Pinephone mini-review - As promised:
This is by no means a comprehensive review - It's based on me playing with the Pinephone over the last few days, so there are undoubtedly a lot of areas I have not covered yet. I'll add updates as I discover more.
1. Hardware
Specs are readily available
(see
https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/) so I won't go into detail here:
- SoC: Allwinner A64, quad-core ARM Cortex A53 @ 1.1GHz, Mali 400 MP2 GPU
- RAM: 2GB / 3GB
- Storage: 16GB / 32GB eMMC + uSD card slot
- Screen: 5.95" IPS LCD, 18:9 aspect ratio
- Cameras: 5MP rear, 2MP front
- Wireless connectivity: Wifi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, 4G LTE, GPS, Glonass
- Wired connectivity: USB-C for charging, USB2.0 host/device mode, video out (displayport alt mode)
- Dimensions: 160.5 x 76.6 x 9.2 mm, weight 180-200g
The Pinephone feels good in the hand, though perhaps a little thick by modern standards this and the curved sides make it easy to keep hold of. The screen is bright and colours seem good, though it should be noted that I have red-green colour blindness according to my optician so should probably be disqualified fom commenting on this. Resolution is 1440 x 720, which seems perfectly OK. On several of the OSes I've tried the scaling is set at 200% so I doubt this is proving a limitation. Neither camera seems to be able to take even passable photos, but I believe this is substantially software-dependent and being worked on actively.
2. OS Options
The following are the OSes I have tried on the Pinephone - Please note that there are several more that I have not tried and also that they are at varying stages of development, so my experience does not necessarily reflect on the quality of each OS, just where it is at present.
UBPorts (Ubuntu Touch)
+ UI is similar to desktop Ubuntu
(Gnome
) at least for the 'launcher' part, does a nice little run-through of basic operation on first boot
+ App store
(OpenStore
) contains web apps as well as native apps, widens the selection somewhat
- Difficult to install desktop Linux apps despite underlying Debian-based OS, I didn't succeed although you can via containers I believe
- Not too many native apps
Manjaro with Plasma Mobile UI
+ UI is quite familiar as an Android user and looks modern and quite 'slick'
+ App store
(Discover
) allows install of desktop Linux as well as native apps
- Few native apps, though the native apps available work well
- Desktop apps often do not scale well to the UI
Manjaro with Phosh UI
+ Clean UI, seems to have quite a few options
+ Fairly easy to install desktop Linux apps
- UI not as easy to just pick up and use as Plasma Mobile or Ubuntu Touch
- Few native apps, though the native apps available work well
- Desktop apps often do not scale well to the UI
Mobian with Phosh UI
+ Clean UI, seems to have quite a few options
(same as Manjaro Phosh
)
+ Easy to install desktop Linux apps, familiar Debian commands in terminal
(for me as long-time Debian / Ubuntu user
)
- Few native apps, though the native apps available work well
- Desktop apps often do not scale well to the UI
3. Further exploration - Manjaro with Plasma Mobile
Based on my experiences I went with Plasma Mobile for now - This just seems the most 'usable' for me at present. I've not spent long playing with it but below is what I've tried so far.
Web browsing
Default browser
(Angelfish
) has a nice clean interface, loads quickly, scrolls smoothly and plays Youtube videos OK. All considering the relatively weak hardware so not amazing but certainly usable. I've not felt the need to try another yet.
Installing apps
App store
(Discover
) is quite easy to use though a little slow and pulls up desktop Linux as well as mobile apps. Wide selection of apps though I cannot find any way to use web apps yet.
Word processor
No native / mobile word processor, there is one
(Calligra Gemini
) that claims to have a touch interface option - I could not make this work. Libreoffice Writer runs fine though a little slowly but I cannot get the menus configured to be usable on this screen - It's just very much a desktop app. A shame as I use this on every Linux device and have managed albeit with some difficulty on my 7 inch RPi-based 'homemade HPC'. So far the most usable is Abiword, it defaults to quite uncluttered menus with elements large enough to operate with a finger, and the menus can be scrolled down by swiping. Size of screen elements doesn't leave much 'paper' space though, as my photo shows.
Keyboard support (USB)
A USB keyboard is picked up without issues and works for text entry in apps, seems to suppress the virtual keyboard as well. Some limited functions elsewhere in the UI
(Alt-Tab works as you'd expect, as does Alt-F4 and Ctrl-Alt-Del
) but not nearly as many as on Android, a little disappointingly. I imagine this is yet to come though - As the Pinephone seems to be driving a lot of the development in the Linux mobile world I can only imagine the keyboard case will help once it arrives.
4. What I've not tried yet
- Running a desktop OS on the Pinephone
- Android (Glodroid) - I'm finding it a little difficult to see much point in this, but at least it's open source Android and probably supported for much longer than 'normal' phones
- Calls / SMS / Mobile data - I've not put a SIM card in the Pinephone at all yet - I bought it to be a PDA but I'm happy to stick a spare SIM in and try this out for others who are curious
- Email / PIM functions - This will take a while to set up so I've just not got round to it yet
- Testing the battery life - It seems as though it would get through a day of mixed use but I have no idea what standby usage is like - I'll report back soon
5. Overall impressions
I'm honestly pleasantly surprised - The level of community support for this device is remarkable, and getting this to function more or less like a modern smartphone whilst running a recent Linux kernel and a fully open source, properly accessible OS is a real achievement. It's clearly not a very powerful device compared to today's phones with decacore 2GHz+ CPUs and 16GB of RAM but outside of Android / iOS I believe you can get a lot more out of less hardware, not to mention tweak the OS to your exact requirements.
Please let me know anything you would like me to test and I'll give it a try and report back, time permitting.
Edited by robertojones 2021-06-15 11:56 PM
(Home Screen.jpg) (Top menu.jpg) (Apps.jpg) (Browser (Angelfish).jpg) (Libreoffice Writer.jpg) (Abiword.jpg) Attachments
----------------
Home Screen.jpg (36KB - 0 downloads) Top menu.jpg (34KB - 0 downloads) Apps.jpg (52KB - 0 downloads) Browser (Angelfish).jpg (56KB - 0 downloads) Libreoffice Writer.jpg (32KB - 0 downloads) Abiword.jpg (33KB - 0 downloads)