PinePhone Review

Re:PinePhone Review by thinkmassive on Thursday December 19, 2019 @11:43AM (#21836482)

This is why I ordered the Brave Heart edition as soon as it was available. I'd rather get it in my hands quickly, customize the software to my liking, and if I have to buy a second device to resolve some hardware issues later this year then I'm still only out 1/4 the cost of a new iPhone, plus I have a backup device for development.

I prefer going into it with the expectation of it being a "developer experience" rather than a prepackaged end-to-end solution. This, and the cost, is why I opted to go with Pine Phone over Purism Librem 5.

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Re:PinePhone Review by dustfinger on Friday December 20, 2019 @06:45AM (#21843400)

> This, and the cost, is why I opted to go with Pine Phone over Purism Librem 5

I am now considering purchasing a Pine Phone and the cost is definitely motivating. I only wish that the PinePhone had hardware kill switches like the Librem 5 has.

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Re:PinePhone Review by thinkmassive on Friday December 20, 2019 @10:36AM (#21844892)

The PinePhone actually has more kill switches for finer grained control, but they’re behind the rear cover instead of exposed on the side.

PP: modem, WiFi, microphones, rear camera, front camera

L5: modem, WiFi, cameras+audio

Check out this comparison by Martijn Braam, a developer of postmarketOS: https://tuxphones.com/yet-another-librem-5-and-pinephone-lin...

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Re:PinePhone Review by dustfinger on Saturday December 21, 2019 @07:10AM (#21850910)

I did it again. I made the assumption that the PinePhone has no way of killing the GPS. In fact, this is incorrect. According to the PinePhone wiki [1] the hardware killswitch for the modem also kills the GPS:

> Modem: On enables 2G/3G/4G communication and GNSS hardware, off disables.

That is because the GPS is bundled with the modem.

> GNSS: GPS/GLONASS/BeiDou/Galileo/QZSS, with A-GPS

The PinePhone sounds great!

[1]: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone#Killswitch_confi...

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Re:PinePhone Review by dustfinger on Saturday December 21, 2019 @06:17AM (#21850779)

Thank you,

I shouldn't have just made the assumption that the PinePhone lacked kill switches. I like the fact that the PinePhone kill switches are hidden behind the back cover. It seems like kill switches on the outside might easily be switched by mistake. I also like that the PinePhone kill switches allows greater granularity, since it has six switches, allowing the cameras and microphone to be killed independently. On the other-hand, I really like that the Librem5 kill switches can cut the GPS. Of course, all three have to be switched to accomplish that, but it is still nice to have the option.

Both phones use a Qualcomm modem that is black boxed and connected via the USB so that the phones do not have to deal with the firmware. The downside of this approach is that, I am assuming again, the firmware can't be updated for the modem. So a vulnerability found in the modem's firmware would not be patchable. However; the Librem 5 modem is replaceable.

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