> 1) Is a Pinephone a viable alternative either iOS or Android?

A Pinephone will never support all the proprietary apps (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Fortnite, etc). In order to be viable, I would say a phone needs to support phone calls, SMS, MMS, camera, GPS/Navigation, and have a fast and snappy web browser. Currently the Pinephone supports everything except MMS (which is necessary for "texting" pictures and groups). Because you will not have access to FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc on a Pinephone, you will have to you SMS/MMS for communication if you want to interoperate with people from the mainstream.

2) For T-Mobile based carriers in the US, you just stick in the simcard.

Actually you can access Facebook, Instagram and Twitter messages through their respective websites (and you can get notifications from the site if the browser supports it), but no WhatsApp nor Snapchat -- though Anbox might just fix this problem.

That sounds like a feature I'm excited about :).

No, probably not, not currently. It's a prototype phone, in low-production numbers, with a somewhat underpowered SOC (but with proper FOSS drivers/kernels).

The regular "Linux-distros" you would typically boot on this phone instead of iOS or Android are still under heavy development, although things are improving.

I consider the PinePhone a good first POC for a pure Linux phone, and I'm happy to have one though.

> 2) How do you get it connected to carrier X?

This applies to any phone any place in the world: You insert the SIM-card given to you by your carrier.

This is literally how it has been done since mobile phones were invented with no change. Seeing a question like this on HN honestly has me quite baffled.

Not sure how /e/ is supposed to be more private yet less open?

I'm using my i9506 (ks01lte) as a daily driver, though I think I'll switch to a i9505 because it has official lineageos support, which means probably less weird SD card bugs.

I wish I could install it on my mi a1

I am not sure how much work that would be to maintain it yourself on your particular phone, but it might not be that much? I don't really know, though.