A few questions before I jump in

[zetabeta]

warning: this will contain some serious personal opinions, i am a privacy advocate, at least some way !

Apologies for starting in this sub-forum, I didn't see an "introductions" section.....

I'm a Linux user since 1998, but admittedly not a real "power user", every computer I own is Linux based, but I have to use an abomination at work like most people.

 I have several years experience with SBC's and a healthy collection of them. As far as coding goes I know some C++, and know enough to do fun stuff, but I'm not a developer by any stretch of the imagination.

I'd like to order a PinePhone, and use it as my daily but I really need to know a few things before I do. I read through the forum some, and watched some YouTube videos but we all know how quickly things change and I didn't see anything super recent about my concerns.

It's understood that PinePhone is under development, and there are going to be quirks and plain old "don't work for that" scenarios (like everything Linux), so I'd like to see a baseline of what IS happening before I commit....

generally speaking it sounds that you're usage may qualify for pinephone, linux experience helps and coding experience helps. but you don't need to be a deep developer for pinephone, pinephone is not an android device.

pinephone pro production has been discontinued. although there is going to be some refurbished units.

pinephone regular continues for some time, but it is slow as something, which seriously hinders usability. even battery life is not great.

battery life is bad in both pp pro and pp regular. battery bank is helpful.

future is uncertain for both models.

I'm not only open to trying different distros, but enthusiastic about it, so if one is better at giving me the capabilities I need than the others that's great!

seems that three distros dominate.

danct12's archlinux.
postmarketos.
mobian.

The things I need from a phone are:

1) 5G phone service on T-Mobile (USA)

impossible, modem chip is lte.

advertising is not allowed. but one competitor is creating a linux phone with 5g chip, mostly european and expensive. and maybe we here about within a year.

2) RCS chat

not available. although who wants RCS. too much apple and google in it.

initially i thought RCS is good replacement for SMS, but google and apple initiated their own servers with their own apps. try to guess the data collection. initially idea was that carrier set up RCS servers within their own data network, that didn't happen.

3) WhatsApp

who wants whatsapp, which collect all metadata to meta inc to be abused.

there are third party CLI clients, which connects to whatsapp servers, but i haven't tested those. although i may have some use cases for those.

i use signal messenger, signal-cli and signal-desktop. signal-cli is a third party client.

4) FireFox, or a secure browser that isn't going to get blocked by places like my bank, preferably NOT chrome

pinephone mostly uses firefox-esr, ublock origin is quite often installed. but banking sites and apps are probably a astronomical headache, because some website directs to a mobile app version, even if website version would work.

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Also I'm curious what development environments can run, my go-to is Geany, and I've also just barely started dabbling in front ends so I'm curious what's supported, QT or something?

i haven't seriously developed anything on a pinephone, beyond some compilement things. i think it is possbile, but i wonder the slowness of compilement.

And I'm assuming there's a way to encrypt a folder and make a safe place for sensitive storage like LUKS?

possible. i don't offer specifics at the moment.

Thank you for reading, I'm really excited to get some feedback, if I can do the 4 things above I'm ordering a Beta,I've looked at the Pro, but it's out of stock.

repeat, pro is discontinued and i don't predict long life to regular either, maybe three years.