Last Updated on March 23, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
Although we where interested for a longer period of time in Linux phones, we could not find a satisfying solution for our application. First, we became interested in the PinePhone. But the shipping was slow and expensive. We immediately sold our PinePhone again. Why a PinePhone? A Linux phone with a custom Ubports rom is enough for our purpose.
Until we found out, that Uborts, at least the custom Roms, cannot write to the external SD card. A reason to buy another Pinephone. Then, the next issue. We reported about the issues with the LibreOffice installation on the Pinephone, until we have let go of LibreOffice on Linux phones. Abiword and Gnumeric are more suitable for Linux phones. But do we need a Pinephone for these applications?
We installed PostmarketOS on our Pinephone. With Uborts, the Pinephone keyboard did not work, so we decided to install PostmarketOS and Abiword and Gnumeric. The Pinephone keyboard has an additional built in power bank. But shipping to Switzerland of the keyboard is expensive. And the keyboard has no black light. We had keyboards on Android phones with which we were completely happy with it. A keyboard with no back light. This is a step back.
We tested a total of 3 non Pine64 usb-c adapters for usb3 and HDMI. None of them worked. Nobody could help us in the Pine64 forum. Why should only the official Pine64 dock work, and not the others? Someone on YouTube managed to get keyboard and HDMI working with non Pin64 docks. We did n t. A driver problem? We are not computer scientists, and we do not want to spend the rest of our live with Pinephone driver issues.
Then the network problems. Linux phones and Windows PCs. We do not know of a straightforward solution how to solve this. This was basically also the answers of supporters in the Pine64 forum.