The PinePhone is a smartphone advertised by its designers as open source. The aim of its design is not only to provide a functional Linux phone to end users, but also to create a market for such a device, as well as to support well-established projects geared towards "Linux on smartphones".
One of PinePhone's value propositions is allowing users to choose their operating system as the user would do on a PC. Earlier this year, there was talk of PostmarketOS, a Linux distribution that grows on a variety of smartphones and Android devices.
Although on the other hand a LuneOS port is being developed, which is a webOS-based operating system. The team behind Sailfish OS is also working to bring its distribution from Linux to the PinePhone platform.
Another of the systems that could reach the team is Ubuntu Touch, as the development team also announced tests with this system.
“The basic functionality of the phone (calls and messages) is already active for several operating systems.
It took some time to operate the mobile network due to a bug in the SIM slot wiring of the 1.1 and 1.2 development kits.
This has been fixed with an adapter and the aforementioned 2.0 development kit no longer requires the adapter.
I have tried PostmarketOS, Maemo Leste, and LuneOS in the last few weeks and they have all made significant progress in no time.
The main characteristics of each operating system are different, which makes it interesting to try these first images.
For example, Maemo Leste has enabled messaging, while PostmarketOS has managed to run the camera (PMOS Martijn has even released a ~ 2 hour live stream from the SDK) and LuneOS offers an extremely smooth user interface with many applications running. .
Plus, all the sensors and even the speakers are working now too, so things really come together at a rapid pace.
As I already mentioned in the May update, the developers of all the different operating systems work together and all the newly activated features quickly find their place in all the system images. I am still waiting to test various systems.
Mentions Lukasz Erecinski
The ability for the user to choose their operating system allows PinePhone to stand out from similar offers.
In fact, the official release of Librem 5 is also expected , a GNU / Linux smartphone and will only offer PureOS (a derivative of the Debian distribution) as an operating system.
The PinePhone is the device of choice for many open source enthusiasts who see in this project having a smartphone which they can change or customize as they wish.
PinePhone Features
- An Allwinner A64 system-on-chip mated to a Mali 400 MP2 graphics processing unit
- 2 GB of LPDDR3 RAM
- a 5.95-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1440 x 720 pixels
- 16 GB eMMC storage
- bootable microSD card
- 5 megapixel rear camera and 2 megapixel front camera
- 4G LTE modem
- Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
- Bluetooth 4.0
- navigation system: GPS, GPS-A, GLONASS
- 3000 mAh battery.
Are there already applications for PinePhone?
This is the part that designers don't seem to be addressing at the moment. Actually, this is the problem you are facing when trying to offer various Linux systems on smartphones.
The absence of an ecosystem of provided applications, such as Android and iOS.
In addition to this, HTML 5 apps are another outlet as announced by those responsible for the Librem 5 project. Afterwards, it all depends on the ability of the project leaders to federate the efforts of a community: a condition that no one has been able to fill so far.
It is planned to launch a prototype of the PinePhone for the month of August of the current year, without a solid app store by then.
Finally it is expected that the price of the PinePhone should be around $ 150.