Price of Pinephone is going to increase by $100?

[kern707]

My take on this subject:

Pine64 is giving people a hint, that the prices of the device will slightly increase in the near future.

I believe, that since the last few positive updates on a few popular linux distros for the PinePhone (Manjaro is a good example), which made the device to be pretty close to be daily-driver worthy, Pine64 do not want to only "break even" anymore, they want to make a few dollars profit, probably to enable them to invest in hardware and design improvements for the PinePhone. IMHO as long as the price increase is small and serves a good purpose, it shouldn't be an issue, only if there was a sharp and un-explainable price increase, that is when I would say something is off or does no longer aligns with the values this project stands for from the begining.

my 2 cents

[deedend]

IMHO as long as the price increase is small and serves a good purpose, it shouldn't be an issue, only if there was a sharp and un-explainable price increase, that is when I would say something is off or does no longer aligns with the values this project stands for from the begining.

Well, an increase in price of 67% is not really a "small" one... But if this can help to have a good Pinephone 2 (or pro?), hopefully with a great camera and decent open CPU/GPU, I'm happy for it.

[kern707]

IMHO as long as the price increase is small and serves a good purpose, it shouldn't be an issue, only if there was a sharp and un-explainable price increase, that is when I would say something is off or does no longer aligns with the values this project stands for from the begining.

Well, an increase in price of 67% is not really a "small" one... But if this can help to have a good Pinephone 2 (or pro?), hopefully with a great camera and decent open CPU/GPU, I'm happy for it.

In this case you are absolutely right,

but.. take into account that this price increase that they "plan", is quite steep since the PinePhone that was pre-sold 3-4-5-6 months ago as a device that could not make calls at all, camera did not work, UI responsiveness was sluggish etc.. now is capable of doing all of those things **almost** reliably.. so now it is not longer just an experimental device but an actual linux phone - I guess that now they want to charge what it actually cost them to build them plus a small margin (that hopefully is to be used to improve the PinePhone and not to "move into a fancier office"  ), maybe Pine64 think that by now, most people who purchased the device as "early adapters" or as "testers / contributors" already have the devices, and the new price is aimed at more mainstream users who would like to try a PinePhone? who knows.. I am as clueless as you all

[bitnick]

$250 for a basic, reliable, works-out-of-the-box open phone is very reasonable in my opinion. But the Pinephone OS:es are far from that!

Things that IMO must work before this can be a mainstream phone:

* Idle battery life at least 24 hours, consistently (not just "if you're lucky, given the right moon phase").
* Call quality good enough to have an unhindered conversation. Audio must work - always!
* SIM must work consistently with all carriers.
* SMS and MMS that always work.
* These things must not break after the phone has been sleeping for awhile.
* The phone must wake up from sleep, and ring, immediately on incoming calls (not on the sixth ring) - and it must be possible to answer them!

This is still a development platform - with some usability and great potential, but not ready for a mainstream price yet. Don't you agree?

[kern707]

$250 for a basic, reliable, works-out-of-the-box open phone is very reasonable in my opinion. But the Pinephone OS:es are far from that!

Things that IMO must work before this can be a mainstream phone:

* Idle battery life at least 24 hours, consistently (not just "if you're lucky, given the right moon phase").
* Call quality good enough to have an unhindered conversation. Audio must work - always!
* SIM must work consistently with all carriers.
* SMS and MMS that always work.
* These things must not break after the phone has been sleeping for awhile.
* The phone must wake up from sleep, and ring, immediately on incoming calls (not on the sixth ring) - and it must be possible to answer them!

This is still a development platform - with some usability and great potential, but not ready for a mainstream price yet. Don't you agree?

I agree with you about that, the PinePhone is making great progress, but is still in development phase, I would not advise a mainstream user that is looking for an out-of-the-box fully functional phone to get one (not yet)

[wibble]

For anyone who's reading this and hasn't seen the blog post explaining it:
https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/02/pine-s...il-stores/

[KC9UDX]

I wish we could say "Open Source Software" in stead of "Linux".

NetBSD is why I'm here, and it's not a linux distru.

[displacefish]

I wish we could say "Open Source Software" in stead of "Linux".

NetBSD is why I'm here, and it's not a linux distru.

AOSP is FOSS too, but the entire purpose of the project is avoiding it. You could call it "Linux and *BSD", but that's slightly unwieldy. Plus at that point, what if someone wants to port e.g. Plan 9? A perfectly descriptive name might be "non-AOSP FOSS phone" but that's even more unwieldy.

So while I agree, I can understand the rationale behind the shorthand of just calling it "Linux". Much like how most people don't bother spelling out "GNU/Linux".

[ryo]

I wish we could say "Open Source Software" in stead of "Linux".

NetBSD is why I'm here, and it's not a linux distru.

Linux is open source, but open source is not Linux.
Not sure what this has to do with Pinephone increasing its price however.

[KC9UDX]

Nothing. But it's being sold as a Linux phone for Linux people, per that link. Just like my PBP which doesn't run Linux yet says Linux on the bottom.