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posted by martyb on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the Yay,-I-can-finally-replace-my-OpenMoko dept.

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...

https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinephone-community-edition-ubports-limited-edition-linux-smartphone

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 :)

There is a great deal of information available online concerning system setup and configuration.

The hardware is probably the 1.2 Braveheart revision, with fixes to several known hardware bugs that existed in the v1.0 developer, and v1.1 Braveheart revisions.

There is only one binary blob required to boot the phone--for the dram controller. And, there are hardware switches to turn off wifi & Bluetooth (Realtek; requires binary blob firmware), microphone, cameras (only for autofocus, requires binary blob firmware) and modem (proprietary OS).

If you want a mass market consumer phone, then you will be very disappointed. If you want a phone that does a better job of respecting your freedom, and want to be able to hack it (with a community of like-minded folks), then this is your lowest price of entry currently available, and is further along than the other main option, the librem 5 (no shade being cast; I'm hoping the librem does well too). It would also make a nice little portable computer combined with a compact external keyboard.

Previously:
(2020-01-17) PinePhone Braveheart Linux Smartphone Begins Shipping
(2019-07-04) How PINE64 is Creating a Device-Design Community to Compete with Raspberry Pi
(2019-05-07) Pinebook Pro Update: The $199 Linux Laptop is Almost Ready to Go
(2019-02-01) PinePhone Linux Smartphone Priced at $149 to Arrive This Year
(2015-12-10) Kickstarter: Pine A64, Cheaper and More Powerful than Raspberry Pi 2 Model B


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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:27AM (#994140)

    You weren't free pre-COVID, and you definitely won't be post-COVID.

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