Posts and notes Pinephone

It’s been a few weeks since my last post about the Pinephone. Since then I have been playing further with a different graphical shell and have been trying out new applications.

In that previous post, I noted a few points that made the phone tricky to use as a daily-driver. However, it should be noted that this was (intentionally) based purely on the phone’s out-of-the-box configuration. I fully meant to continue exploring and to discover ways in which the device could become more of a useful daily use phone for me. This post forms part of that journey.

Back in April, I bought a Pinephone. I used the phone quite consistently for the first few weeks and I meant to write an update here a couple of months back, but work (and other things) got in the way a bit.

So, here is my delayed “first few weeks with a Pinephone” update.

As mentioned, I initially aimed to simply use the phone in its out-of-the-box state (i.e. Manjaro Linux with KDE Plasma Mobile) - not as a daily driver, but more as a means of measuring the phone’s base case usability. However, hopefully with an aim to eventually being able to use such a device more full-time.

As you may know, I recently purchased the beta edition of the Pinephone. It arrived last week in the Pinephone Beta Edition box shown below.

As mentioned in my previous post on the subject, I bought the phone for purely experimental purposes, to get involved in the community, and to be a part of the freedom and Linux-on-phone movement.

I fully understand that the device is not yet really considered ready for every-day reliable production use (especially when compared to my current iPhone 11 Pro Max). However, the Pinephone is less than 20% the price of my iPhone, and comes with the freedom to do so much more - without the restrictions of Apple’s “walled garden”.

Pre-ordering the PinePhone Beta

Earlier this week I ordered a PinePhone, which recently became available as a Beta Edition.

I’ve been excitedly following the progress of the PinePhone for some time now. I’ve joined various Matrix rooms, subscribed to blogs, and started listening to the PineTalk podcast. The phone is a hackable device that runs plain old Linux - not an Android variant - and thus helps users escape from the grasp of the Google and Apple ecosystems.