But it's proprietary software, right?
lemmeee
joined 11 months ago
Don't forget that Raspberry PI can't run a mainline Linux kernel. You can't install an official Debian build on it for example. I don't get why people are ok with that.
Raspberry PI can't run a mainline Linux kernel.
They made a device with a proprietary operating system and proprietary software. If you really want that, why not just use Android?
Steam OS is proprietary, so what would be the point?
Debian is GNU/Linux and that's what almost always people mean when they say Linux. Android is not GNU/Linux and doesn't even use the mainline Linux kernel - just some old, heavily modified version.
Mobian or Manjaro ARM on the other hand are GNU/Linux distributions. They run the same software that you can run on your desktop distro.
It uses an ancient Linux kernel with millions of lines of code changed from the original.
Purism has contributed a lot to the software development. They hire developers who work on Phosh (mobile desktop environment). So by buying their phone, you have at least contributed to the cause.
I bought the keyboard addon with the extra battery and that has increased my og PinePhone's battery life a lot. So maybe give that a try. The downside is that it makes the phone pretty big and it might not always fit in your pocket. But it might be useful while traveling for example.
For PinePhone Pro there is also some proprietary firmware, which is supposed to help. Are you using that? I probably wouldn't want to install it, but it's supposed to increase the battery life to that of the original PinePhone.
A lot has changed in 2 years. But the camera on the original PinePhone will always be bad, since it's a 5 megapixel camera. For that reason nobody has even bothered to implement video recording, but there are scripts, which will let you do that.
I use it as my only phone. It all depends on how important freedom is to you and if you are willing to sacrifice some things to get it.
I can confirm that my PinePhone runs the same software that I run on my desktop. I usually don't even need to compile anything, since a lot of packages in Debian repo have an ARM version. Not all apps have responsive UIs and some of the old ones lack touch support, though. But that is something that keeps improving over time (GNOME 4 and libhandy for example). You can also use CLI programs if you want.