Just another noob wanting to know your favorite build

[AwHereWeGoAgain]

Alright!  Lets get this show on the road.  So I ordered a brand new pinephone (3gig CE model) the other day and am already chomping at the bit to start playing around with it.  I know it comes with Manjaro Plasma and that distro sounds like it "might work well."  Im not so worried about doing too much crazy stuff but I do have basic things I want the phone to be capable of doing to be what I would consider a "Daily Driver". 

1. Make and receive phonecalls without a hitch.
2. Do normal texting things.  (Not so worried about MMS)
3. HOT SPOT HOT SPOT HOT SPOT.........(I love my hotspot and the ability to work on my laptop while on the go.  I travel a lot.)
4. (A working GPS with a map utility would be nice but not required.)
5. Camera?  Yeah....that could prove useful at times.  

If it can do these things, it will be my daily driver.  From what I hear, Manjaro "should" be able to do all/most of this out of the box but I would like to hear about Mobian--which sounds like it could be more stable.  Also, to those of you who have taken a swing at making a pinephone your daily driver, what programs/tweaks did you make to help the process along?

The carrier I was going to attempt was Visible which is a Verizon based sim which I will activate on a dummy phone and stuff in the pinephone.  (Hopefully It goes as smoothly as it has in my head.)

I might play around with GloDroid but it sounds like a frustrating experience with some of the more basic functionality not working.  (Let me know if they it has improved)
What resources are there for people who want to attempt running those 1 or 2 android apps?  I heard Anbox can be attempted but don't know much about it.  I have other phones so if it cant do everything that is fine especially since I have seen pretty good progress made since the last time I checked in on the pinephone.  I am not a linux master by any means but I am a linux enthusiast and very much enjoy the idea of a more secure and free virtual world that doesn't get its money selling my personal info.

Thanks!

[Frankie]

1. Make and receive phonecalls without a hitch.

So far using Manjaro Plasma and Ubuntu Touch I have managed to miss calls and for this reason I don't think it's quite ready for what most people call a daily driver just yet.

Plan to do more testing once I have time, Mobian didn't boot for me so I'd like to try that out and Manjaro Phosh.

[Zebulon Walton]

I've been using Mobian, and currently phone calls and MMS are working fine. Camera works OK for what it is (inexpensive, low-spec).  Megapixels can read QR codes but to paste the data after copying you have to hook a mouse up to the phone, which is awkward. I have not been able to get the hotspot working but my last attempt was several months ago and there have been a lot of updates since then.

EDIT: I meant to say SMS is working. MMS is still very much a work in progress.

[mikehenson]

1. Make and receive phonecalls without a hitch.
2. Do normal texting things.  (Not so worried about MMS)
3. HOT SPOT HOT SPOT HOT SPOT.........(I love my hotspot and the ability to work on my laptop while on the go.  I travel a lot.)
4. (A working GPS with a map utility would be nice but not required.)
5. Camera?  Yeah....that could prove useful at times.  

1. YES
2. YES, no MMS
3. YES. I have to turn on the Bluetooth to see the hot spot
4. YES
5. YES, but it needs more work.

For carrier support:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Carrier_Support

I started with Jumpdrive to expose the eMMC and flashed the latest Arch release. So my OS is rolling Arch and Phosh.
1. Update the whole system with "sudo pacman -Syyu"
2. Connected my Go ogle account for contacts email and calendar 
3. Created a custom keyboard layout. 
4. Installed pcmanfm "sudo pacman -S pcmanfm"

[MtnSk8]

Out of the box, usb tethering and wifi hotspot are functional and reliable on Mobian. There are instructions in the mobian wiki for usb tethering but I've never had to do anything but plug in (to my PinebookPro) with a usb C to A cable and start surfing (individual results may vary ).

I would have to answer Yes all the above questions in regards to Mobian OS.

Cheers!

[Frankie]

Mine has been much better since switching to Mobian.
Not done anything online with it except the updates but it's been able to handle calls and SMS now at least.

[Avatars]

The default OS is a disaster. Oth, mobian just plain works for basic communication, the reason I bought it to begin with, You know, a phone?
To enable or disable wifi you have to briefly switch to the bluetooth tab and then back again to wifi. For some lame reason when you switch wifi off it goes into airplane mode which disable the phone so just turning the radios on or off is a bit of a pita. I disabled auto updates because the battery is weeeek. Contacts works great just wish the almost a desktop would import a vcf file so you don't have to type every last # in, you do. Evolution will sync with whatever is in your contacts and makes for a better calendar than what ships in mobian by far. The default image viewer needs to go go go. If you put an image to fullscreen you literally have to hard reset the phone to get out of it. I installed gthumb instead. Other than that hell yeah it's ma new phone. Don't call me, I'll call you.
I'm running mobian phosh from march. Gets regular little updates and I just had to reboot to get wifi to connect. That's ok. The phone rings when it's supposed to.
I'm going to order 2 more power cables and a 120W desktop PS. Did I say the battery was weak? Literally the stupid airplane mode comes on every time you switch wifi off, and the bluetooth will start automatically. I hope they fix that nonsense soon.

[AwHereWeGoAgain]

Phone just left the factory in China on the 28th. Now just to wait for it to get into the States.

Yeah. I heard that Plasma was a bit of a hot mess. I was going to play around with it for a few minutes before deciding if it was usable enough to leave on the phone. I was going to have a look at Mobian and Manjaro Phosh. Im sort of excited about Manjaro Phosh. It seems they have been putting in a lot of work. They have almost daily updates and a very enthusiastic community. Whichever one i like better will end up being on the phone. Im just curious if I will need to re flash the phone every time a new major update comes around. If thats the case, I might just stick with the SD card method until a really nice stable version comes out. In that case, Mobian would be the defualt OS on the phone. (I did hear that Manjero Phosh has made progress with the battery life though.)

Any thoughts on Anbox? From what I hear it doesn't really work all that great yet.
Has anyone tied running the Pinephone just like any other desktop linux distro? I might put some of my favorite linux programs on there and see if they work. I imagine the issues would arise with clashes between the phone GUI and the screen. I figure my programs that run in the terminal would be fine. I want to get my VPN up and running.

If I need to turn off WiFi on Mobian, perhaps it would be better to use the hard switches in the back of the case? Then its more hardware and software just has to deal with it lol.

Now its just a waiting game for it to get into the US of A. How long did shipping take for all of you?

[marcih]

Im just curious if I will need to re flash the phone every time a new major update comes around.

No need for that, just occasionally check the commit history of phosh and PinePhone build profiles to keep up with packages were added or removed from the new images and make the changes on your image, otherwise running "sudo pacman -Syuu" is enough to upgrade. I'm still running the same factory image that came with my Manjaro CE device in November with no issues.

If thats the case, I might just stick with the SD card method until a really nice stable version comes out.  In that case, Mobian would be the defualt OS on the phone.

Manjaro Phosh is in some regards better than Mobian because the latter is heavily reliant on upstream Debian; as an example, Mobian is still on the 1.14 branch of ModemManager which is less reliable than the 1.16 branch that Manjaro is on.

Any thoughts on Anbox?  From what I hear it doesn't really work all that great yet.

If you have Linux installed on your desktop, try Anbox there; it's the same on the PinePhone, just significantly slower, especially startup. Also beware that apps running in Anbox can't access the microphone or camera, so using Signal or WhatsApp for calling or syncing the desktop app is impossible at the moment.

I imagine the issues would arise with clashes between the phone GUI and the screen.  I figure my programs that run in the terminal would be fine.

Correct.

If I need to turn off WiFi on Mobian, perhaps it would be better to use the hard switches in the back of the case? Then its more hardware and software just has to deal with it lol.

I haven't tried in a while but I remember needing to reboot the phone to have WiFi come back after flipping the switch back on.

Now its just a waiting game for it to get into the US of A.  How long did shipping take for all of you?

I can't comment on that since I'm in Europe.