The PinePhone Pro - Finally a Linux Flagship Smartphone 

Big bezels, one camera, no notch, no holepunch, open source, removable battery, expandable storage. This is actually perfect

I would watch the hell out of a series dedicated towards the development of gnu/linux mobile.

Removable battery and open source os is really tempting me to move from android. I swear, the fact that every single android manufacturer no longer makes a phone without removable batteries is fishy to me.

how many years off you reckon we're from linux based high end phones with really modern features

I think treating the pinephone as a Linux "flagship" isn't really the right mindset. It's not designed or intended to be the best phone, it's made to be a reasonable phone with reasonable specs at a reasonable price. More appropriate comparisons would be to entry level phone of a similar price.

I honestly dislike modern smartphones’ obsession with removing bezels. I like having somewhere to grab the phone without touching the screen. Also, my biggest concern with the PinePhone is and always has been the lack of decent software support. I haven’t kept up on the scene in quite a while, but last I checked, mobile Linux outside of Android and Sailfish is kind of abysmal when it comes to basic phone features like calling and SMS. As much as I’d like to not need anything besides LTE/5G, there are way too many normies still holding onto the old ways.

If I were Pine64 I would go full into marketing it as a phone-laptop, I can see a lot of people wanting that

Yes... thinner bezels. Because we all love accidentally triggering things on our phones just by holding it normally.

I think that one of the reasons why Pine64 went with a simple, rectangular screen is that nothes, terdrops, rounded corners, etc. are going to be a huge pain for mobile developers and users who just want to run a linux app that most likely wasn't designed with a non-rectangular display in mind.

I'm not a fan of bezel-less phones and multiple cameras, I think this phone would be really good for someone like me🙂

4:17 you missed the chance to say 'apples to pineapples comparison'

Those kill switches on the back are called DIP switches, as in dual in-line package. They also make SIP switches too, but DIP is more common the way they get soldered.

I actually like the fat bezels on the PinePhone. It give me a place to grip the phone without accidentally pushing buttons on the screen. I freaking hate those wrap-around screen things Samsung sells.

Between this and the steam deck a lot of new Linux products are comming to the market

For hardware specification, it's definitely not worth the price... For it's functionality, mainly the modification freedom, it's totally worth it.

I've got a samsung s7 edge and I've had it for like 5 years. I feel very unsecure with it due to privacy concerns, I tried to root it but couldn't figure it out. I'm really hoping to see more privacy oriented smartphones in the future. I LOVE how that Pinephone has a killswitch for cameras and mics. I hate how my phone doesn't have such feature.

I run a Fairphone with /e/OS on it, cost $450 and /e/ has been recently independently verified to remove OS-level tracking entirely. Would love to hear your take on it, since it's been kicking around a while.

Having almost no bezel increases the chance of cracking when the phone is dropped

„real fake fed money“ - Mental Outlaw, 2021. Love it!

I actually like the big bezel. It is way more comfortable to hold in certain positions. Also big bezels allow for better front cameras and sensors.

I'm all good with the bezel. Wall to Wall screens are a pain in the ass for me to hold how I naturally hold a phone my fingers touch the interface and start doing things. It's not so much an issue once there is a case on it but with a removable battery being an option, I doubt I'd be using a case. As for resolution, I'm going to agree with you on that, although I'd prefer a 1440.

Some years ago i saw someone on behalf of Pine64 commenting how they were planning to implement a sabre DAC/AMD in the Pinephone just like the LG Vxx series of phones. Sad to see that didn't happen (yet). I'm personally as much of a linux phone enthusiast as I am an audiophile. So for me de-googled LG V50 with LineageOS will still be the way to go, however this seems like a very nice phone.

hoping to see librem try to challenge this soon, year of the linux phone??

7:06 honestly i think the resolution is fine. I have phone with higher res but i lowered it in settings to get better battery life. I can't tell the difference in image quality. I wish pinephone had oled but its not too big deal for me.

I would definitely use it as a secondary phone, the price isn't unreasonable at all

Yeah, I'm getting one. Sick of the short update span for Android phones, they're basically abandoned after a few (if you're lucky) years. And with all the bloat gone with proper Linux, I bet they can be pretty snappy.

It's great to see the active development of Linux phones, but it's still really unfortunate how most $150 androids easily beat what is pretty much the best linux phone out there

I don't want to deal with random notches and unviewable pixels on a screen when I'm writing a fullscreen application. A rectangular screen is the best screen.

excellent. I hope they keep making better hardware, and it'll definitely be what I'll be upgrading to from my very comfy LG-V20. Things I'd like the pinephone to have: NFC IR blaster a good DAC for the AUX port and I disagree with the no bezel thing you said. The bezel is fine. I guess though when you attach the keyboard, it'd be like a pillarboxed screen, but I think that's still fine. Good video, catman.

Don’t be a pinecone, buy a pinephone.

I was waiting for you to make a video on this

Let's go, Brandon!

I'll be quite honest I miss bezels like this. I prefer to have a little space on the sides and the top/bottom. These phones with edge-to-edge screens drive me nuts and probably why I've not gone past the Pixel2.

I love the new privacy centered market that has been popping up in recent years.

Lovely take on a cellphone and it only gets better from here. The only thing I'd like to remark on is the Bluetooth 4.1.

A pressure sensitive stylus and this works for me perfectly. All I really need in a phone. Linux compatibility with some repos could get some programs a mobile mode.

Bezels are fine! I'm more worried about the app environment on it.

I'm looking forward to see the review

Wow, the editing has become real slick

I really hope we can see some Anbox usage with it! If its possible to run android apps okay then I would use this as my driver over pixel

The Oneplus 7t was one of the only phones with a practical camera layout, one for high megapixel normal shots, one for wide angle shots, and one with telephoto (optically zoomed).

Personally i didn't need a phone because i don't have many friends and i can communicate with my friends on Instagram. I was fine with it. I didn't have a phone for the last three years. But now I have to get one because I'm going to college next year. It's too damn nice to see the phone that I've been wondering about for a while from my favorite youtuber.

I didn't buy the last model because it lacked 5ghz WiFi. So glad they made a better version. This looks like the real deal. Keen to see a review!

Nice video. Noticed you said you have a OnePlus 6. You can actually run mainline Linux on that and have a pretty decent feature set. Theres also ubuntu touch ofc

I'm nostalgic of the Windows phone UI. I know MS is not very nice with personal data, but the UI was well though. I hope Linux will make possible to get various UIs, like the PC desktop environments.

Good to see more developments on linux phones.

It's a good effort. I hope it does well but a bit out of my price range and still no fm radio.

Awesome! I’m looking forward to when Linux phones get great!

For phone cameras, software processing is much more important than hardware. This is why apple and samsung can get away with 12mp cameras.

I have been eyeing the PinePhone for a few months now and I really think I'm just going to get it once the bugs are worked out. I don't use my phone for anything except calling, texting, and browsing the web tbh. My only concern is the compatibility with service providers.

Would really appreciate a video comparing browsers for mobile Linux. I can't see to find anything snappy that isn't spooky.

this vid makes my wanting to buy this phone more than any ad i have ever seen

Can you cover Fxtec? It comes with a built in keyboard, has pretty good specs and isn't too expensive. Its not as focused on FOSS and privacy, but since the booloader is unlocked, you can despook everything.

@Mental Outlaw Careful with that camera comparison. As you probably know this is all about software and that software makes something of it which wasn't there. It might have been there, it might not, the software kind of speculates the gap between what the sensors can detect and what really was there. In my opinion Apple and Android tend to oversaturate those pictures. That random picture which you took with Oneplus6 might look prettier but also it is quite unrealistic, it didn't look quite that if you would have been at that spot at that time and looked at that flower and plant. But yes, for now we have to choose between privacy+security or better hardware. That is fine at the point where the additional hardware is not required. Of course there also is the option to not use a smartphone at all. ;)

I am excited for the future! Going to be holding on to my 2016 SE until pine is ready to go mainstream.

im exited cos now old pinephones will be affordable for me i was thinking of buying a fairphone 3 but i actually didnt realise the pinephone had a removable battery or those killswitches

Thanks for the video. I wonder if the GPU will be sufficient for smooth operation and if the screen resolution will be sufficient to display small text legibly. I'm already curious about your benchmark results. And just as an aside, let's go Brandon!

I hate curved screens and notches. My S9 drives me crazy with accidental touches when typing and I hate notches I will never get one with one

That phone would totally fit my needs.

Really, I decided to buy it, even though I don’t have any previous experience in Technology, but I care about privacy so I will learn everything about Linux in this phone. Camera and call are not important to me, and I will keep my old phone for call and SIM. Thank you for your video.

$400 of real fake Fed money. 😂

Better specs than my laptop and that runs my Arch setup I put on all my devices perfectly fine, so I think I’ll be getting the Pinephone Pro. Plus I don’t really game on pc or mobile so it should be perfect. I can’t wait to finally ditch my spyPhone 11

I'll probably buy it. Won't be my daily driver, but it'll be fun to play around with and it'll help with making an app I'm making work on Linux phones

Hopefully in the next two years this takes off and by that time i would be interested.

I hope you can install Gentoo ARM64 on it.

>Front camera Killswitch I would still put tape over the camera

That's a beautiful set. In fact, that thing's just plain friggin' awesome, especially with the switches to shut off the wireless and camera etc etc etc. That's one of the reasons I love my old Dell Latitude D630 laptop... it has a cut-off switch for it's bluetooth and wifi radios. I set my Dell up presently with 8 gigs of RAM and a dual-booted 1TB SSD with the primary OS of Linux Mint... and for all my Windows 'needs', a secondary OS of Windows Vista Home Premium. I love this old laptop. ; - ) Even though there is no cell coverage here in my area I want to buy one of those Linux phones. Can it be set it up to just use it as a beautiful little pocket-sized tablet in no-coverage areas? Thanks for sharing, MO.

crazy cool that it just runs Linux out-of-the-box! makes me want to buy one of these

This is awesome! I really might consider buying this if it performs well on public release. I'm just wondering, what's the difference between the Pinephone OS and Android without the Google extensions in terms of privacy?

Sorry to say it Mental, but unless you've applied to help do kernel or other low level development, it's unlikely we'll be accepting the application

Great video! Is it possible to dual-boot on these linux phones?

Through Gentoo Linux on with with all the hardware working and software to support it all, minimal window manager like i3 or awesome

Do we have decent navigation software for linux? That's the only mobile app I actually use.

"really legit" sounds like a bit of a stretch when they still have a 720p screen on there, honestly. But I've been disappointed by the budget Android phone market's return to 720p screens as well.

4:07 I was under the impression that Snapdragon is Qualcomm’s brand of ARM chip and is still an ARM chip. Rockchip is another brand of ARM chip. I understand they’ll have different firmware and blobs and whatnot, but they are the same architecture.

I hope we get a fairphone 4 review from your channel ^^

I'd still go for self made de-Googled phones bought from second hand deals or with actual phones that I possess for getting in practice with it. I rather wait few years for pinephones to have better specs even if it's Linux based.

To add a bigger sensor you also need to add a bigger lens. And that's where the challenges reside

I installed Linux and the feeling of freedom and privacy hit me so hard that I immediately began committing crimes, knowing that the FBI could never track me. Piracy, sexual assault, trademark infringement, petty larceny, tax fraud, you name it. I also own several fully automatic firearms even though I live in the state of California, but it doesn't matter. Ever since I removed Windows 10 from my computer and replaced it with Arch Linux, and began using a PinePhone as my daily driver phone, police can't even stop me in traffic. Windows may have a lot of video games, but the benefits of Linux should not be understated.

Looking at the I/O specs for the Pro, I didn't see any mention of a 3.5mm headphone jack. Is that going to be on the main edition?

try out the dock/convergence where you turn the phone into a desktop linux by connecting it to a screen.

Megapixels dont really matter anything above 8 mp is fine 99% of the time, the processing and software behind the camera are way more important on modern phones just saying

One thing that l'd I want in a device is a mobile that uses normal smartphone hardware (namely a proprietary baseband processor, etc.), and then just have it isolated from the main device. In other words you'd technically have two separate devices built into one package. One device takes Wi-Fi and cell signals and passes it through to the main device, while the main device is the thing that actually has the beefy CPU and RAM and storage and such. This way the proprietary baseband stuff is effectively stuck in a sandbox, while the wi-fi is also essentially routed through a proxy, such that any software that queries the wi-fi won't be able to find out location info about it since it is always going through the static middleman rather than seeing any nearby devices or APs. _Technically_ this isn't a sure-fire way of preventing any issues, since in theory the baseband could still be told to modify the packets that it passes on (in either direction), but I'd say it's not a big deal, since I doubt the power of any sort of baseband exploits/backdoors could extend that far when kept exclusively within the baseband processor itself, and even if that wasn't the case that sort of capability is more limited than it may seem (namely due to the existence of encrypted communication, so most of the stuff that it passes on of any importance would just be encrypted)

Those pogo pins at the back are actually I2C pins, I2C is not fast enough for use in high speed applications like high res camera, however it's good for connecting some small sensors and devices like: temperature, humidity, imu, gpio expanders, pwm drivers.

It's not really a flagship. It's a low end - mid-range. Suppose you could call it a flagship for its kind, if that's what you mean.

Multiple cameras isn't a dumb trend, it is on budget/*some*midrangers but on flagships each camera serves a purpose and contributes to image quality.

I just switched to CalyxOs (because of your channel) and the only thing I miss is Pokemon Go. I know that PoGo is developed by a Google owned company and some amount of gps data is def being sent to them but damn I miss PoGo so much. If this phone can play Pokemon Go I would absolutely pay $400 for it.

With all being said in this review, what about the Librem 5 phone from Prism? Is that a good Linux phone alternative?

Might be a bit of a stretch to call it a flagship, I would consider it to be more so a midrange.

Still way go a looooong way to go. The phone is better than PinePhone but still very very expensive for its hardware. I'm glad we are getting there tho!

might get this if it will ship to me as that is a good price and a good upgrade from my S7

ram went from ddr3 to 4 too

All it needs is a better gpu

I had issues getting the original pine phone to work with my cell providers. after doing some research found that some companies would not let the modem pine used on their network so i kinda gave up on the idea. did you encounter something similar ? any workarounds ?

Might make this one my next phone

As if just ordered the last model...

No, I hate no bezel phones, I need some where to grab it by

What do you think about the Volla phone? Better specs & at about $800 it is in your budget if not mine.

i hear people talking about how the software isn't great but it seems like people *love* the hardware, so i have an interesting question. would it be possible put a custom os like calyx or graphene on it? most modern smartphones have ways of preventing custom os's but i assume something like this would be ok with it.

I've recently switched to carrier pidgeons, paper maps, and vinyl instead of a smart phone. Easiest switch I've ever made.