- Do you use the Pinephone as your daily driver?
Yes.
- If yes: What distribution do you use?
Mobian phosh on an SD card at the moment, on T-Mobile in the US. 3GB KDE Plasma community (not beta) version.
- Which desktop environment/interface do you use?
See above.
- Does the interface offer the basic functionality you need or is something missing?
Functionality I need: Receiving calls, placing outgoing calls, using (wired) headset with calls, streaming music from Pandora, occasional map/GPS use, wireless hotspot, very occasional need to load a webpage in a browser, SMS, email.
Functionality as it stands today:
Receiving calls: Appears to work most of the time, though occasionally calls will not ring and phone will not wake, even when plugged in, and I miss calls.
Placing outgoing calls: Seems to work, though I have occasionally run into situations where the call is misrouted. Calls sometimes drop unexpectedly. This appears to happen when the cellular modem switches from 4G to 3G or even 2G. Also happens when receiving calls.
for both receiving and placing calls, I have the following nits to pick UI-wise:
1) sometimes I have to use another phone app while on a call. Sometimes, when I pull the phone away from my head, the thing's gone to sleep, and the phone UI is overlaying the lock screen UI, and I can't unlock the phone.
2) many times, when I either place or receive a call and my headset is already plugged into the phone, the audio out is correctly routed through the headset, but the mic will not work, even though it tests fine in settings. I end up having to unplug my headset and put the phone up to my ear. This also happens if I try to connect the headset during an ongoing call.
3) when I hit "speaker", audio is instead routed through the internal earpiece and thus the speakerphone functionality isn't usable as it is too quiet to hear.
4) many people on the other end complain of high background noise, even though I am in a silent room.
Streaming music from Pandora: Works fine with Pithos, after I added a script that constantly checks whether audio is streaming and prevents the phone from sleeping.
Occasional map/GPS use: map is very slow to locate me. GPS drains the battery (from 90%+ to <20% within minutes).
Wireless hotspot: works fine.
Loading webpage in a browser: both firefox and the default web browser in Mobian phosh are unacceptably slow, particularly when the page has a more modern design, or horizontal scrolling is necessary.
SMS: no usable notification, to the point that my family cannot reliably contact me via SMS, as I cannot tell I've received a text if I'm not looking at a turned-on phone at the time it arrives. Also, clicking links often fails, and cut and paste similarly fails. The ability to follow links in email or SMS is effectively dead; I cannot use the phone for this purpose.
email: works well with geary, though notifications are slow, folder sync is slow, and cut and paste don't work.
reddit: app load and initial authentication times make giara unusable.
- Have you been able to add the missing functionality through third party applications or customisations?
See above.
- Which customisations did you apply to make the pinephone meet your expectations towards a daily driver?
See above. While I continue to use it as a daily driver, it is still rather buggy and slow. But I'm super-stubborn.
Additionally, the file browser keeps launching almost any time I wake the phone from sleep. This is annoying.
Notifications in phosh cannot be swiped away; they obstruct the top of the screen, and you must wait for them to disappear. Likewise, in the top pull-down, they can't be swiped away. The only way to dismiss them is to click on them, which launches whatever app they're from. This is an annoyance.
