Keyboard availability?

[KaylaMarie81]

Has the keyboard case for the PinePhone Pro been discontinued? It shows up as out of stock and I can't find anywhere that carries it.

Thanks!

[Kevin Kofler]

Yes, unfortunately. PINE64 said that the orders were insufficient for the minimum batch size required by the factory to be economical and that there are some hardware design flaws that need to be addressed (as far as I know, related to the charging circuit), but a redesign is also not economical with so few orders.

Your only options are to find a used one at the usual places (though there are a lot of people interested in buying one used now that it is no longer produced) or to use an external Bluetooth keyboard instead (there are some tiny ones available).

Theoretically, it is also possible for a third party to build such a keyboard, the pins for such active back covers are documented, but I do not know of any such design at this time.

[tookmeayear]

I was looking for a keyboard too this morning but with no luck.. let's make a group of people that need a keyboard an make an order to a 3rd party to manufacture one for us : P

UPDATE: I found an ugly alternative.. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4845231

[tookmeayear]

I was looking for a keyboard too this morning but with no luck.. let's make a group of people that need a keyboard an make an order to a 3rd party to manufacture one for us : P

UPDATE: I found an ugly alternative.. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4845231

I've also stumbled upon this which I think is for the non Pro version.. but maybe with a bit of tweaking... 

https://youmagine.com/designs/pinephone-...p#comments

[biketool]

There were small problems but it was great, had a stupid airport employee steal mine form a bag. Super frustrtating because KB + extra battery made a PPp a really great pocket computer.
I wish they had held back a few for us die-hards!

[Peter Gamma]

I also miss a wired keyboard for the Pinephone. I invested a lot of time in installing LibreOffice on the Pinephone:

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=16614

The following video shows that LibreOffice on the Pinephone is usable:

https://youtu.be/BWk2Z2HjT7U

And to be usable, a Pinephone keyboard is necessary. The problem with the Pinephone seems to be the community. After a Pinephone hipe, there seem to be only some posters left every now and then.

I am looking since a long time in a professional solution for Office applications and a smartphone. The Pinephone with a keyboard and LibreOffice would be great, if there would be a community.

Softmaker Office for Android has a support forum and a community. So I have left the Pinephone, and use now Softmaker for Android with this keyboard:

https://de.aliexpress.com/item/329921475...pt=glo2deu

It is a bit large. But with this usb-c adapter:

https://de.aliexpress.com/item/100500332...pt=glo2deu

A google Pixel 6 Pro can do what I wanted to do with the Pinephone. The above usb-c adapter works suprisingly good with the Google Pixel Pro.

- charging works
- mini SD card reader works
- a mini SD card reader plugged into the usb 3 adapter can be used to write on it with the phone.
- ethernet works over the above adapter.

So with this equipment, I can do with my Pixel 6 Pro what I wanted to do with the Pinephone.

I would also prefer the Pinephone with LibreOffice and the Pinephone adapter. But hardly anyone seems to use it. There seems to be no community. And without community, there is now developement.

I hated going back to an Android phone, since it so strongly controlled. And I am also looking for an alternative. But I don t believe my future device will be a Pinephone.

I think it is rather a Raspberry Pi zero 2 w, as soon as there is more ram. The software support for Raspberry Pi s is much better than for the Pinephone. The Pinephone has many distros. But is the Pinephone more than a demo device? Rasbperry Pi s are more than demo devices. Altough I hate Raspberry Pi s, too. But I think the future will be rather to build your own device based on single board computers, than based on a (dead?) Pinephone.

[biketool]

The reality is that the N900 Nokia was able to get mainstreamed in part because it had a fully ready to use OS developed from the 770 800 and 810s.
With the PP and PPp we still have massive usable life issues vs some half hacked Lineage or Graphine device, even SailfishOS is stuck using libhybris Android drivers.
To get good FOSS drivers form day one we are stuck(in the ARM-iverse) with a very small dev community and limited choices for supported bootloaders.
Maybe we can start getting flagship grade openRISC CPUs that don't thermal most of the battery into entropy and we can get back to successes like the Sharp Zaurus and Nokia Linux N-series but for now the little shops like Pine and historically OpenMoko have to use the chipsets available which so far is not making all but the most zealous satisfied while Nokia, Sharp and a few others created a great user experience but were full of blob drives making the Nokia and Sharp devices mostly un-unbridgeable until reverse engineered drivers became available sometime ten or more years later.
One thing to be sure of any android/IOS phone including hacks like graphine is that it is always an easy unlock with a Cellbrite dongle, the pinephone, libre, and any other fully free bootloader device with a fully encrypted disc is verified un-hackable.