PinePhone Linux Smartphone Shipment Finally Begins

Pine64 will finally start shipping the pre-order units of PinePhone Braveheart Edition on January 17, 2020. Fossbytes reports: A year ago, PinePhone was made available only to developers and hackers. After getting better responses and suggestions, the Pine64 developers planned to bring Pinephone for everyone. In November last year, pre-orders for PinePhone Braveheart Edition commenced for everyone. But due to manufacturing issues coming in the way, the shipment date slipped for weeks, which was scheduled in December last year.

PinePhone Braveheart Edition is an affordable, open source Linux-based operating system smartphone preloaded with factory test image running on Linux OS (postmarketOS) on inbuilt storage. You can check on PinePhone Wiki to find the PinePhone compatible operating system such as Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, or Sailfish OS, which you can boot either from internal storage or an SD card.

UI

[DogDude]

My big question is what does the UI look like? For security and privacy's sake, I use Windows Phones, so I'm spoiled with a good UI. If these things are as bad as Android and iOS in terms of UI, I'll just stick with my Windows Phones until I absolutely can't get my hands on any more of them.

Re:

[pak9rabid]

Looks like it runs PureOS [wikipedia.org]. However, you're free to load any other compatible OS onto it.

This is the first phone I might actually be excited about in a long time.

Re:

[DogDude]

Oh, that's what I was afraid of. Yuck. I'm sticking with my Windows Phones.

Re:

[pak9rabid]

It doesn't look like a phone that would be appealing to the masses. But for geeks, it looks pretty gd fun to play with.

Re:

[DogDude]

I agree it'd be fun for geeks. I use my phone for work, though (and as little as possible), so I'm unusual in that I do NOT want to play with my phone for a second longer than I have to. Hence, my hang up with a good UI.

Re:UI

[J. T. MacLeod]

I use my phone for work, though (and as little as possible), so I'm unusual in that I do NOT want to play with my phone for a second longer than I have to.

Respectfully, I think that this sentence is the only way someone could accuse Windows Phone of being a good UI.

It's pretty slick... as long as you don't really do much of anything with your device. They are not UI principles that scale.

Re:

[DogDude]

You mean it wouldn't scale if I had tons and tons of "apps" on it like most people do? Why do you say that?

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

DogDude, this is Slashdot, you need to use a "</sarcasm>" tag at the end of your sarcastic humor posts, the pedantic, imaginationless types don't get that you're kidding. ;-)

Re:

[DogDude]

Have you seen the Windows Phone UI? It's pretty great. Android and iOs are just a random jumble of different icons that looks like my Grandma's Windows 95 desktop.

Re: UI

[aRTeeNLCH]

Windows Phone was the first smartphone I saw that I recon my mom could use. I probably would have liked it, a first for me and MS Software... I still mourn the Nokia n9, and this device runs Sailfish os... I don't get what you are doing on Slashdot if you can't configure this pine phone to have the ui you desire. Oh yeah, like me, commenting...

Re:

[twocows]

You mean this one [ytimg.com]? Ah, well, I guess everyone has their own tastes. I think iOS and Android look a lot better, though.

Re:

[DogDude]

Yup, that one.

Sailfish OS works

[DrYak]

I have extensive experience with Sailfish OS on multiple devices supported by Jolla.

It basically works. It covers most on basic needs (phone, message, e-mail, browsing, etc.) though it might need some fumbling for some more advanced/custom/esoteric uses... (community's WunderFritz supports photo translations, but you need to set up Azure API keys yourself).

Once it's out of the "Breave Heart"/early access phase (or if you already play with it now and wait for a later more stable point before using it as a da

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for letting us know. I had been wondering all day if you were going to switch phones, and it was looking like you weren't going to tell anyone. Thankfully, this story was provocative enough to trick you into revealing your intentions.

Build your own UI!

[b3e3]

Out of the box it's running Gnome on Linux; you could make your own WinPhone UI, or completely rewrite everything and make it look however you want.
They make it pretty clear you shouldn't rely on the stock build as your sole handset yet-- this phone is a hobbyist's tinkertoy, not a stable mass-market daily driver.

Re:

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

This is the first phone I might actually be excited about in a long time.

Same here. I never ever feel any interest in the newest phone, but this one....yeah. I can feel my wallet trying to climb out of my pocket as we speak.

Re:

[fonske]

Wait until that wallet takes a hit by customs. In Belgium I paid a fat 60 Euro customs... But I pay it gladly for community efforts. Thanks Pine team!

Re: UI

[OpinOnion]

For me the major feature lacking on any non Android platform is that little microphone icon that you press to be able to do voice to text in any app simply from the on-screen keyboard. Windows phone was okay, but like iOS it lacks The easy to use and pretty darn accurate voice typing. when you're being forced to use an on-screen keyboard voice typing in voice commands can become massively more convenient and much much faster. People that don't use voice typing on a phone that is in trash or completely mi

Custom input

[DrYak]

At least for Sailfish OS (and I strongly suspect that UBTouch too ?), it supports custom inputs and the community has already gone crazy with custom interfaces (swype-based, extemded emoji keyboards, etc .) adding a voice-to-text wouldn't be difficult.

The main problem is finding a way to decently do it on-device. If you keep needing to stream all your mic audio to Google's mothership, it partly defeats a good chunk of the reasons not use android.

Re:

[atisss]

Why would you need UI? I'm fine with terminal

Re:UI

[Rick Schumann]

atiss@bash: phone --dial --number 12135551212
That must really suck after a while using multi-tap.

Re:UI

[snickers]

That's because you're not using the address book functionality. I much prefer to dial with the following command.

snickers@bash: grep girlfriend address_book.txt | awk -F '[ ]' '{print $2}' | phone --dial

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

You're making my thumbs cramp just looking at that. xD

Emacs

[DrYak]

of course, there's an Emacs command to do that.

[Ctrl]+[Meta]+[Esc]+[G] shortcut (or +[M] to call mom instead)

(On-screen touch keyboards: finally a way to have all the super-meta-etc. modifier available to use Emacs in all its glory).

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

[Ctrl]+[Meta]+[Esc]+[G]

..and you drop your phone, not enough fingers to hold it properly, it lands on a corner, shattering the glass. :-( xD

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

atiss@bash: phone --dial --number 12135551212
phone: /dev/phone: Permission denied
atiss@bash: sudo phone --dial --number 12135551212
[sudo] password for atiss:
atiss is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.
atiss@bash: su
Password:
# phone --dial --number 12135551212
ERROR - Don't run phone as root!
# poweroff

Braveheart Edition

[fahrbot-bot]

They do know that Sir William Wallace [wikipedia.org] ended up hanged, drawn and quartered - right? Not sure how that bodes for the hardware, but just sayin'.

The Software, not the Hardware

[DrYak]

Not sure how that bodes for the hardware, but just sayin'.

It's a reference to the current state of the *Software* (no the Hardware) - that's the part which is considered early beta.
Currently the phone ships with a minimalist OS that only contain hardware self-tests.
The user is supposed to install themselves one of the early available OS.

It's not targeting the regular end-users yet, ti's targetting OS developers, and test-users. Hence the moniker.

Daddy Want

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I'm just trying to decide if I'm gonna be a "Braveheart' or not. Soooooooo tempting, and really, $200 ain't shit for a device with its capabilities. Hmmmm.

Also, my birthday present is still in limbo (I haven't decided what I want yet) but maybe this will be it. Hmmm.

Re:

[Guybrush_T]

Yeah same. Back in the days, I bought an OpenMoko and it was pretty expensive, for something that was quite limited in the end, and didn't have that much of a long life. But I loved being able to SSH on my phone and be root. I could install whatever I wanted on it, like write shell scripts to manage my icons, it was very hackable and it was great to feel you had 100% control over it.

Now what I'd be really missing is the ability to install apps. Same as moving from windows to linux, on smartphones, applicat

Re:

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Now what I'd be really missing is the ability to install apps.

This is the one thing that's giving me pause...I don't install a lot of apps, but the ones I do install I wouldn't want to be without. I think I'd have a very hard time replicating them on Linux, or even coming close. Some of them I know for a fact have no Linux equivalent, and that's a problem to be sure.

Still...I want one of these, lol.

Android Apps

[DrYak]

At least Sailfish OS, in its commercial version has an (LXC-based) android compatibility layer.
So if Jolla goes to officially recognise this port and provided the licensed version, you can also run the couple of android apps that your friends insist on you using (e.g.: WhatsApp).

At some point UBTouch has also toayed with the similar Anbox layer. I haven't paid attention how far that has gone.

Re:

[Guybrush_T]

I personally just follow the advances of Anbox. It's ambitious, might never work, but is still the only approach that I find valid to ever run a linux phone.

And I can test it on my linux laptop to get an idea of how usable/stable it is, before I jump to a linux phone.

Mobile vs Privacy

[btcwarrior]

Everything in the mobile environment was designed against privacy. This is a good news that a new mobile phone is using postmarketOS.

Allwinner Chinazi CPU, no thanks

[Nocturrne]

What where they thinking? There are plenty of better options.

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

Such as?

Re:

[Nocturrne]

Mediatek, Qualcomm, and Samsung are good non-dictatorship sourced options. Allwinner is the worst of the worst, with a long history of design problems and terrible support.

Re:

[ELCouz]

Qualcomm you need volume which ain't happening.

Re:

[Nocturrne]

The last time I worked on a mobile phone project, the MOQ for the Qualcomm chipset was 5K. Since we chose to use a common platform with no major hardware changes, we were able to start the project and ship the first shipment, based on an order or only 3K. Mobile phone business is terrible now. I think you can find suppliers are much more flexible than they used to be.

micro batches

[DrYak]

the initial batches at Pine64 tend to be in the hundrets range.

Re:

[h4rr4r]

Mediatek is a GPL violator. That's even worse.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> Mediatek is a GPL violator. That's even worse.

Worse than imprisoning millions of people in concentration camps and harvesting organs out of butchered political prisoners, mostly all for their religious beliefs?

Yeah, copyright isn't as important as mass murder. China would be under heavy sanctions if the EPA hadn't chased all the manufacturing out of the US.

I'll buy my next phone from Korea, thanks.

Can it make/receive calls?

[ikhider]

Does anyone know whether this phone can actually make and receive calls, or is it something for developers to still figure out?

out of stock?

[0-9a-zA-Z_.+!*'()123]

I went to go buy one and it says "out of stock".

https://store.pine64.org/?prod... [pine64.org]

Early adopters

[DrYak]

That's the "Brave heart" edition for early adopters :
for developers of OS and for test users.

The next batch (of orders + shipments), the "regular" one, is probably going to take place after the chinese new year festivities (check Pine64's Blog for more details).
Hopefully, by then, the current crop of developers and test-users would have helped the OS landscape mature.

Re:

[samwichse]

I'm pretty intrigued by the Plasma Mobile interface. I definitely plan to pick one of these up when the next round comes up.

It would be super cool if they use the "alternate mode" part of the USB-C spec to allow you to plug in and charge the phone while breaking out GPIO or rs232 on some of the assignable pins.

Missing features

[aRTeeNLCH]

Dual SIM, for me a must have. Waterproof, nice to have. Full HD screen, nice to have, as I get older, it's not that necessary anymore. Ticks all other boxes though. Dual SIM might be doable via the back pogopins. Ticks lots of nice too have boxes too. May have to get one just to support the efforts.

This looks awesome

[WaffleMonster]

The future with current efforts moving from custom vendor forks for ARM SOCs to mainline Linux and Android kernel moving to Linux looks promising.

One thing I love about pine phone it will boot directly off any bootable SD card. The ability to swap system images for testing or messing around with new software is awesome.

I hope LineageOS or some android image makes its way to pinephone or at least some container scheme that lets people run their Android apps.