Six years ago the entire Linux enthusiast space was super excited for the PinePhone, then everything fell apart. What went wrong? Was PINE64’s favoritism towards Manjaro the sole issue or were there other problems?

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    12·
    9 hours ago

    I have both the PinePhone and the PinePhone Pro, IMHO :

    • lack of Android apps (yes, I know, weird to open with that but for a lot of people, that’s the 1 thing, not actual calls or SMS) despite Waydroid because it didn’t exist initially then requires higher specs
    • bad power management : the battery is small so without spot on power management one ends up with less than a day of normal usage, that’s a show stopper for most
    • lack of updates : the PinePhone Pro was available without camera support, no big deal, most were expecting based on the initial pace of updates that it would eventually come but even today checking https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro it’s either Not implemented or Not working

    … so with all that very very few people used either as a daily driver and thus even less probably invested time to make it actually usable.

    It’s amazing as a tinkering device with connectivity… but in practice I went instead to a deGoogle Android phone (with /e/OS by Murena). I still have other hardware by Pine, e.g. PineNote or PineTab2, so I do enjoy they provide a very valuable service to the community and I’ll keep on, probably, getting more from them but one has to be pragmatic about the software limitations coming from a company that basically does not provide software for the hardware they sell.