Progress report Linux phones

Last Updated on December 31, 2022 by pg@petergamma.org

Pinephone

We first bought a Pinephone. But when we received it, shipping, import taxes and fees where so high, and shipping time was so long, that we immediately sold our Pinephone again without using it, and decided for a Uborts phone.

UBports phone

We reviewed the different Ubports phones. We tried to flash a Xiaomi Redmi 7, but failed, since it was too difficult to unlock to bootloader.

Then we started to test a Fairphone 2 to unlock the bootloader. Here is where we stuck.

We then found out, that the Pinephone can write to the external SD card, but not Ubports phones. This was a reason to buy again a Pinephone.

  1. Pinephone

We bought a second Pinephone on Ricardo Switzerland. But after we started it, the pin code was missing. We where pissed of, but somehow we could solve the problem, but we do not remember how.

Then we spent about three weeks testing to install Libreoffice, what whe have described previously in our journal. Then, we gave up.

Second phase with the second Pinephone

About one year later, the Pinephone which we had put on the screed was again the most attractive device for us to test for new word processor options. We took it down from the screed. We opened up the box, started it. Then, we could not start it, since we again did not have the PIN code how to unlock it. We remember it should be on the packing list, which the Ricardo seller did not include. Also a search in the Pine 64 forum and the web did not help us. We remember that we did this last year also with the same frustration.

We feel like we don’t have a community with this device as non-coders and we’re going in circles.