PinePhone vs PinePhone Pro: Which should I buy?
PinePhone vs PinePhone Pro: Which should I buy?
I'm wondering which is more free (as in freedom) so I can make the right choice. I've also heard people say the regular PinePhone is better than the Pro version. I am planning on using it as a daily driver. I understand it's not perfect yet, but I'm dedicated to make it work, I don't do much with my phone. I also just want to help support Linux-based phones and would like to see it become more popular in the future! I'm planning on dropping my Google Pixel w/ GrapheneOS for this.
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I loved all by pinephones... the og is much more reliable but the pro is significantly faster and more 'usable' in terms of 'let me open something and i expect it to open like fairly soon.' I owned and daily'd both at some point so ama?
I work in IT and need to be reliable via phone calls / texting, what's your experience? I use JMP.chat, so I would need to use some XMPP app that supports that. Texting / calling is all I do on my phone, I do everything else on my laptop. Also, how is the camera quality on the Pro? Is it good enough to send to a clear picture to my boss of something he wants to see? I ordered the PineTime watch too to go along with everything.
texts are reliable. calls can be wonky but i always used gvoice (i know satan) to manage my calls reliably. camera... i'm going to be biased ... i love the aesthetic but i would be remiss to ignore they arent the standard experience. for work no... for art yes! i love my pinetime and it worked great with my pinephone and android phone.
edit - there are xmmp and voip clients. i prefer maftrix which works great
fuck double edit- i need to mention i was on community modem firmware and changed my aspd. which was some work to get to work but had volte working reliably
Thanks for your response! I have two more question. If I had a PinePhone connected to my GNU/Linux laptop via Bluetooth, could the PinePhone show calls I receive on my laptop without the phone needing WiFi? I would communicate by using my bluetooth headphones. I want to rely solely on Bluetooth for answering calls from my PinePhone, without needing Wi-Fi.
I'm basically asking if there's a way to make my laptop forward notifications to my PinePhone via Bluetooth?
Also, is the camera quality on the regular PinePhone good enough to send to my boss without it looking too bad?
You're not going to like the pinephone, it just isn't ready for you if you're asking for notifications on your PC.
The calls are okay AT BEST. SMS/MMS have come a long way and should be okay. Battery life is MAYBE a day, if you're lucky. Anything beyond that is painful unless you want to spend hours getting it to work with your own code.
Kdeconnect might be what you're looking for notifications but I do agree that this might not be for you... The pictures are very saturated and colors can be not true to life. Like your boss will probably think 'what was this taken on and why did they edit them to look like this'. Bt works okay... But 2.4ghz wifi messes it up. And calls are like 'works a lot of the time but sometimes it doesn't and sounds like dookie.' I've had a policemen curse me out over the call quality... Murica
My biggest issue with the pinephone is folks getting a pinephone expecting a smooth experience... It's a dev phone and not for normal use. Does that mean it can be daily driven? Yes it can but you better be willing to put in work... Like I had an install over a year old, but I was messing around trying to get winedive to work and ended up borking the install.
If you want to daily drive a pinephone, expect carrying batteries and expect mucking about to get things to work most of the time ...
I'm totally fine with tinkering. I honestly just want to use the phone for it's camera and nothing else. Even the PinePhone Pro has bad camera quality? I can setup my PineTime smart watch to answer calls and communicate via my PineBuds.
I just don't want to weird my boss out by pulling out an actual camera in order to take photos. Any pictures I take with the PinePhone Pro, I can just send to my laptop over Bluetooth and then text/email him the photos on there.
https://mastodon.social/@qkall/112952099104717664
I don't own the pinebuds but the pinetime does have call answering. Now will it auto go to bt headphones... Phosh and plasma probably but not sure about sxmo
I have one and opted for a Oneplus 6 running postmarketOS because of the pinephone's many shortcomings:
- Terrible battery life when on, though can last on standby
- Phone has terrible performance. It is frustrating to do basic tasks because it is too slow.
- It gets uncomfortably hot when using it.
Some things I liked:
- Screen was fine
- All the phone hardware features work (unlike my op6)
- Plastic back makes the phone pretty rugged.
I might have stayed with the pinephone if it was more powerful like the pro, and might have brought a battery bank so I don't have to worry about running out.