Last Updated on July 7, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
New PINE64 Hardware for 2019 with Lukasz Erecinski
- Lukasz Erecinski has opened the Pine64 shop:
- The PINEPHONE costs there 350.00 €
https://pine64eu.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-convergence-package
- And does his EU PINE64 store offer something special?
- Is it not just a Pine64 USA clone?
- It does not even offer a Pinephone Keyboard anymore.
The only keyboards which are available are those promoted by Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org on his site, for instance this one:
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=19317&pid=122599#pid122599
- Which still has to be confirmed that it works with the Pinephone.
- Lukasz Erecinski has been Pine64 community manager since 5 years.
I invested a lot of time in the Pinephone:
- Installing LibreOffice on it.
- reviewing it for office applications.
- resolving the issues with keyboard and mouse by writing a documentation about the issues on my site.
- Reviewing office applications for the Pinephone.
- But what does Lukasz Erecinski?
- Open an EU shop which expensive Pine 64 products?
3 days ago Keneda from the Ubports forum commented about the Pine64 EU store:
«Completely insane prices!»
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/10209/swiss-german-language-support/21
- I bought two Pinephones. One I have sold immediately after I received it, since shipping and import taxes to Switzerland are so high that I immediately started to look for alternatives.
- Then a bought a used one. I had new hope that I could solve a problem with it soon.
- Then I bought also a Pinephone keyboard.
- I have spent estimated around 400 USD for the Pinephone and did not use it for a single day.
- I will not sell it anymore. But my hope that it becomes better soon is not there anymore.
- I could make it better, but it takes a lot of time.
- But I invested a lot of time in evaluating the Pinephone.
- And what came out of it is manly negative.
- But what do I have got about 3 years later after I started to be interested in it? I never used my Pinephone for a single day in my life. I wrote all the issues which needed to be resolved so that it could be usable as a contemporary QTEK 9000. But not even the Pinephone keyboard is available anymore, which is a essential component for such a device.
- And also the community for the Pinephone seems to be gone. I installed LibreOffice, wrote about the issues. And about the issues with keyboards and mouse. But about 4 years after I have registerd in the Pine 64 forum on the 06-08-2020 and wrote 406 posts there, hardly a single issue which I described has been resolved.
- This is not Lukasz Erecinski fault directly.
- Opening an EU-based PINE64 online store has been a dream of Lukasz Erecinski:
- Having a Pinephone with a keyboard and office software which is a setup which can replace my:
Samsung Galaxy S5 with Android 4.4
- has been a dream of Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org.
- Google killed all the nice features I loved about the device many years ago.
- And the Pinephone could not replace my Samsung Galaxy S5 with Android 4.4 up to the present day.
- If there would be a community which resolves the issues I described my Pinephone still have, I would eventually accept the «completely insane prices!» as Keneda from the Uports forum has described the prices in the Pine64 EU store.
- Completely different is the community of the Pi’s.
- Kajidataonline from Malaysia shows us how to install LibreOffice on the Raspberry Pi zero w.
- A YouTuber from India shows us how to use a 7 inch smartphone as a Rasbperry Pi screen.
- Pi’s have a community from U.K. to Switzerland to India and Malaysia.
- But Pine64 has a community which does currently not show much signs of life.
- All of this makes me retreat from Lukasz Erecinski and his Pine64 EU shop.
- If his EU shop with his completely insane prices would offer someting special, for instance a Pinephone which can do something Android phones can’t do anymore, then I would welcome the Pine64 EU store.
- But currently this shop does not offer such a Pinephone.
- I could modify my Pinephone for my needs, now, but it is currently not worth it for me personally.
All of this makes me change as fast as possible to a device based on Raspberry Pi where the community is there which Pine64 with the Pinephone does not seem to have anymore for the application I am looking for, or never had.