1. Yes
2. Mobian (Manjaro at the very beginning)
3. Phosh
4. MMS, blacklisting contacts, reliable alarm, reliable AZERTY keyboard, etc
5. Partially, "at" helps, I explained my experience in details here, it might help.
My post expresses my own views. The usability of a smartphone depends on subjective criteria to determine whether it suits the end user's need. I don't claim that my criteria are the same than others.
I bought 2 Pinephones, one for me and one for my best friend, I've been a daily user of the former since about November 2020, the latter won't be used, we'll sell it, my best friend is a lot less tech savvy than me, we'll buy a Fairphone for him. Therefore, I totally understand that people can have very different expectations. By the way, I'm still waiting for my Librem5.
In my humble opinion, the Pinephone's target audience is advanced Linux users, you need some technical knowledge even to replace the default ringtones, I'm ok with that, it's not a smartphone for everybody. I still lose the network several times a day, it's the most annoying problem for me. The battery starts having some problems, the top right corner seems to have some dying pixels, the picture preview in Megapixels is ugly, the pictures are less ugly but I have to use a real camera instead... It's not practical but in my humble opinion, it's not the most important thing, I agree with paying this price to have a smartphone that behaves as a snitch a lot less than any googled Android smartphone. It's not a smartphone for those who still want to use WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, ... yes, it's for me
The road is long, I hope that the end user experience will go on being improved but I don't want some compromises to be done to please those users, they do whatever they want with their stuff but I use the Pinephone because privacy is important for me, I use it for political reasons and I'm still happy to have GNU Linux inside my pocket instead of something designed by corporations that try to escape taxes.
2. Mobian (Manjaro at the very beginning)
3. Phosh
4. MMS, blacklisting contacts, reliable alarm, reliable AZERTY keyboard, etc
5. Partially, "at" helps, I explained my experience in details here, it might help.
My post expresses my own views. The usability of a smartphone depends on subjective criteria to determine whether it suits the end user's need. I don't claim that my criteria are the same than others.
I bought 2 Pinephones, one for me and one for my best friend, I've been a daily user of the former since about November 2020, the latter won't be used, we'll sell it, my best friend is a lot less tech savvy than me, we'll buy a Fairphone for him. Therefore, I totally understand that people can have very different expectations. By the way, I'm still waiting for my Librem5.
In my humble opinion, the Pinephone's target audience is advanced Linux users, you need some technical knowledge even to replace the default ringtones, I'm ok with that, it's not a smartphone for everybody. I still lose the network several times a day, it's the most annoying problem for me. The battery starts having some problems, the top right corner seems to have some dying pixels, the picture preview in Megapixels is ugly, the pictures are less ugly but I have to use a real camera instead... It's not practical but in my humble opinion, it's not the most important thing, I agree with paying this price to have a smartphone that behaves as a snitch a lot less than any googled Android smartphone. It's not a smartphone for those who still want to use WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, ... yes, it's for me
The road is long, I hope that the end user experience will go on being improved but I don't want some compromises to be done to please those users, they do whatever they want with their stuff but I use the Pinephone because privacy is important for me, I use it for political reasons and I'm still happy to have GNU Linux inside my pocket instead of something designed by corporations that try to escape taxes.