does anyone have more current, year+, hands-on experience with a Pinephone & wouldn’t mind doing a quick review?
want to give one a go & probably will soon anyhow but thought to check with HN. Possible Qs:
- how do you like the interface?
- is the “experience” of typing pretty smooth? (some phones have a suck touch-keyboard
- likes/dislikes? What needs to improve?
thanks for taking the time to read
The default OS plainly doesn't work. It's not that it's slow or that it crashes. It's that it's totally unpredictable. Things pop out from no where, you get error alerts from things you don't know. I couldn't figure out how to make my sim card work...
Then I installed Ubuntu touch. It's way better, but still I couldn't make the phone work. I received a text at some point, and then I had to take care of my kid and I didn't pick it up since...
There is not one interface, there are many. I personally like Purism's Phosh the best, as Plasma Mobile has had more problems for me. The typing experience is overall ok, but it's not fancy (no autocorrect on Phosh, no swiping on any keyboard). I think watching videos can help you getting an idea on that.
What needs to improve? Overall reliably. I've inevitably always run into slowness and lockups after some time (postmarketOS Phosh did best, I could go a week without reboot). But things are slowly coming together, even video acceleration is coming with a future GStreamer release.[1]
[1] http://briandaniels.me/2021/06/27/hardware-accelerated-video...