Are you using the Pinephone as your daily driver?

[kqlnut]

TLDR; anbox keyboard is unusable so it is not possible to run android applications on the pinephone, which makes pinephone unusable as a daily driver.  If this is resolved I think it can be a daily driver (within reason)

I haven't tried it myself yet, but take a look at Waydroid. It seems very promising for running Android applications on (Wayland) Linux and apparently runs much better than Anbox.

[ryo]

1. Do you use the Pinephone as your daily driver?  Yes.
   
2. If yes: What distribution do you use?  Mobian (Bookworm).
   
3. Which desktop environment/interface do you use?  Phosh.
   
4. Does the interface offer the basic functionality you need or is something missing?  Mostly. Some way to silence the ringer and an alarm clock that actually wakes up the phone and alarms would be nice.
   
5. Have you been able to add the missing functionality through third party applications or customisations?  Not that I know of.
   
6. Which customisations did you apply to make the pinephone meet your expectations towards a daily driver?  Just change to dark theme and install a couple of needed apps.
   

[edit] It would also be great if the notification light wouldn't blink when the phone is entering low power mode.

We really need a dark theme on this forum just to be able to read your answers.

[Smeegle]

TLDR; anbox keyboard is unusable so it is not possible to run android applications on the pinephone, which makes pinephone unusable as a daily driver.  If this is resolved I think it can be a daily driver (within reason)

I haven't tried it myself yet, but take a look at Waydroid. It seems very promising for running Android applications on (Wayland) Linux and apparently runs much better than Anbox.

Thanks!

I just got waydroid up and running and slack's been running in waydroid like native in for the last hour, wow!

[Eugo]

Okay, after three weeks I'm almost there, Manjaro Phosh has everything I need, and I've customized or managed to workaround a few things:

• The keyboard layouts work, I've got both serbian layouts (cyrillic, latinic, vertical and horizontal) working.
  
• Downloading pictures and (probably) sound recordings from the phone just works, if I boot into Jumpdrive, it appears as a mounted disk. Have to sudo mount it to be writable, though.
  
• Flash doesn't work in Megapixels, though the button is there, but it does nothing. However, I can turn the flashlight on, take a picture - that works, and is actually quite nice, as I can see what I'm doing
  
• My provider has the USSD menu, to which I should reply with a SMS containing just the digit of the option I choose. However, no button appears on the dialog showing the message. Looking for USSD codes on wikipedia (!) I noticed that the number dialed can have trailing components, so instead of dialing *100# to get my status, and then sending a message with just a "2" inside to get a SMS with details, I call *100*2# and get the same SMS. This may help someone, I hope.
  
• Looks cool with all serif fonts everywhere  
  
• On maps, can't get rid of keyboard after I type the locations, so the visible portion of the map is about two postage stamps.
  
• There's the Tweaks app and I've supplied two .mp3 files (also .ogg versions) to be my ringtone and incoming message tone, but it doesn't work. I'll have to dive into some config editing.
  

So far so good, after less than three weeks of fiddling, I have a phone I can use. Actually, I have a linux box which can even make phone calls, and isn't pwned by either of the big corps.

[drh]

Yes, I have been using the Pinephone as my main mobile phone for about a year now. I use mobian (phosh) because I like it. I have a Pinephone Pro, but don't use it yet because my Pinephone does what I need and the pinephone keeps working (even after many drops and cracked screen)!. Impressively tough little phone.

[zetabeta]

i put it here instead of separate thread.

i mostly likely have to shy away from daily driver (temporarily, i wish), reason what i call flipping frames bug. practically all o.s.'s and u.i.'s are affected. i don't know about pinephone pro, which also uses mali gpu chip. pp pro lima driver may have same bug but it's still slightly different gpu.
 
if device just randomly crashes within a day, it is just intolerable to me.

https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/805
https://gitlab.com/mobian1/issues/-/issues/460

edit: typos

[cone99]

Well it looks like I'm getting close now...

I'm running Arch/Phosh and after the last update to Phoc, Phosh and linux-megi battery life has improved noticeably. Everything GUI is smoother and faster. Elisa and Angelfish/Firefox are not just bearable but useable now.

After getting Axolotyl running at last, I've now discovered telegram-desktop (audio calls work!), which has replaced Signal for me.

VLC's GUI is tweakable, so that's working very nicely as a video player. It also has mouse gestures for control.

I can view my security cams from an app running under Waydroid, although this chugs battery.

The modem still disappears occasionally and calls and texts are still a little hit and miss but... all in all, happy days

[zetabeta]

The modem still disappears occasionally and calls and texts are still a little hit and miss but... all in all, happy days

for that disappearing modem, i recommend the following setting. it wastes more battery though. it is recommend for almost opensource modem, but i recommend for both stock and almost opensource modem.

Code:

## Edit /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/80-modem-eg25.rules
## Look at the first line where it says
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2c7c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0125", ATTR{power/control}="auto"
## And change it to ON
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2c7c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0125", ATTR{power/control}="on"

https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pine...ETTINGS.md

[cone99]

The modem still disappears occasionally and calls and texts are still a little hit and miss but... all in all, happy days

for that disappearing modem, i recommend the following setting. it wastes more battery though. it is recommend for almost opensource modem, but i recommend for both stock and almost opensource modem.

Code:

## Edit /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/80-modem-eg25.rules
## Look at the first line where it says
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2c7c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0125", ATTR{power/control}="auto"
## And change it to ON
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2c7c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0125", ATTR{power/control}="on"

https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pine...ETTINGS.md

Thanks for posting but I already did that. I'm using Biktorgj's firmware. I've also tried ADSP 002, 003, 004 and 006!

[Chief]

I no longer use Pinephone Convergence as a daily device. I'm back to Blackberry Classic. I still have my two pinephones and will continue to 'play' with them but all comms are once again on tried and true Blackberry.