8 Months of Daily Driving

[keg0death]

Since I broke my android phone, I figured I would give the pinephone a shot at being my daily driver. The specs to start off:

Pinephone : postmarketOS Edition 3gb
Distro: Arm Arch for the last 7 months. First month was PMos.
Carrier: Google Fi talk/text/data unlimited
Two pinephone batteries

First off, nothing wrong with PMos. It worked without issue. I just happen to be an insufferable "Arch BTW" user on everything else I own so it was too good to pass up yet another reason to irritate people with talk about Arch. Installed directly to EMMC.

The SIM dropped in with a size converter kit and functioned on startup. I didn't have to change anything in settings to get it working. Has good enough signal for me not to notice outages.

I explicitly stated two pinephone batteries because if you aren't planning on charging it mid-day then it will absolutely die before a normal 8 hour work shift. Now, I will assume that since I work in a basement and it is constantly trying to find a signal, that is draining the battery faster than it usually would. But even on the weekends with very light usage during the day it will die before I would normally plug my original phone in. I would unplug and pocket it at about 6:30-7 AM, if I use it a few times a day to browse reddit or look up a recipe, it will die by about 8PM. All that considered, I pocket the battery out of my braveheart edition just in case I need it. I am hoping that the keyboard+battery will remedy this and remove the need of having to carry a 2nd battery. Time and luck getting one will tell.

A few months back I didn't realize I wasn't getting text messages. A concerned visit from my parents isn't how I would've liked to find that out but in any case... The modem had filled up with text messages stuck in "receiving" and I had to use mmcli to remove them. I am uncertain if they are texts that I received and read/replied to, or if they were stuck in limbo and I was never able read them. It is a concern that I still harbor now, they may be something serious that I never receive. Currently my fix for this is to just check it myself daily. I should make a script to auto remove anything stuck, I just haven't got around to it.

I have no evidence to back this up other than speculation. But I believe this is due to text messages getting queued up while the phone is dead and just doesn't know what to do with all of them when the phone is cut on. The modem firmware update that I've read about may fix this, but as this is currently my main phone I don't have alternatives if I brick it.

Other than that hiccup, the call quality is quite nice and I haven't had issues with receiving/sending calls.

Performance with web browsing and applications isn't great, but I barely use a smartphone for more than phone calls and texts. When I do need to use it I can definitely tell I am waiting a while longer than even a 5+ year old mediocre android phone. Not a deal breaker for me and the pinephone pro looks like it will remedy this issue just fine.

All things considered, I will say if you are prepared to deal with a few inconveniences, the pinephone can definitely be used as a daily driver. If you use your phone constantly everyday for social media, videos or anything really I would have to recommend at least waiting til the keyboard+battery comes out and hope it gives it enough juice to keep up all day. If you hate pressing a button and waiting any length of time I would wait for the pro and hope for the best. For someone like me who just uses texting/phone and maybe one or two webpages a day this is a fantastic device. Hopefully I can get a pro and keyboard to use as a daily driver as I think they will invalidate all the negatives.

[mikehenson]

First off, nothing wrong with PMos. It worked without issue. I just happen to be an insufferable "Arch BTW" user on everything else I own so it was too good to pass up yet another reason to irritate people with talk about Arch. Installed directly to EMMC.

+100, I use Arch on EVERYTHING!

I have a similar story. 

Daily Driver:
Pinephone: 3gb version purchased used
Distro: Arm Arch with Phosh
Carrier: FaithWireless (AT&T virtual provider)

Build Machine:
Pinephone: 2gb version purchased used
Distro: Arm Arch with Phosh
Carrier: Only Wifi, used to build packages for my daily driver

For the Text Messages, use: modem-manager-gui

Code:

sudo pacman -S modem-manager-gui

Check out these packages. All were very useful.

Code:

sudo pacman -S gedit
sudo pacman -S pcmanfm-gtk
sudo pacman -S danctnix-tweaks-app-pinephone danctnix-tweaks-app-phosh
sudo pacman -S gnome-screenshot
sudo pacman -S modem-manager-gui

==Spelling==
sudo pacman -S aspell aspell-en
# go into gedit and select preferences >> spelling >> preferences >> highlight misspelled words

==SyncThing==
sudo pacman -S syncthing
systemctl start system-syncthing.slice
sudo systemctl start syncthing@alarm.service
sudo systemctl enable syncthing@alarm.service
local host: http://localhost:8384/

==PHOSH - App filter==
OFF
gsettings set sm.puri.phosh app-filter-mode '[]'
ON
gsettings set sm.puri.phosh app-filter-mode '["adaptive"]'

[marcih]

Build Machine:
Pinephone: 2gb version purchased used
Distro: Arm Arch with Phosh
Carrier: Only Wifi, used to build packages for my daily driver

Have a look at distcc, using another PinePhone as a build machine must be painful.

[wibble]

The text message problem is because most distros don't yet have MMS handling by default, so if you receive MMS messages they remain on the modem. Since the modem only has limited slots for storing unhandled messages of all types, if you keep receiving MMS messages and not removing them, eventually all the message slots will be filled and you won't be able to receive messages of any type until slots are cleared. modem-manager-gui is one way to do this. Another is to install one of the MMS readers that have been developed. These should eventually find their way into the default installs of the distros.