Challenging
When I gave you the Pinephone challenge I had given up on the Pinephone six months before then. It was death by a million deal breakers across multiple versions of multiple OSs. Beyond turning it on and kinda-using it for a few hours it was highly unreliable and a terrible Linux device let alone a phone.
- Had I just missed something? Was it just me?
- Had the phone become usable in the last 6 months?
- If someone had my experience of trying to really use it, would they still call it a “tinkerers phone” or a hot piece of slag?
OS developers weren’t using the phone
The best example (of many) is if you forgot to plug it in and went to bed every OS would over-discharge the battery beyond the point the phone could recharge it and you’d have to recover it externally. That’s been a problem since before 2020 and I solved it early 2022 (at least for me) with a simple BASH script. It’s a problem that can’t exist if just one OS dev actually uses the phone.
Persistance
Around the Pinephone Pro release (only a few months ago) is when the Standard Pinephone (non-pro) became usable as a decent Linux phone using Mobian or PostmarketOS Phosh (imho). It also requires the keyboard case to make daily driving viable in terms of battery life.
Heavy air quotes because you still need to be VERY curious in order to figure out how to integrate it into your life and ideally be willing to read the official Pinephone/Mobian wikis end-to-end which to their credit are extremely good.
Rewards
Pinephone development is slow, has always been slow and from what I can tell will always be slow but from everything i’ve seen and continue to see the people involved are highly dedicated, high quality individuals that just do not stop. Owning a Pinephone is like owning an exotic pet that you uniquely know how to use and once it’s done scratching your face off it’s an extremely rewarding experience that’s hard to communicate but you’ll know it when you feel it.