Pinephone Pro for a Debian user?

[primesocial]

Hi,
I am new to this site and would like to ask some questions.
I would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction.
I have been using Debian on my laptops for over 5 years.
Anything i want to do in the command prompt, i use instructional videos.
It has worked out fairly well.
I installed Ubports on a nexus 5, and it works well...as a mp3player
I would use it as a device if it had encryption.
I see that Mobian is gaining traction in the Pine64 Community.
Is Mobian functional enough for a GUI junkie like me?
Can someone like me buy a pinephone pro and get decent funtionality out of the device?
Would I be better off with a regular pinephone, pinetab2, or pinebook pro?
I like to travel, and i like to segregate my tasks.
I would like multiple devices.
Eg:  one device for browsing the web and torrenting, one device for business, and one device for banking.
I dont need the device to be an actual voice phone, but I would like to have secure, steady browser functionality.
Are there any plans on shipping the devices with an preordered os iso image ready to install?
That might be a way to earn extra revenue for pine64
Thanks for any advice you can give,
Greg

[KC9UDX]

If you don't need a phone, I'd recommend a Pinebook Pro at this point. But I haven't used any other Pine devices but the RockPro 64. I've run Debian on one of my PBPs, but I normally use NetBSD. I suspect you'll be better off with the stock Manjaru unless you're very adventurous.

[zetabeta]

Hi,
I am new to this site and would like to ask some questions.
I would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction.
I have been using Debian on my laptops for over 5 years.
Anything i want to do in the command prompt, i use instructional videos.
It has worked out fairly well.
I installed Ubports on a nexus 5, and it works well...as a mp3player
I would use it as a device if it had encryption.
I see that Mobian is gaining traction in the Pine64 Community.
Is Mobian functional enough for a GUI junkie like me?
Can someone like me buy a pinephone pro and get decent funtionality out of the device?
Would I be better off with a regular pinephone, pinetab2, or pinebook pro?
I like to travel, and i like to segregate my tasks.
I would like multiple devices.
Eg:  one device for browsing the web and torrenting, one device for business, and one device for banking.
I dont need the device to be an actual voice phone, but I would like to have secure, steady browser functionality.
Are there any plans on shipping the devices with an preordered os iso image ready to install?
That might be a way to earn extra revenue for pine64
Thanks for any advice you can give,
Greg

lets start with this, manjaro for pinephone regular or pp pro is a bad idea at this moment. and probably takes months to get decent functionality. go with mobian, postmarketos or archlinux (daanct something).

i think i agree with @KC9UDX, if phone functionality is not required, then pinephone (pro) is not necessarily good idea.

pinephone has phosh, which graphical, but reality is that console knowledge is required for some things. phosh is more or less beta software, so glitches and bugs will occur. plasma mobile is also possible, but more buggy. some people go with sxmo, but that is for special and hardcore users. i haven't tested sxmo for awhile.

pinephone regular is slow as something, but also cheaper. my guess is that probably easier to start with regular. pp pro starts to be pricey enough that may lead to disapointment, phosh and software is still more or less buggy.

pinephone's (pro and reg) battery life is poor, if using suspend, maybe it is something like 24h. if not using suspend, then it is something like 4 hours. keyboard case helps. take this into consideration.

you probably mean full disk encryption, it is available in some cases, but requires different installation.

some cases pinephone has pre-installed image when bought, but they may get outdated, so how much it matter, if user have to install newer image anyway.

generally speaking, pinephone regular and pro are for advanced linux users. some guys probably thought, it is quick get away for privacy phone. privacy phone it could be but not necessarily quick one. these users probably went back to modified android, which still offers decent compromise of functionality and privacy, if no google and other closed components are installed. in case of android, i leave it to following comment, android ... is ... not ... linux!