If they did that, it would be sold out for years before you or I could get it.

A lot of the libcamera work done on Raspberry Pi boards is going towards improving the camera support on linux phones like the PinePhone, which is great!

Aside from that, sadly a lot of people (including myself) are kind of fed up with Raspberry Pi, after they essentially abandoned their mission during Covid to please corporations, and are preparing to go public despite being a “charity”. Broadcom, their SoC supplier, also has left a sour taste in my mouth after their purchase and mass layoffs at VMWare.

If they created a phone it would likely end up being scalped to death, and maybe pretty pricey compared to a PinePhone

Raspberry PI can’t run a mainline Linux kernel.

They made an entire Linux-powered portable game system that’s revolutionizing Linux gaming at the moment…an embedded engineer is not the same skillset as an app developer. Not even close.

They can do the hardware and let someone else compile the os

Well, I don’t want it to be android powered anyways. That’s the entire point.

Everything that matters is open source and upstreamed or on the way there. Haven’t kept up with the state of things but as far as I am aware you can already run a mainline kernel on the Deck. Would love to see an open phone you can easily run your own distribution on without jumping through hoops.

But phones are hard. An x86 phone with decent battery life is even harder. But one can dream.

Plasma and unity both seem to be the ones I come back to. The other three I would mess with, but something about the other two always brought me back.

Phosh is pretty good. I don’t think Gnome Mobile is finished yet.

Getting laid

In the US store it costs 200$ for the original PinePhone and 400$ for the Pro version. The EU store is a little more expensive.

I’m not the person you asked, but I’ve had mine for 2 years.

Pros:

• free software and freedom (and with that increased privacy and security)
• runs the same software that you can run on desktop as long as it has an ARM build (a lot of Debian packages do) or you compile it yourself - this includes not just apps, but also terminal programs and servers
• killswitch to power off the proprietary modem for when you don’t want phone carrier tracking you
• like in other modern phones the modem is isolated (here it’s connected over USB)
• multiple distros to choose from
• multiple desktop environments to choose from
• replacable battery
• headphone jack
• replacement parts available in case you break something
• there are some interesting addons that you can buy (https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone/#accessories)
• microSD card slot
• you can boot from the microSD card, so distro hopping is easy
• can run Android apps through Waydroid

Cons:

• slow - you are running modern software on an old SoC (the Pro version is faster, but still slow compared to modern phones)
• not all GNU/Linux apps have a responsive UI that works well on mobile
• some old apps might not have touch support
• short battery life - the SoC is not very energy efficient. Possible workarounds: get the keyboard addon with builtin battery (but it makes the phone bigger and heavier), carry spare batteries with you, or buy/3D print a bigger case and use a bigger battery
• runs hot
• GPS isn’t super accurate
• audio quality during phone calls isn’t great
• the non-pro version might not be able to run a mainline kernel, so you might not be able to install a desktop distro on it
• the Pro version should be able to run a mainline kernel, but there might be things that don’t work
• experience with GNU/Linux is required
• sometimes workarounds are needed - for me, on Mobian stable sometimes the modem or wifi don’t wake up from suspend and I have to reset it with a script (I added it to the apps menu for quick access, but it’s still annoying)
• [on original PinePhone] bad camera and the default app can only take pictures - there is a script for recording video, but then there is no preview
• I’m not sure if you can use the camera as a webcam in most software
• [might depend on the model] video playback is not GPU accelerated, so it makes the CPU hot and drains battery and you might be limited to 1080p@30fps or 720p
• you can run a stable distro with old software and old bugs (and sometimes things change very fast) or a less stable one with current software, but then things will sometimes break after update and you will have to fix it (probably more than on desktop)
• on Mobian stable (old software) the proximity sensor acts weird during a call and sometimes you can’t see the screen
• no Xbox gamepad support in Mobian stable (but Playstation gamepads work)
• they keyboard addon isn’t perfect and requires some setup
• with the keyboard addon I can’t plug in any USB devices to the phone and I don’t know why - charging works though
• support for emergency broadcast is only just now being introduced in Phosh (https://phosh.mobi/posts/cellbroadcast)
• [original PinePhone] uses micro SIM standard instead of nano SIM
• sometimes there is screen flickering in non-pro version
• killswitches could be a bit easier to flip (they are very small)
• [on original PinePhone] poor 3D performance (even SuperTuxKart doesn’t run smoothly), WebGL doesn’t seem to work (at least for 3D)
• not a lot of RAM, so you can’t run too many apps at once or have too many browser tabs open - you can still run Electron apps, though (just not too many at once)
• no push notifications, so if you want to be notified when you get a message in some app, while the phone is suspended, you would have to setup a script to wake the phone up periodically

Edit: I corrected a mistake with the SIM card. I turns out that PinePhone Pro uses nano SIM and it’s only the original PinePhone that uses micro SIM

I used mine on T-Mobile almost daily. It worked okay. Think of early Android days where everyone had their own custom rom and none of them were as smooth as you felt they should be.

lol

Five

I haven’t used it on the PinePhone or PinePhone Pro in a while, but Waydroid is solid on my OnePlus 6T with postmarketOS. Android apps that only need an Internet connection work fine. I installed microG and have push notifications working for Discord and Teams. However, notifications don’t get passed through to the Linux side so they only show if you open the Android UI. Screen rotation doesn’t work on Waydroid which can be very annoying. Apps that use other hardware features such as location, Bluetooth, vibration, access to calls/texts won’t work properly.

Looks like for me I will have to wait for WhatsApp to be cross-app, and the phone call audio quality will be an issue.