A host named regret

[biketool]

I just received my new Pinephone, after a week-long struggle with DHL. I purchased the Pinephone in order to have a device for which I can source replacement parts, but the debacle with DHL makes me think that idea is impractical.

At best, the phone is unusably slow at nearly all tasks except making and receiving calls. With the factory image running, no updates could be installed (first for unspecified unresolved dependencies, and then because PackageKit kept crashing).  "Discover" app takes >1m to start.

With PostmarketOS installed to sdcard, the phone sort-of works, and was able to make and receive phone calls, which is almost all I care about (apart from replacement parts, and the nice-to-have of other basic phone operations). It still takes "Software" app takes <20sec to start, "Shattered Pixel Dungeon" took about 40min to install and about 15sec to start.

Everything is clunky, stuttery and slow. The phone eats battery and gets warm for no apparent reason; the case does not fit well; the speaker makes constant snapping, popping noises. It is expensive junk. I cannot afford another phone, and time taken to fix this one's constant breakage (assuming I can get it "working" from the current state) takes away time I need for other things.

Apps don't work well on Pinephone, none of the repositories have phone apps. Apps don't sleep when the screen locks. I was exited to install Shattered Pixed Dungeon, because I thought it was the Android version. Silly me, thinking a Linux device could run Android apps!

The phone is not currently at its best: I tried to install TowBoot and messed up: now TowBoot Installer is installed to the eMMC and will not leave. I tried the instructions at https://tow-boot.org/devices/pine64-pinephoneA64.html to remove the boot partition data, but the installer still comes up when I boot the phone, sdcard or no sdcard. I will write another card and fix this, but it's not great.

I don't know what to think. Nothing I read on these forums prepared me for how crap this phone is, at this late date.

I guess I'm not looking for advice, just venting. I wouldn't know what to ask.

The Allwinner CPU Pinephone is better to consider a testbed minimal 'cheap' phone but I used one for several years before upgrading.  The Pinephone Pro does everything better and as long as you dont use the phone too much for web scrolling and too much I mean no more than 30 min and minimal phonecalls.  With mobian trixie I can go all day and can also use it as long as plug in at every opportunity when eating out, bus, car, train, etc.  The Pinephone Pro and Pinephone are amazing, this is partly ego as they took some of my techno-paranoia ideas from the failed Neo900, but there is no device available except the LibreM that gives you a fully user serving design.

*Modem is modular(with paranoia hardware power cut switch) not integrated into chipset
*FOSS drivers
*paranoia hardware power cutoff switches (camera front/back, modem, wifi, mic, serial console/headset)
*I2C hacker interface for addons like keyboard, charger, LoRa, etc
*replacement parts
*removeable battery
*3.5mm TRRS headphone/serial I/O jack
*Cellbrite immune verified running towboot and encrypted / partition

The battery optimization still needs to be done, the user experience needs work, but this is a special and unique piece of user and not commercial hardware which can't be replicated by putting LineageOS