The GNU/Linux-based smartphone, PinePhone, has begun shipping. It uses the same Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit System on a Chip (SOC) as the the Pine64 Single Board Computer (SBC) and thus it also runs mainstream GNU/Linux. The goal is to provide a hardware platform for a wider variety of Linux-on-Phone projects. Hardware availability is expected to be five years.
Lilliputing: PinePhone Braveheart Linux smartphone begins shipping January 17th
The PinePhone is an inexpensive smartphone designed to run Linux-based operating systems. Developed by the folks at Pine64, the $150 smartphone was first announced about a year ago — and this week the first units will ship.
Herald Writer: The PinePhone begins delivery—a Linux-powered smartphone for $150
The PinePhone is powered through an Allwinner A64 SoC, which options 4 Cortex A53 CPUs at 1.2GHz, constructed on an attractive historical 40nm procedure. This is similar chip the corporate makes use of at the PINE A64 unmarried board pc, a Raspberry Pi competitor. There are 2GB of RAM, a Mali-400 GPU, 16GB of garage, and a 2750mAh battery. The rear digicam is 5MP, the entrance digicam is 2MP, the show is a 1440×720 IPS LCD, and the battery is detachable. There is a headphone jack, a USB-C port, and strengthen for a MicroSD slot, which you'll if truth be told boot running techniques off of. The mobile modem is a big separate chip this is soldered onto the motherboard: a Quectel EG25-G.
Earlier on SN:
PinePhone Linux Smartphone Priced at $149 to Arrive This Year (2019)
Librem 5 Backers Have Begun Receiving Their Linux Phones (2019)
Related Stories
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Smartphone users are usually torn between the two choice — Android or iOS. Their dominance is such that other competing OS like Windows, BlackBerry OS, or Symbian have almost been abandoned.Those who don't want either of them can opt for Pine64's Linux phone dubbed the PinePhone which offers good hardware and software at an affordable rate of $149.
The phone's specs aren't great, but it does include a headphone jack (I wonder if it's capable of using the JACK audio system?) and the article notes that it may provide physical switches for disabling various components. The company behind it, Pine64, also produce the PineBook Linux laptop, which also use an ARM processor.
Source: https://fossbytes.com/pinephone-linux-smartphone-149/
Related: Kickstarter: Pine A64, Cheaper and More Powerful than Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337
Librem 5 backers have begun receiving their Linux phones
When Ars spoke to Purism founder and CEO Todd Weaver two weeks ago, the Librem 5 had been "shipping" for a month but not to backers—only to Purism employees and inside developers. Weaver talked a little about the unexpected hardware issues the company had been experiencing late in the game, including a batch of phone boards missing a 10kOhm resistor, and he gave us an updated schedule for when the phones would resume shipping. More importantly, Weaver said backers would begin receiving their phones by the first week of December.
Thankfully, the company met this latest deadline on time. On November 27, Ars reader Azdle posted a comment to the thread—"Just because I can, hello from my freshly-received Librem 5 phone! (And, no, I don't work for Purism, I'm just an early backer." Azdle was also kind enough to share some unboxing pictures and some commentary about what, exactly, a Librem 5 phone from the Birch shipment is—and what it's not.
First of all, it's not really a "phone" yet. There's no audio when attempting to place a phone call. The cameras also don't appear to work yet. Azdle reports "installing and opening up Cheese"—Cheese is a very basic Linux video application, installed by default in many distros—"I just get a message saying 'no device found.'" There's also effectively no power management yet, so the Librem doesn't last long on battery.
[...] This isn't supposed to be a finished, working, retail-ready phone—it's a (mostly) working prototype, made available in very small numbers to extremely early backers who knew what they were getting into.
If you missed out on the last pre-order for the BraveHeart release of the PinePhone that shipped last January, you have another opportunity to buy now. What is it? According to their Wiki:
The PinePhone is a smartphone created by Pine64, capable of running mainline Linux and supported by many partner projects. The "BraveHeart" edition was the first publicly-available version of the phone, though it came without a fully functional OS (factory test image) and was geared specifically towards tinkerers and hackers. People looking for a stable consumer-grade phone should wait for the final release...
The "Community Edition: UBports" Limited Edition PinePhone is aimed primarily at UBports community members, willing to run their OS on a mainline Linux and provide feedback to UBports developers.
The "Community Edition: UBports" Edition PinePhone comes with UBports OS build installed. Please note that the OS build is still in a beta stage, and while most core functionality (phone calls, SMS messages, LTE, GPS and GPU acceleration) works, some elements remain a work-in-progress.
The phone seems to be the same hardware as the Braveheart and the same price $149.99 + shipping. Pine will donate $10 to the UBPorts Foundation for every phone purchased.
It comes pre-installed with UBPorts, but there is nothing keeping you from re-flashing to whichever OS you want. Currently there are several ports in progress like, Debian, PostmarketOS, SailfishOS, Maemo Leste, etc. Some of these can even make phone calls and sms texts already :)
PINE64 releases a consumer version of the PineTime, its US$26.99 smartwatch
PINE64 has re-released its developer-friendly PineTime smartwatch. This time, PINE64 aims the PineTime at consumers but without hiking the price up. The revised model is pre-built, comes with an OS installed and is IP67 water resistant.
July update: community developers portal
Let me start with really good news for those of you waiting (im)patiently to get their hands on a PineTime: I've just learned that the production of the new batch of PineTime is going well and, if everything goes according to plan, then single sealed PineTime units should be available when this post goes live! These PineTimes are flashed with the latest versions of the bootloader of and InfiniTime, so that you'll be able to get the most out of your watch the moment you receive it.
As we announced last month, the factory was waiting for this release to start the production of the new batch of PineTimes. As a reminder: the ongoing component shortage forced PINE64 to use a slightly different accelerometer for this new batch, since the original one was not available anymore, and InfiniTime needed to add support for this new chip to ensure features like step counting and wake on wrist rotation would work as expected.
Is it eWaste? You decide.
Related: PinePhone Braveheart Linux Smartphone Begins Shipping
Pine64 Unveils Quartz64 (Model A) Single Board Computer
Drought in Taiwan Could Cause Shortages of Single Board Computers and Other Products
PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone to feature a power-optimized Rockchip RK3399S processor
Pine64 has now announced the PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone with a Rockchip RK3399S hexa-core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, that's a power-optimized version of the popular Rockchip RK3399 processor. It will provide a noticeable upgrade to the PinePhone Linux smartphones launched in November 2019, which, by today's standards, is quite underpowered.
Besides the faster processor, PinePhone Pro also comes with 4GB RAM and 128 GB storage which should make it a better candidate at mobile desktop convergence, as well as a 5.95-inch display with 1440×720 resolution, a 13MP rear camera, a 5MP front-facing camera, and more.
[...] Pine64 collaborated with Rockchip to fine-tune the RK3399 SoC's performance so that it meets the necessary thermal and battery-consumption envelopes, as and as a result, RK3399S was born. Pine64 also explained Rockchip helped a great deal in enabling the PinePhone Pro's suspend state, which allows the smartphone to receive calls and SMS messages while preserving the battery.
[...] Just like most Pine64 products, the PinePhone Pro will rely on work from the community for software support, and the first PinePhone Pro devkit is up for pre-order for $399 plus shipping and eventual import taxes now with a clear focus on developers and established contributors, although newcomers with an established development record can also pre-order. Tech enthusiasts without a developer background are asked to wait a couple of more months for the second batch of PinePhone Pro "Explorer Edition" that is scheduled to be manufactured before the end of the year, and ship in early 2022. Additional information may also be found on the product page.
Also at Phoronix.
Previously: PinePhone Linux Smartphone Priced at $149 to Arrive This Year
How PINE64 is Creating a Device-Design Community to Compete with Raspberry Pi
PinePhone Braveheart Linux Smartphone Begins Shipping
Another Opportunity to Purchase a PinePhone
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday January 17 2020, @03:25PM (18 children)
uh... what providers support it?
Even my "Bring your own device whatever it is" provider is fundamentally built on an android app.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 17 2020, @03:49PM (8 children)
Really? Pretty much every phone I've used is "connected" to the provider via SIM card. Swap the card into a different phone, the new phone immediately starts working. No apps, no registration, no notifying my provider.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 17 2020, @03:57PM (2 children)
Yeah, I was thinking: FINALLY! I can access cheap phone hardware without having to learn (and continue learning every 3 months on the perpetual Android security treadmill) Kotlin.
If I can slip a GoogleFi data SIM into one of these, be able to ssh into it and stream photos / video out of it, I will be very happy, indeed. Leave it on the boat plugged into the solar charger and now I've got a remote presence onboard, for $150 purchase + $0.01/MB streaming data fees.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 17 2020, @04:18PM (1 child)
However, at the moment this appears to be the current state of Linux support on the Pine Phone in general:
I'm guessing they slapped the hardware together in the hopes that a community would form and solve their driver issues for them... I'll be waiting until a few more things are documented as working in a downloadable OS package.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:46AM
If you want to debug it by the end of next decade, I suggest to get rid of systemd.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Friday January 17 2020, @05:22PM (4 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Friday January 17 2020, @08:29PM (2 children)
This version of the phone has been called by Pine as a pre-release developer phone. It's intent is to provide developers a cheap, common, reference hardware platform for the developers to start from. It is much like the early Nexus phones from Google. Though you are correct to assume that Android was much more developed before the Nexus One or even when the G1 phones were released. If only Pine had 90% of the search and advertising revenue of the internet so they could leverage that revenue to hire more developers and complete the OS+phone app before releasing it to the 3rd-party developers to write shitty candycrush clones. Personally, I like how upfront Pine as been about the state of the phone as opposed to how wishy-washy the Librem 5 release has been.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 17 2020, @09:23PM (1 child)
Back in the 90s I was able to get people to install Linux, but not any more. People would rather pay for something that has so many deficiencies, and I can't blame them. Printers and sound continue to be a problem for Linux and the *BSDs, and in-place upgrades are as bad now as windows at the turn of the century.
I'll still use them because that's what I'm used to, and how I earned my living, but I would never recommend them to anyone ever again. I hate OS X, but it's not spyware and it works year after year r for everyone I know who uses it. Linux isn't worth the price even if you value your time as $0.00, just for the frustration factor.
Until we demand better or are ready to abandon it en masse, nothing will change.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday January 17 2020, @10:15PM
The US has economies of scale that some countries can't manage. Cheap [bigw.com.au] tablets aren't really a thing in some countries.
The PinePhine is not a phone, though - not yet. It could be a phone, one day, with work.
A cheap tablet will bever be a phone
most tablets are too big for a pocket, too, although that isn't stopping apple or samsung
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:56PM
Sailfish on it supposedly can make calls, chill: https://twitter.com/neochapay/status/1218243855562289152 [twitter.com]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday January 17 2020, @03:59PM (1 child)
Over here in EU land we are not tied to a provider.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 17 2020, @04:06PM
The cellular market in the US has a fair amount of choice and competition, at least compared to the landline situation.
Starting around 2013 the two year contract cartel broke down and even the "big boys" like Verizon and AT&T started dropping their rates while improving their offerings. Verizon still has a quasi-monopoly on certain bandwidth and tower space that makes them the most reliable provider, particularly in rural areas, but otherwise there's a lot of choice. My wife has an unlocked Sharp phone, bought from banggood (China) - excellent camera, super cheap service through Mint mobile for something like $15 per month - unlimited talk and text and more data than she ever uses - coverage is O.K. in the city, could be better, but at $15 per month?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @04:51PM (6 children)
Here are the LTE bands etc. the pine phone supports:
https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone#Specifications [pine64.org]
Here is what bands / frequencies your provider uses:
https://www.frequencycheck.com [frequencycheck.com]
If there is a large overlap, you are good.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 17 2020, @09:41PM (5 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @10:40PM (2 children)
It sounds like you don't have a damned clue. Stop embarrassing yourself.
Pine64 are releasing a hardware project sans OS. Deliberately. If nothing works yet then it is because the software hasn't been written yet. But it was never intended yet to be a daily driver.
If that concept threatens you then stay in your iOS/Android duopoly. But right now you are spreading FUD like a complete ignoramus.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:16AM (1 child)
The loud tranny is wrong yet again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:20AM
If your tranny is making any noise you should take it to a good auto-mechanic. Like many problems in life the sooner you fix it the better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:03AM
Your post makes it sound like you are not the target market. "You," in my response with the frequency info was both to the parent, and to folks who are actually considering a purchase of the device.
This is marketed by and for folks who want to create a free (as in freedom) device* / software to replace proprietary spy devices.
It is not a turnkey device, it is a developer / tinkerer device targeted at an even smaller subset of developers and tinkerers-- those who are believers in free software ideals, privacy advocates, etc.
We've been waiting ages since the last freedom respecting phone, the open moko, or a bit less freedom respecting, but newer, the n900. If you don't want one, fine. But, please don't shit all over this. This is an amazing device, at an amazing price for us to begin working toward freedom respecting phones in our pockets. i had an early n900. When I first got it, I had to run a query from an xterm (running on the phone), to see my call history. I was not upset at the lack of polish. I was amazed and excited that I was able to open an f'ing xterm on my f'ing phone, and run a query against a DB containing call state! This phone was going to be amazing! And, in my opinion, it lived up to my expectations.
I'm very much looking forward to getting my pine phone to start hacking on.
* tough (maybe impossible, if you consider the baseband) to have a fully free phone, this one isn't quite there, but it is better than any of the commercially available phones. The Librem is a bit more free, but it still has binary blobs too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:00AM
begone, tranny.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Friday January 17 2020, @03:27PM (15 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 17 2020, @04:01PM
Good Engrish this is [pine64.org], bashing the Herald article you are. Sharan Stone's byline photo is a prime catfish, the copy reads like computer generated text.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday January 17 2020, @04:02PM (3 children)
This is a phone that the user can configure pretty much how (s)he wants. They are saying that the hardware will be supported for 5 years. After that, I suppose that they will hope to release another one with improved specs based on experience of how well this one does.
(Score: 0, Troll) by barbara hudson on Friday January 17 2020, @05:13PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:06PM (1 child)
Everything works on an n900, but the kernel is crap old. We're just getting restarted on that same.path, why are your panties in a twist? SFOS has working phone calls on the pinephone: https://twitter.com/neochapay/status/1218243855562289152 [twitter.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:55PM
it's a closed source apologist.
(Score: 3, Touché) by mth on Friday January 17 2020, @04:06PM
What is wrong about "Hardware availability is expected to be 5 years"? Maybe "is expected to last 5 years" is better, but it's still understandable as it is.
I agree about the rest, but all those incorrect translations (garage, strengthen, techniques) come from the second article, so they should only reflect on whoever did the translation and not on the project itself. The linked article reads like it was put together by bots; if this was the work of a real journalist then I suggest she takes a much-needed vacation immediately.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @04:43PM (2 children)
Probably autotranslated from Chinese, but what does a badly translated article have to do with the qualities of the actual product?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @04:51PM (1 child)
I'm buying it for the 16GB of garage so I will let you know.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @05:42PM
How many cars can you store per GB?
On further thought, see what happens if you paste in 內褲 to a translator. One context can mean "internal memory", the other can mean "in-house garage".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Friday January 17 2020, @04:56PM (5 children)
I dunno. I have some of Pine64's gear, and it works pretty well. I built a home file server/NAS based on their RockPro64 and it's been very reliable. I've had it for about a year and it's been great so far, it's quieter and consumes less electricity than an equivalent x86-based server. I'll probably buy a PinePhone myself once I can save enough money for it. I probably won't use it as my daily driver, but still it sounds like an awesome device to hack on. From Pine64's own Wiki page [pine64.org] about it, it seems to have actual hard killswitches that can physically disconnect power to the cellular modem, Wi-Fi, microphones, and cameras. It also has "pogo pins" that can be used to interface custom peripherals to the phone. I've been interested in Sailfish OS but Jolla have not made it easy for most of the world to obtain their devices, but I can probably run Sailfish OS on the PinePhone more easily than on any of my old Android phones. It will be nice to have a phone that will not fight you when you try to make it do exactly what you want for a change. This is a hacker's phone!
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 17 2020, @05:06PM (4 children)
When you get a respectable portion of the peripherals working, post a HowTo and I'll join you in PinePhone ownership.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:34AM (3 children)
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:53PM
The price and idea of it has me THIS close to buying one, but I have way too many toys sitting around, /and/ I already ordered a Pinebook Pro and an Odroid-GO Advance last month. Pine really knows how to make techies want to pull the wallet out.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:46PM
Given Purism's propensity to send its software upstream (and maybe Pine does this too) they are likely to be using a lot of the same software.
I expect them to have phones that function as phones at approximately the same time.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:49PM
If I had the resources to A) get the peripherals working myself (in other words, about 10x more free time than I currently have), and B) take over production of the open design when the current team gets disillusioned with it (in other words, about 100x more free cash than I currently have, and another 10x boost on the free time), then, sure - I'd dive right in, it's a great start.
Hopefully, others out there do have at least the time to prove the peripherals - if they do that I'd bet someone with the money will keep the hardware production rolling.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday January 17 2020, @06:59PM (5 children)
I was going to put this in a journal entry but I'll just stick it here.
Get Ready For The Manjaro Linux Laptop Explosion (Including AMD Ryzen Models) [forbes.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 17 2020, @07:08PM
A lot of things come to my mind when you say Laptop Explosion. A huge Linux market, isn't one of them.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by barbara hudson on Friday January 17 2020, @09:31PM (3 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @10:15PM (2 children)
Which printers? Which programs? I haven't had an issue with either on Linux in at least five years. Provide some context for your complaints or you're just whining. That's the fact equivalent of "Pix or it didn't happen."
Good luck with that.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:47PM (1 child)
Many popular programs are Windows only. I imagine those are what he's talking about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:36PM
It's *she*, but I take your point.
All the same, without libraries/support Mac binaries won't run on Windows, Linux, BSD or Android.
And Linux or Windows binaries won't run on MacOS, IOS or Android either.
Windows binaries won't run on MVS. However, many Windows binaries will run on Linux and BSD via Wine.
It's all just a bunch of anti-*nix/open source bullshit she's spewing.
She's talking out of her ass and it smells that way too.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:52PM (1 child)
I am still waiting for a reviews that saya either Pinephone or Librem 5 actually work as phones.
I really want to be able to use a distributed revision management system to coordinate information between my computer and my phone. But I still need to make phone calls.
Any ideas, by the way, how to coordinate between Linux and Facebook Messenger and receive notifications?
For good or ill (maybe really ill) my family has decided on Facebook Messenger to coordinate family events.
Or another, better such service that works on Linux AND android. I might be able to get them to convert someday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:33PM
There's a bitlbee (use IRC for all kinds of IM protocols) plugin for FB messenger: https://github.com/bitlbee/bitlbee-facebook [github.com]
Pinephone does work as a phone depending on the OS you use. I think postmarketOS (the default it ships with) is not really up and running yet, but Sailfish works, and probably others, the Pine forum has a lot of activity around it.