The Pine64 community, dedicated to the creation of open devices, announced the news that already began receiving pre-orders for the "PinePhone Explorer Pro Edition."
The PinePhone Pro continues to position itself as a device for enthusiasts who are tired of Android and iOS and want a fully controlled and secure environment based on alternative open Linux platforms.
PinePhone is built on the basis of Rockchip RK3399S SoC with dual ARM Cortex-A72 cores and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores running at 1,5 GHz, as well as a quad-core ARM Mali T860 GPU (500 MHz).
The RK3399S chip was implemented specifically for PinePhone Pro in collaboration with Rockchip engineers and includes additional energy saving mechanisms and a special sleep mode that allows you to receive calls and SMS.
The device is equipped with 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB eMMC (internal) and two cameras (OmniVision OV5640 5MP and Sony IMX258 13MP). For comparison, the first PinePhone came with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of eMMC, and 2 and 5MP cameras.
PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition pre-orders open today, January 11 (7:00 pm UTC / 11 am PST) and there will be a 6-day order window for January / early February deliveries. Pre-orders placed on or after January 18 will ship for the first time once the team returns from their vacation.
As in the previous model, a 6-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 1440 × 720 was used, but it is better protected thanks to the use of Gorilla Glass 4. PinePhone Pro is fully plug-in compatible instead of the back cover, previously released for the first model (for the almost indistinguishable PinePhone Pro and PinePhone body).
From the filling of the PinePhone Pro, you can also see Micro SD (with support for loading from an SD card), a USB-C port with USB 3.0 and a combined video output for connecting a monitor, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 4.1 , GPS, GPS-A, GLONASS, UART (via headphone jack), 3000 mAh battery (15 W fast charge).
As in the first model, the new device allows to disable LTE / GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, cameras and microphone by hardware and with dimensions 160.8 × 76.6 x 11.1 mm (2 mm thinner than the first PinePhone).
PinePhone Pro performance is comparable to Android smartphones from current mid-range and is approximately 20% slower than that of the Pinebook Pro laptop. With a keyboard, mouse, and monitor attached, the PinePhone Pro can be used as a portable workstation suitable for viewing 1080p video and performing tasks such as editing photos and office suites.
By default, PinePhone Pro ships with the Manjaro Linux distribution and a KDE Plasma Mobile user environment. The firmware uses the common Linux kernel (patches required to support hardware padding are included in the main kernel) and open source drivers.
At the same time, it should also be noted that it has alternative compilations with firmware based on platforms such as postmarketOS, UBports, Maemo Leste, Manjaro, LuneOS, Nemo Mobile, Arch Linux, NixOS, Sailfish, OpenMandriva, Mobian and DanctNIX that can be installed or downloaded from a SD card.
The structure includes applications such as KDE Connect to pair your phone with a desktop, Okular document viewer, VVave music player, Image viewers, Koko and Pix, reference notes from the Buho system, Calindori calendar planner, File manager the Index , the discover application manager, the Spacebar SMS sending program, plasma agenda, plasma-dialer, plasma-angelfish browser and Spectral messenger.
It is expected that Pre-orders shipped before January 18 ship in late January or early February.
For orders after January 18, delivery will be delayed until the end of the Chinese New Year. The cost of the device is $ 399, which is more than double the price of the first PinePhone model, but the price increase is justified by a major hardware upgrade.
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