Depends on which year's. Pine64's SoC, Allwinner A64 is 4x 1,2 GHz Cortex-A53 chip, giving you about the same level of raw performance as a 2013 flagship phone.

And it will run smoothly, if you choose simple software: https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/.

Though from a few videos it's got an incredibly primitive UI that mainly uses the side buttons instead of the big touchscreen. The interface seems much more apt for a feature phone than a smartphone. (Though I realize there can be some niche demand for a non-touchscreen Linux phone with a hardware keyboard... Maybe that's what might be more achievable in the FOSS Linux hobbyist scene than something like the Pinephone or the Librem 5.)

Lately I have been trying out $200 range phones (with Android): the galaxy A31 for instance: it is the experience of a flagship phone from a few years ago. If the pinephone was that, I think everyone would be happy and yes, this is possible for $200. At least if you are Samsung?

So yeah, not flagship but close enough for a lot of people (side by side, the a32 vs s21, for me is not worth the 4x+ pricetag, as in the difference between flagship and not flagship is shrinking fast, ymmv), however...

The pinephone is worse hardware though (In almost all respects but the dipswitches) and the software, at this point, is really alpha quality mostly. But we know this: the promise it will run Linux smoothly on a phone is enough to buy one. It will take time but I would buy any phone that allows me to freely run multiple OSs new out of the box with all hardware supported.

For me, the killer feature is that pinephone runs mainline kernel.

According to https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices - that's a rather uncommon thing to have, and pretty much unobtainable for a recent device (other than pine64/librem5).

Yes, agree. That is why it is OK that it is not the best at this point: there is not much competition.

OTOH about $200 gives you much more from some other ... err ... proprietary vendors, lets say Xiaomi/Poco M3 Pro, with the possibility of alternative firmware.