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posted by janrinok on Friday January 17 2020, @03:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'll-buy-one dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 1) by DECbot on Friday January 17 2020, @08:29PM (2 children)

    by DECbot (832) on Friday January 17 2020, @08:29PM (#944704) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 17 2020, @09:23PM (1 child)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Friday January 17 2020, @09:23PM (#944732) Journal
    The point remains. It's not a phone if it cannot make phone calls. It's a small tablet, way overpriced. You can buy real Linux tablets that have bigger screens for less than half the price, and they can't make phone calls either, so it's just another marketing scam. Maybe a future version will make phone calls, but it probably won't be backported. So good luck with that. They're selling something that is overpriced compared to real Linux tablets. But be a sucker and buy one, or cheerlead for them, it will be the same as Linux on the desktop - not fit for purpose.

    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.

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    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday January 17 2020, @10:15PM

      by MostCynical (2589) on Friday January 17 2020, @10:15PM (#944762) Journal

      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

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