Last Updated on September 5, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
I have given up the Pinephone for the time being.
- Instead of LibreOffice on the Pinephone, I use Softmaker on Android.
- Instead of the Pinephone as a Privacy Phone I have chosen a Google Pixel Phone with GrapheneOS.
- For further developments, I have chosen the Rasbperry Pi zero 2 w with DietPi.
- What remains interesting for me personally on the Pinephone is the form factor of a smartphone.
- An issue for me personally is that Pine64 started a new development from scratch and has built a Linux phone with many distros which are little developed.
- On the other hand we have the Raspberry Pi s which have been developed over the last 10 years as far as hardware and software is concerned.
- A big advantage of Raspberry Pi s is the Raspberry Pi OS, which has been debugged over the last 10 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS
- And DietPi which is my favorite OS for the Raspberry Pi zero 2w is based on Raspberry Pi OS.
- Reviewers concluded that DietPi is better than Raspberry Pi OS.
- DietPi allows only to install those modules which are required.
- This is an advantage for instance for Rasbperry Pi s with little Ram such as the Rasbperry Pi zero 2 w.
- Raspberry Pi s have also many distros as the Pinephone.
- But the main OS which has been debugged over 10 years is Raspberry Pi OS.
- The Pinephone does not have such a main distro.
- This means one Pinephone distro offers this feature, and the other that feature, and I did not find a distro which would fit all my needs.
- So what remains for us personally as an advantage is the small form factor of the Pinephone.
- It did not find yet a Raspberry Pi which is as far developed as the Pinephone which would fit in my pocket.
- But for our applications the Pinephone is little suitable.
- And we know of hardly anyone who is still positive about the Pinephone.
The Pinephone can do anything:
But you have to do it yourself.
- Since the community of developers is small.
- Which means that it is very unlikely that someone already has developed what you are looking for on the Pinephone.
- And Peter Gamma is a physologist and not a soft- and hardware developer.
- Which means that he has not plans to spend the rest of his life with the development of the Pinephone.
- Who chooses the Pinephone as a platform for his developments, a Linux phone which has only a very small community?
- In the example of Office applications the community currently consists of only two people next to Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org.:
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=19406
- And Peter asks himself if the other two are sellers who wanted to sell the Pinephone, but are disappointed it as Peter is.
Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org chooses Raspberry Pi s instead of the Pinephone. Since Raspberry Pi s have a large worldwide community. We also made negative experiences with Raspberry Pi s in recent years. But this problem can be solved by not choosing the latest Rasbperry Pi models, or to build you development on refurbished devices.