Unboxing The PinePhone From Pine64

By Michael Tunnell

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I donā€™t think it looks too thick. It looks really nice. Speaking of courage jack, does anybody know the DAC that they use in the pinephone? Iā€™d like to see the video that puts the convergence through its paces.

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The phone is based on their open source Pine A64 single board computer of theirs. Though they did have to use closed source hardware to turn it into a cell phone.

True, afaik, there is no such open source hardware. It would be a grail phone for me with a completely Libre hardware stack as opposed to just a desirable phone.

I want one so badly that I will just order one. When my wife asks why I spent my money I will refer her to Michaelā€™s video.

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I noticed on their new store site, just for a while it had the quantity available. There was three times the number of ones with 3GB of RAM (nearly 3000) than the ones with 2GB of RAM (~8XX). I wonder if that is a sign of things to come with 4GB+ versions.

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Word to the wiseā€¦ during installation on first boot I opted for full disk encryption and used a very long password from my OnlyKey over USB.

After installation I rebooted and discovered USB does not operate prior to full disk encryption being entered. After several manual attempts I couldnā€™t replicate my extremely long password using the touchpad.

Iā€™m VERY happy about the security feature of turning off USB during boot. But ahhhā€¦ guess iā€™m learning how to reflash early lol.

Same first impressions, just a beautiful beautiful beautifuuuuul phone. Especially impressed with the tactile feedback of the buttons. 1st class experience so far.

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the PinePhone is not too thick at all. I think it is great looking phone especially for the position it is in.

I am not sure what the DAC is but as @Trent said it is the same as their A64 boards so whatever this is.

I will be doing testing of the Convergence dock for sure! :slight_smile:


I apologize and youā€™re welcome. :smiley:


I can say that it is very likely that in the future they will upgrade the hardware provided that the device is overall deemed successful by Pine64 which I think is safe to say it has been. In regards to a 4GB+ RAM model, this is not possible in the current Phone design because the motherboard/chipset they are using for this first version of this phone maxes out at 3GB of RAM. So Yes, in the future, I believe they will get more powerful versions but it will be a dramatic change to the overall phone as well.


This is very good to know. I just disabled all of that when I first booted it because I dont expect to leave the default OS on there very long.

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I had not realized it did not support more than 3GB as the Rock64s can come with up to 4GB of RAM. I am really surprised they turned to using their original Pine A64 for the basis of the phone. I had bought one of those a while back. Shortly after I had gotten it, I noticed support for it was quickly dropping in the area of various OS to install on it. They stopped being updated, and a few of them even dropped support altogether and pulled down the download for the OS.

I am on the cusp of purchasing one as the new batch has arrived, but I at the point where if I spend that $200 right at this moment, it will come and bite me, because when I do , I then usually need that money on something pricey I buy. Either way, if in still in stock next week, going to get one.

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Iā€™m sure I can find this, but what apps are available? Are they all per-OS? And is there a list of carriers? I donā€™t really use my phone a ton right now, but there are a handful of apps Iā€™d love to have access to, and obviously I need it to make calls! Iā€™m carrier agnostic as well, just donā€™t know if they only work one band or what.

It depends on the OS and yes per OS basis.

They dont list carriers because its meant for Global supply but here is the tech list.

Worldwide, Global LTE bands
LTE-FDD: B1/ B2/ B3/ B4/ B5/ B7/ B8/ B12/ B13/ B18/ B19/ B20/ B25/ B26/ B28
LTE-TDD: B38/ B39/ B40/ B41
WCDMA: B1/ B2/ B4/ B5/ B6/ B8/ B19
GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, single-band, hotspot
Bluetooth: 4.0, A2DP
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS

Looks like Iā€™m on the carrier list!

So this list holds the apps on PostMarket?

I guess do you feel like the PinePhone ready to be a daily driver for ā€˜light usersā€™? Or are you still learning its quirks and getting ready to install the 13-in-1 card?

I am still learning the PinePhone but I can say that postmarketOS is not ready for sure. I also donā€™t like Phosh at all. This is the interface shell that Purism made for the Librem 5 and they can keep it.

I will be testing the 13 in 1 but I can say that I have used Ubuntu Touch on a One Plus One and it worked just fine as a daily driver for the basics. Itā€™s not ideal but in terms of the basics it handles those pretty well.

I will be testing Ubuntu Touch on the PinePhone for sure! :smiley:

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This made me laugh.

Iā€™m sure youā€™ll cover it but Iā€™d love to hear your impressions on it as well. Somehow I had never come across https://open-store.io/ but this does seem to have quite a bit of apps. Iā€™m just hesitant to drop $200 on a phone if I canā€™t replicate my workflow, but Iā€™d LOVE a phone powered by Linux!

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Let me know what all you need and I will try to test those things in the video. I have experienced Ubuntu Touch a lot and even ran it as a daily driver for 3 months last year so I expect it to be solid. I will test it on this device though as my previous test was with a One Plus 1

Thanks! It has most everything, surprised not to see VLC on there since VLC is EVERYWHERE, but I would like a music and/or video player, see how smooth it runs too.

I already know that I will go with Ubuntu Touch. I never had one of those cool Ubuntu phones but I always wanted one and we all know what happened. As the reviews for Ubuntu Touch are pretty much positive I know where to go and I am an absolute light phone user.

The only apps I need are a browser (Firefox) and Telegram. I have no interest in anything else.
I mean I guess I would install some kind of media player to listen to music or play the occasional video. I could even live without a camera. On my Android phone I almost never take photos anyway.

I just realize how perfect this device is for my use case and I am definitely in.

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Been looking to buy one too, but iā€™d like to know if itā€™s ready for daily use.
I

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The Manjaro ones are available, and due to be shipped in early November. Lukasz just put out a new post saying he thinks the Manjaro distro is so far the ā€œsmoothest experienceā€ on PinePhone out of all the others. I did order the 3GB Manjaro CE version.

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