PinePhone2 and Cricket Wireless, and VLC? And music alarms?

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Hello! I am alarmed that several apps I rely on will possibly stop working in 2027 on Android, and I heard about PinePhone from Ecosia's AI chatbot. It says the newest model of PinePhone is the PinePhone2, which supports microSD cards which is important to me because I have a large music collection. But it couldn't find any info about whether PinePhone2 supports Cricket Wireless, which is important for me because I'm on a very tight budget. I'm honestly not even sure I can afford a PinePhone2, but I'm terrified of Google's new restrictions so I figure it's best to do research.

Also, do VLC Media Player and Brave Browser work with PinePhone2? I can switch to Firefox if I need to, I just found that Firefox was slow last time I tried to use it on my phone.

Also, I've been using Alarm Clock Xtreme from AVG for years, but I'm not sure it will be supported through 2027. I like that it lets me set daily and weekly alarms and appointment reminders with music from my collection. Are there alternatives to that app available for PinePhone2? It's OK if I have to use two separate apps, one for alarms and one for reminders. Really I should be using a calendar instead of one-off reminders but I don't like Google's calendar app. 

Lastly, how is the battery life? Can I replace the battery on a PinePhone 2? I know most phones don't let you do that but I wonder if this more open alternative bucks that trend. That would be cool.

I'm sorry for asking so many questions in one thread. I don't really know if it's best to split it up or not. I'm kinda scared right now and I'm just looking for some hope in an increasingly scary world. FOSS software always made me happy.

[biketool]

Hello! I am alarmed that several apps I rely on will possibly stop working in 2027 on Android, and I heard about PinePhone from Ecosia's AI chatbot. It says the newest model of PinePhone is the PinePhone2, which supports microSD cards which is important to me because I have a large music collection. But it couldn't find any info about whether PinePhone2 supports Cricket Wireless, which is important for me because I'm on a very tight budget. I'm honestly not even sure I can afford a PinePhone2, but I'm terrified of Google's new restrictions so I figure it's best to do research.

Also, do VLC Media Player and Brave Browser work with PinePhone2? I can switch to Firefox if I need to, I just found that Firefox was slow last time I tried to use it on my phone.

Also, I've been using Alarm Clock Xtreme from AVG for years, but I'm not sure it will be supported through 2027. I like that it lets me set daily and weekly alarms and appointment reminders with music from my collection. Are there alternatives to that app available for PinePhone2? It's OK if I have to use two separate apps, one for alarms and one for reminders. Really I should be using a calendar instead of one-off reminders but I don't like Google's calendar app. 

Lastly, how is the battery life? Can I replace the battery on a PinePhone 2? I know most phones don't let you do that but I wonder if this more open alternative bucks that trend. That would be cool.

I'm sorry for asking so many questions in one thread. I don't really know if it's best to split it up or not. I'm kinda scared right now and I'm just looking for some hope in an increasingly scary world. FOSS software always made me happy.

Sadly the Pinephone Pro is no longer available for about a year, and now Pine64 is temporarily exiting the mobile device category due to the massive component price spike brought to us by the cartelization of manufacturing sales and to the demands from LLM(AI) server farm bubble pricing.  There is still the used market and there is also Purism.  After running a PPand a PPpro I bought a Purism Librem 5.  THese pure linux phone are more for the brave hacker class of people and the battery life optomization would appear terrible to an apple or android user though you can replace the battery carrying a battery bank is smarter.  VLC and I think brave have implementations the VLC is native though not yet built optimized for the GPU, but if you have or convert to mp4s(mkv doesn't work) Clapper is built for the Pinephone(pro)'s and Librem's GPU. That said the appropriate paranoia, as in nearly impossible to hack-ness is on-pointe for both the pine and the purism devices. Not only is there a paranoia hardware power kill switch on the baseband module but the wireless is isolated from the system so this doesn't happen: 
https://forums.puri.sm/t/volte-stack-ove...gh/31267/2

As far as a customized alarms go there is a app which sets alarms in the modem, which wakes the phone when it is in battery savings mode similar to a phone call or sms wakeup. You could hack that or maybe vibe code in the features you feel are missing.

[zetabeta]

Hello! I am alarmed that several apps I rely on will possibly stop working in 2027 on Android, and I heard about PinePhone from Ecosia's AI chatbot. It says the newest model of PinePhone is the PinePhone2, which supports microSD cards which is important to me because I have a large music collection. But it couldn't find any info about whether PinePhone2 supports Cricket Wireless, which is important for me because I'm on a very tight budget. I'm honestly not even sure I can afford a PinePhone2, but I'm terrified of Google's new restrictions so I figure it's best to do research.

Also, do VLC Media Player and Brave Browser work with PinePhone2? I can switch to Firefox if I need to, I just found that Firefox was slow last time I tried to use it on my phone.

Also, I've been using Alarm Clock Xtreme from AVG for years, but I'm not sure it will be supported through 2027. I like that it lets me set daily and weekly alarms and appointment reminders with music from my collection. Are there alternatives to that app available for PinePhone2? It's OK if I have to use two separate apps, one for alarms and one for reminders. Really I should be using a calendar instead of one-off reminders but I don't like Google's calendar app. 

Lastly, how is the battery life? Can I replace the battery on a PinePhone 2? I know most phones don't let you do that but I wonder if this more open alternative bucks that trend. That would be cool.

I'm sorry for asking so many questions in one thread. I don't really know if it's best to split it up or not. I'm kinda scared right now and I'm just looking for some hope in an increasingly scary world. FOSS software always made me happy.

@biketool probably said key points.

pine org does not formally have any plans for pinephone2. maybe ai hallucinated some vomit (how shocking !). pinephone pro production has been stopped, and pinephone regular's production is temporarily stopped. pp regular may come back to production, but gpu is heavily outdated. software probably supports both models for some time, maybe one year.

overpriced chips are key reason why pinephone models are currently halted. do not expect near term plans for pinephone pro or pinephone 2.

as a general advice:
- laptop with linux distribution.
- technical basic phone, (not android based).
- ungoogled android with f-droid.

my guess is, your best plan for short term is, ungoogled android with f-droid. https://f-droid.org/

alphabet inc's control is probably bad for those, who use stock android. which has google components in it. i don't think alphabet inc's bad policies affect ungoogled androids that much. f-droid probably survives, because most f-droid users probably uses ungoogled android already or they have disabled some key google components, like google play services and google play.

[biketool]

I think I could get by well enough using an open design unix'ish or freertos foss candybar phone with no creepy blobs and requires all foss hardware drivers designed specifically to defeat the most advanced state intelligence tools like Celebrite using an encrypted vault for all personalized information like phonebook, calendar, and smss; maybe email capabilitty too and something like briar or another tox style IM. I am sure we could squeeze a terminal app and some sort of FOSS browser with all of the privacy features like ublock. It really needs to be rugged, have a LED flashlight, a removeable battery, phone jack, bluetooth but key is that it can do PAN to feed 4-5G data to my tablet or laptop. I have moved to a Purism Librem 5 which is still in production but I would love a dual sim version of this candybar phone.