Current State of PIne Phone Pro

[kmsgli]

Hey folks, looking for some opinions from current PPP users.

I am a regular Pine Phone user and I use it as my daily driver. I am really happy with the sate of the software and while it has some bugs that require a restart here and there its becoming less and less almost to the point where I don't notice issue really.

The big things for me are MMS and proper wake / suspend to conserve battery as I generally have access to a charger but I hate being plugged into it all day.

That being said I really do want a faster version of what I have, I just don't know if the PPP is as far along as the regular PP as the PP had so much more development time.

I would love to hear from anyone who has upgraded from the PP to the PPP or anyone that is daily driving the PPP.

Thanks for the help.

[ojimek]

I'm also a pinephone user, using it as my main phone. I did buy a pinephone pro in january and got it in february. Less than a month after, it was dead. Not dead dead, but the sim card slot is broken, so now it's basically just an overpriced raspberry pi with a touchscreen.

I'm not the only one either, if you look at this forum, you'll find plenty of people mentioning having problems with the sim card slot, which is apparently a poor component. I haven't seen pine64 ackowledging it so far. So I wouldn't recommend to buy it for now, until the problem is acknowledged and fixed.

[fxc]

I'm also a pinephone user, using it as my main phone. I did buy a pinephone pro in january and got it in february. Less than a month after, it was dead. Not dead dead, but the sim card slot is broken, so now it's basically just an overpriced raspberry pi with a touchscreen.

I'm not the only one either, if you look at this forum, you'll find plenty of people mentioning having problems with the sim card slot, which is apparently a poor component. I haven't seen pine64 ackowledging it so far. So I wouldn't recommend to buy it for now, until the problem is acknowledged and fixed.

There is no SIM card slot issue. Occasionally people put empty SIM adapters in the slot or lose the SIM from the adapter (both cases user errors), in which case the contact pins can bent or break if the user applies brute force to remove the card again (second user error). The combined SIM card slot and microSD card reader is used since the original PinePhone and received a slight upgrade with the Pro, so I don't expect Pine64 folks to swap that component (and I doubt there are practical alternatives) to reduce user errors. Just be careful, don't apply force. I think that is common sense.

---

ojimek, please refrain from repeating accusations in further replies and wishing people a broken device, that kind of language is really unasked for. I would suggest you to have a look at the community rules.

[kmsgli]

Well that took a weird turn, I am familiar with the sim slot the regular pine phone is a bit fickle and you need to be careful when using it.

I am looking for anyone who has actual daily driver experience with it or anyone who has upgraded from the regular pine phone to the pro who can give me an opinion on if it is in a similar state.

Thanks.

[bcnaz]

Well that took a weird turn, I am familiar with the sim slot the regular pine phone is a bit fickle and you need to be careful when using it.

I am looking for anyone who has actual daily driver experience with it or anyone who has upgraded from the regular pine phone to the pro who can give me an opinion on if it is in a similar state.

Thanks.

I just got my first Explorer phone at the end of February.

My first Pine phone was the Brave Heart edition, followed by 3 of the 1.2a convergent, and one 1.2b convergent phone(s)

I only use one as a real time communications device, and one loaned to my youngest son, the rest I actively use
to test the operating systems...  
---  If a test phone crashes, I do not miss any important calls or messages.

***  To answer your question,  I think the new Pro series phone is a really nice piece of hardware.
But it does have a ways to go before the software catches up with the original Pine phone.

I do really look forward to being able to use my Explorer as a daily use phone,  but it is not ready yet.
Possibly in weeks, but it could be months, probably less than a year.
Software advances seem to jump in spurts.  If you are real tech savvy perhaps you could tweak it today ?

Sorry if that's a bit vague  --- My opinion : I am glad I did purchase my Explorer.

[kmsgli]

Thanks that is actually just what I am looking for. Its not as polished as OG pinpehone.

This was my assumption, I am definitely buying a pro in the next month or so seeing how it seems like it takes a month or two due to the international shipping. Hopefully in two to three months the pro will mostly have caught up.

I used to have to reboot my OG Pine Phone a few times a day for glitches/freezing and re install the OS every couple weeks because an updated would break it. I am to the point now where my Pine Phone needs a reset maybe once every couple days sometimes I don't need one for a week and I have been running the same OS since January.

I am super happy with my phone just itching to get that performance bump.

[fxc]

Well that took a weird turn, I am familiar with the sim slot the regular pine phone is a bit fickle and you need to be careful when using it.

I am looking for anyone who has actual daily driver experience with it or anyone who has upgraded from the regular pine phone to the pro who can give me an opinion on if it is in a similar state.

Thanks.

The Pro isn't daily-drivable in the current software state IMO, there is plenty of more and less severe bugs, such as boot-loops with a drained battery, disabled suspend because of an underlying bug, call audio quality isn't fine-tuned yet and plenty more, as well as no camera support. I would suggest you to wait beneath the early adopters state and the alpha software state.

[kmsgli]

Well that took a weird turn, I am familiar with the sim slot the regular pine phone is a bit fickle and you need to be careful when using it.

I am looking for anyone who has actual daily driver experience with it or anyone who has upgraded from the regular pine phone to the pro who can give me an opinion on if it is in a similar state.

Thanks.

The Pro isn't daily-drivable in the current software state IMO, there is plenty of more and less severe bugs, such as boot-loops with a drained battery, disabled suspend because of an underlying bug, call audio quality isn't fine-tuned yet and plenty more, as well as no camera support. I would suggest you to wait beneath the early adopters state and the alpha software state.

That is what I needed, thanks man. I will hold out a bit. I would hate to get it have to stay with my OG pine phone due to lack of usability.

[bcnaz]

Yep, it MAY be better to wait.
I am still using a 1.2a convergent PP as my main communications device, with Mobian running on an sd card.

BUT I just could not wait.. to get a Pro series phone.
I just put a cheap $20. a month Pure Talk sim into my Pro and leave it on the charger to use as a home phone so to speak.
* (also running Mobian from the sd card, + I have read several posts saying -- "the Pro is not ready to run from the emmc yet")

What does work on my Pro at the moment -- does work pretty well, only real problem for me : "freezing on suspend"
** But staying on the charger it does not need to suspend.
Using my cellular data I have actually used my Pro to do some of my posts here. (so it is not really useless)

[codefossa]

I am currently daily driving the PPP, and not having any real issues with it, though it didn't start off that way.  Long story short, I'm on my 2nd PPP and I've tried to set myself up for success.

Wiped eMMC to avoid booting into it and have a 32G SD set up with Arch Phosh.  With my first PPP, one of the many unfortunate things that happened is uboot update killing the installed OS and even using the bypass button on the back, was never able to get it to boot from an SD.

I saw the info posted under the Arch software section for using btrfs with the PPP, but didn't have any luck with that yet, though I plan to try again soon.  For now, I'm just pulling backups to a PC every so often.

Just like running Arch on my work laptop, I don't update when I'm not able to take the time to take care of it.  I wait until I'm home and can fix it if needed.  This has caused me to update about once a week, which is plenty.

There's an issue with sound sometimes after suspend.  Basically causes all sound to play in fast forward.  My fix is to just suspend it again and once it wakes up that's generally resolved.

The suspend mentioned previously has a desktop file so it appears on the app drawer.  Due to that bug, this has been necessary because typing it in a terminal would be a pain with how often it occurs.

The last gotcha I have is of course app availability.  I assume this is not an issue if you're currently running the PP, but I have had to create some of my own apps, as well as find some workarounds to deal with using some browser plugins and sites.  Firefox has been my browser of choice and has been doing well for me.  I used Chromium while there was a bug with Firefox 98, and it wasn't quite as good, though the gestures for back, forward, etc. was nice.  Of course, using Chromium will allow you to cast YouTube and whatnot to TV if that's something you care about.  Worked perfectly for me.

Call quality is good enough for me as I don't do many calls.  The speaker is just okay, though I really wish it wasn't on the back as it's not the best experience for media consumption.  Again, it's good enough for me.  I also use it as my alarm clock, so I do have it set to not suspend while charging, and I just leave it on a charger all night.  I'll probably have to replace the battery a little sooner because of that, but at least with these phones that's an option.

Texting has been working fine for me as well.  Both calls and texts are waking the phone from suspend, as far as I know, all the time.  I haven't tried MMS, and I can't guarantee that I haven't missed anything.

Suspend works fine most of the time, though once in a while it will not let me wake, so I have to hold the power button to shutdown and boot back up.  Otherwise, suspend has been great, and I'm able to just charge it when it's convenient, and have the phone all day.

The battery doesn't last forever, but while suspended, it can last quite some time.  I haven't been super active on my PPP like I was with Android, and this is probably my main reason for daily driving it already.  I have found it so peaceful to be away from app notifications, chats, etc.  I can still access everything I need, but my phone doesn't bug me to do anything.  This phone is literally making my life better.

Bluetooth audio in the car has been fine.  I use YouTube Music.  I currently have premium, but that will probably be cancelled soon.  The only problem with this is that I believe the app on Android preloads the next song, while the site is not, so there's a delay between song changes.  On Android, I can switch song after song rather quickly, while the PPP I switch about one song every 5 to 10 seconds.  Again, this is an app vs browser comparison, so probably unfair, but it is what I have to work with.

If you care about the camera, well it doesn't work at all right now, so that could be a killer for you.

Sorry if this is all over the place.  Just spit out thoughts as I thought of them.  I switched from a Pixel 3 XL, and this is a decent summary of my experience.  Once in a while I do have to swap the SIM back when I need to be using Android Auto, or when the family goes geocaching, but these are rare.  There's also some apps that just don't have the option to exist, like Kasa.  Because of that, my Android phone sits around and I try to keep a charge in it, but I just rarely touch it.  Lastly, I'm using Mint Mobile, and everything has seemed great for me.