long term plan for pine phone?

[natasha]

I am very  new to this.  

I understand that something called "community editions" have been made available.  My understanding is that a community edition means the phone is still not stable or fully developed, it is intended for technically-interested users.  

Does Pine64 intend to produce a stable pine phone intended for the ordinary public?  And, do they plan to do that long term?  

I can't take the time to play with something like a community edition, so I would like to wait for the stable or final version.  But, I don't want to get that if it isn't going to be a long term project by Pine64 (or someone) who will be around to provide support, maintenance, and development.

This is a great project, and I wish the best, so one day this will be for daily use.

However, I would say we are still far from that day. I am not a pro on this, but I have been following the project for a while. So much progress has been done. however, I haven't seen enough to think that this will be ready anytime soon.

Maybe someone with more experience in this kind of projects can shed some light on how they see this in a realistic way

I agree. Pinephone is not ready and it won't be ready for daily use for a loooooong period of time. Do not buy a pinephone expecting to get a super-smart phone for a very cheap price. For now, this is just a project. A hardware dream toy so developers can play and enthusiasts can admire and test (I am in the last group).

Having many OS make it just fun, giving freedom, nothing else what we should expect from Linux philosophy.

Many OS updates  have to come, and... and... many hardware versions have ALSO to come before having a final product (hey! this is linux, it wont be ever a final product, let's say 'functional' product)

[amosbatto]

Is there any information available whether the next version of the Pinephone ships again with Ubuntu touch, or will it stay with Postmarket OS?

The whole goal of PINE64 is to produce hardware for community software projects. PINE64 wants to create hardware for tinkers, developers and tech enthusiasts, which is why it tries to involve as many different community projects as possible. At this point, mobile Linux projects like Plasma Mobile, UBports, postmarketOS, LuneOS, Maemo Leste need to attract large communities of volunteer developers, testers and users, but they have a very hard time doing that if there is no new hardware to run on. The Maemo Leste community is still using the ancient Nokia N900 and most UBports developers are using the Nexus 5 and postmarketOS didn't have a single phone model where all the hardware could be used before the PinePhone.

When these community projects have more volunteer developers and more users, they can eventually create a system that is good enough for average end users, but PINE64 is not trying to decide which software should be used on the PinePhone and wants to give its customers the choice to decide on their own.

In one of the recent monthly updates, PINE64 said that it would produce custom back covers for each community project, and people could buy them separately for $15 each to support the software project of their choice. I assume that the generic Community Edition phone will be next model that PINE64 releases and there won't be any more Limited Editions for particular distros.

[Peter Gamma]

Phone functionality was missing in the Ubuntu touch version of the Pinephone. When a volunteer developer manages to get the phone working, I would deside immediately to go back to the Ubuntu touch version.

[bcnaz]

Phone functionality was missing in the Ubuntu touch version of the Pinephone. When a volunteer developer manages to get the phone working, I would deside immediately to go back to the Ubuntu touch version.

Yeah, I do not understand UT,  when I first received my Brave Heart phone,
* UT actually "worked" in the early months of this year... Phone and text.
At some point the functions started disappearing with each release, a function would quit working.  

But recently I went back to try one of those old releases and I could not make any of those
old releases work today. ?  ?

[Zebulon Walton]

Very interesting project. I'm in the minority in that I'm really not interested in smartphones, at least the Apple and Android variety, and currently just have a simple flip phone. The idea of having a pocket Linux computer that can be used to make and receive phone calls seems like a great alternative, particularly with the removable battery and hardware switches for privacy. If the Pinephone gets to the point where the telephone function is working reliably on AT&T's U.S. network with at least one of the available OSes I'd definitely want one. (I'm not even interested in being bothered by SMS text messages and would want to disable that service if possible in the software.)

[Veraendert]

There seems to be at least one person that got the pinephone working with AT&T: https://www.reddit.com/r/pinephone/comme...t_working/
I don´ t know about reliability though.

[Zebulon Walton]

There seems to be at least one person that got the pinephone working with AT&T: https://www.reddit.com/r/pinephone/comme...t_working/
I don´ t know about reliability though.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. I'll be needing to change phones due to AT&T discontinuing 3G service, but they're saying that won't be until early 2022. Hopefully during this time telephone operation on the Pinephone will become stable. (Years ago I had a smartphone-sized Linux tablet called a "SmartQ" that was very handy while it worked. Pinephone looks like it would be a great choice to combine that functionality with that of a telephone without having to get involved with Google or Apple.)

[robthebold]

The idea of having a pocket Linux computer that can be used to make and receive phone calls seems like a great alternative, particularly with the removable battery and hardware switches for privacy. 

At the time (2010) the N900 was all that. Well, no kill switches, but you could pop out the battery with no tools! A physical keyboard paired with my better eyesight at the time, and it was a miniature PC. It replaced my 7" EeeeeeePC for situations requiring a small device that could run ssh (even Xwindows over ssh -X). Not only did it obsolete that little PC, it replaced my candybar phone (of course), palm pilot, sharp zaurus, Nokia N800 tablet, compact digital camera, compact digital camcorder, and my digital music player. And if desktop capability was required you could chroot Debian.  And it was a legit (again for 2010) convergence device, with composite A/V out and an OTG capable USB port (with pin-swapping cable) for desktop-size keyboard and mouse. And an IR blaster to control the big TV you'd plugged the A/V into. Too bad the sun is setting on 3G in the US and the screen is getting too small to be used far enough from my eyes . . . I used to take it out for "N900 day" once a year.

I'm super excited to tinker around with my Pinephone next month, and soon™ my Librem 5, and maybe even someday the holy grail FxTec Pro1.

[bcnaz]

There seems to be at least one person that got the pinephone working with AT&T: https://www.reddit.com/r/pinephone/comme...t_working/
I don´ t know about reliability though.

LTE is working fine in Arizona, USA on my Brave Heart phone, Mobian on sd card.

Using AT&T PrePaid  No special configuration needed.