Are you using the Pinephone as your daily driver?

[kgg533]

1. Do you use the Pinephone as your daily driver?
   
2. If yes: What distribution do you use?
   
3. Which desktop environment/interface do you use?
   
4. Does the interface offer the basic functionality you need or is something missing?
   
5. Have you been able to add the missing functionality through third party applications or customisations?
   
6. Which customisations did you apply to make the pinephone meet your expectations towards a daily driver?
   

1) Yes, since Febuary-ish.
2) Arch
3) Phosh
4) The basics are there, but phosh lacks useful ui customization via a gui.
5) Yes, though some of the workarounds are slower or require additional steps. Haven't found a good email client, Thunderbird ui is sub-par.
6) Added multiple web and script shortcuts (wireguard toggle, web weather, etc). Visual theme modifications. Updates, additional software.

I suspect that some of my "missing features" could be added if I had a better understanding of gnome.
Functions have only "broken" twice. Stuck/full SMS which had to be cleared via AT commands and a recent update which has caused occasional SIM "disappearance".

[ryo]

【Pinephone 2】
・Do you use the Pinephone as your daily driver? → nope.
・If yes: What distribution do you use? → Manjaro ARM
・Which desktop environment/interface do you use? → PlaMo
・Does the interface offer the basic functionality you need or is something missing? → quite a lot missing so far. Most of the interface is still hard-coded to English. The Japanese keyboard is seemingly unable to convert characters in pretty much all apps, even though it's the exact same keyboard used in Ubuntu Touch, which can convert characters without any problems. Megapixel is making you epileptic. And the non-Kirigami and non-Libhandy apps don't scale to phone screen size at all.
・Have you been able to add the missing functionality through third party applications or customisations? → I had to install Anthy to fix the problem of keyboard getting permanently crashed after switching to Japanese input, but the Manjaro team confirmed they fixed this by having Anthy (and 2 Chinese-specific libraries) pre-installed with Manjaro ARM from now on, which is great.
・Which customisations did you apply to make the pinephone meet your expectations towards a daily driver? → Unlike Phosh, PlaMo still has a long way to go before I can consider it to be daily driver ready. But development really sped up over the past few months, now that more people are having a PinePhone. So I'm definitely positive that PlaMo has a bright future in sight, and could get about the same potential KDE Plasma 5 has today.

Now that PlaMo is getting more and more usable at a surprisingly fast pase, the first question has been transformed into "yup.".
Really cool to see it change so quickly, especially since I've been checking it out from time to time since 2016, but it got updated once a year at that time, and it felt very much like a non-playable tech demo you'd see on E3 1 decade ago.
Nowadays it's even multiple times a day sometimes.

[nelstomlinson]

Right now the only thing keeping me from making it my daily driver is the lack of MMS and the fact that the updates are still likely to break something. I need my phone to work for work, and can't afford to have my phone down for hours while I figure out how to fix something.

No MMS I could live with, the lousy camera will always be a nuisance but I can live with it, but I think I need to see it go a couple of months without an update causing problems. We're getting close!

Should have added: periodically the modem disappears, have to restart ofono and eg25-manager, then use ofonoctl to power up the modem and put it online. It's easy enough to restore, but periodically losing phone service is a serious problem for me.

[daniel]

1. Do you use the Pinephone as your daily driver?
   
2. If yes: What distribution do you use?
   
3. Which desktop environment/interface do you use?
   
4. Does the interface offer the basic functionality you need, or is something missing?
   
5. Have you been able to add the missing functionality through third-party applications or customizations?
   
6. Which customizations did you apply to make the pinephone meet your expectations towards a daily driver?
   

1. Unless I am missing something here, this is not a realistic question. I got the UBports edition, and for a few months, I followed the progress very closely. Then once a week, once a month, and now every few months. I upgraded last week, and no one can seriously pretend Pinephone can be used as a daily driver. No need to fight. I have debated this for months, and I know some people are convinced they use PP as a daily driver. 



2. Mobian

4. Everything. 

- Battery life is super short, half a day?

- Phone calls are not working correctly. The sound is metallic. Sometimes is so broken you cannot understand, or they do not understand you.

- If calling an automatic service, you can not dial options

- Some automatic services don't work with pinephone

- Modem loses connectivity (random?)

- SMS not always arrive. Both directions.

- Apps are soo slow. Firefox takes forever to launch. Websites need a long time to load. The format is not adapted to a phone size

- Exchange email not working

- No app for Dropbox

- Should I continue?

- Camara: Low picture quality, software not ready.

- VPN not working properly (at least a few months ago)

- Maybe you can use it as a daily driver if you do not need a phone.



Good things about the phone?

It is a project, and it is moving forward. 

Terminal is great!



I am not following very actively. Maybe some of my points are already fixed. 

I am a fan of PP! 

---

[Zebulon Walton]

@daniel, whether it is feasible to use the Pinephone as a daily driver depends on what you expect and what you need. Mine will be replacing a simple flip phone that I use only as a telephone. Currently in Mobian that function is working reliably, including using the keypad to navigate automated phone systems. I've never used a cell phone for internet, email, camera, sms, mms, or anything other than making and receiving calls.  Audio quality may not be not the greatest but it works well enough. Even the short battery life is not a big concern since I keep my phone turned off when not in use. (Also I have an extra battery if needed.) I'll be transitioning to using the Pinephone as a daily use phone in about a month when AT&T disables my old flip phone so I'll see how it goes, but I expect it will work out fine.

[nelstomlinson]

@daniel, whether it is feasible to use the Pinephone as a daily driver depends on what you expect and what you need.

I really just need reliable phone and texts.  We're almost there.  All the other stuff daniel wants will be really nice when it comes, and I'm afraid we'll get daniel's problems fixed before we get my two problems fixed.

[zetabeta]

snip , and no one can seriously pretend Pinephone can be used as a daily driver. No need to fight. I have debated this for months, and I know some people are convinced they use PP as a daily driver.

even though i have modifed and degoogle android as a spare phone, pinephone starts to be a daily driver. software still has serious bugs and flaws, but if basic calls and texts work then its enough to replace that duopoly cartel. i do other stuff mostly on computers (with gnu/linux).

i was thinking even going back to technical basic phone, but those hardly exist anymore. reading that at&t disables umts network, it means lte and lte-voice starting to be required. although at&t might be only one at a moment disabling both 2g and 3g networks.

i might be inaccurate, development of ubports is weak for the pinephone at a moment. manjaro and mobian fairs better.

[anonymous]

1. Yes

2. Mobian (Manjaro at the very beginning)

3. Phosh

4. MMS, blacklisting contacts, reliable alarm, reliable AZERTY keyboard, etc

5. Partially, "at" helps, I explained my experience in details here, it might help.


My post expresses my own views. The usability of a smartphone depends on subjective criteria to determine whether it suits the end user's need. I don't claim that my criteria are the same than others.

I bought 2 Pinephones, one for me and one for my best friend, I've been a daily user of the former since about November 2020, the latter won't be used, we'll sell it, my best friend is a lot less tech savvy than me, we'll buy a Fairphone for him. Therefore, I totally understand that people can have very different expectations. By the way, I'm still waiting for my Librem5.

In my humble opinion, the Pinephone's target audience is advanced Linux users, you need some technical knowledge even to replace the default ringtones, I'm ok with that, it's not a smartphone for everybody. I still lose the network several times a day, it's the most annoying problem for me. The battery starts having some problems, the top right corner seems to have some dying pixels, the picture preview in Megapixels is ugly, the pictures are less ugly but I have to use a real camera instead... It's not practical but in my humble opinion, it's not the most important thing, I agree with paying this price to have a smartphone that behaves as a snitch a lot less than any googled Android smartphone. It's not a smartphone for those who still want to use WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, ... yes, it's for me The road is long, I hope that the end user experience will go on being improved but I don't want some compromises to be done to please those users, they do whatever they want with their stuff but I use the Pinephone because privacy is important for me, I use it for political reasons and I'm still happy to have GNU Linux inside my pocket instead of something designed by corporations that try to escape taxes.

[TRS-80]

Forgive me for not answering OP's specific questions. But I think it really does come down to expectations.

People who want to compare it directly to modern smart phones (which have had decades of time and millions of dollars of development, remember) seem to be disappointed.

OTOH, people (like myself, and some others here too) who are so disgusted with current state of duo- (almost mono-, really) poly are thrilled to have even the possibility of some real alternative, even if it is very early days. And then we do what we can to help move this dream forward and make it a reality.

[mouffa]

I use it as a daily driver since I can use all the services from the browser. The major problem is the Plasma dialer that is very problematic and must be rewritten if you want to have a working phone and the other problem is that some services like for example viber or webex can not be replaced with the browser neither the respective linux applications can run easily.