinephone in a week or two and am building a podcast player as a side project. It is the first gui/app I have ever made and currently it cant even play anything, that is when it compiles, but if you take a look in 2 weeks I might have something (ugly and) functional. https://github.com/dskleingeld/pods https://github.com/dskleingeld/pods
- tmzt 6y ago
  Cool. It looks empty because there's no README.md and you could mention it's using Iced as it's ui library.
  - dskleingeld 6y ago
    Yeah I will definitely acknowledge the great rust crates that make this possible
- black_puppydog 6y ago

crowf 6y ago

Can this phone run WhatsApp? That is one of the few things that prevent me from making phones like these my primary one

anderspitman 6y ago
If you can run it in a web browser or generic Linux, then yes.

heavyset_go 6y ago

How well does Anbox work on the PinePhone? Does it work well with modern Android apps? What about apps that integrate with Android security like banking apps?

anderspitman 6y ago

I've been playing with my pinephone a bit (2GB postmarketOS). Overall I think it's awesome and I love having a real linux machine in such a nice package. The build quality is much better than expected. That said, Firefox is extremely slow and crashes a lot. Getting a fast stable browser seems like priority #1 to me. If these things are ever going to take off they need apps, and I think web apps (for better or for worse) are the quickest way to get a decent number of apps. I'm not sure if it's simply a hardware issue (can't expect too much for 150USD), or a software optimization problem. I don't have a cheap Android phone to compare to.

omnimus 6y ago
I would bet its software issue. Cheap androids are more than OK. People who only buy high-end don't realize how good cheep phones like xiaomi mi a123 are. It's mostly worse camera... they are solid metal build and don't even feel slower. I've had the pleasure with pinephone manjaro edition and its ok build. Once the software is better i will go for it.
- linmob 6y ago
  Just a reminder: You can just write an OS to SD card and quickly try it out, and when you've found one that's quite good (I really like Mobian and ArchLinuxARM) you can settle on that. No need to stick with what your PinePhone shipped with :)

Teknoman117 6y ago

I really wish it was possible to have flagship class phones that supported open systems well. The closest any phone is that I can find is the Pro1 X, which hardware wise is a Pixel 2, but it isn't open hardware, it's just documented so that you can more easily run what you want. I'd love to see a current Snapdragon, Mediatek, Exynos, etc. chipset in one of these open phones. I'd even be willing to pay flagship prices for one.

backing 6y ago

Will KDE succeed where ubuntu didn't?

emilsedgh 6y ago
They have wildly different definitions of success.

boronine 6y ago

I use my pinephone as a portable privacy focused Debian server. It establishes an ssh tunnel to a VPS with a static IP and forwards port 443. This provides end-to-end encryption for my private services.

gossamer 6y ago

I was hoping this was a phone based on the old Pine email client. :-(

fnord77 6y ago

does this phone work on LTE networks?

linmob 6y ago
Yes. See https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone#Modem_and_carrier_support https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone#Modem_and_carrier_sup... for more info.