I picked up a Pinephone for 2 reasons: My current phone has a bloating battery
and it's destroying the screen, I need to decide what I get next. But mostly
I'm really curious how "alternative" phones are doing.
By alternative, I mean not Android or iOS. I haven't run a stock OS on my phone
for years starting first with Copperhead which fell apart shortly after then
just AOSP with no Google services.
I've been hopeful for a viable alternative to the mainstream OSes that is
affordable. The Pinephone seems to be the only thing in the running unless you
consider feature phones, too. But often even those are still more expensive.
After playing with the phone for a few days, I've gone through the handful of
OSes and and interfaces available. They all have their problems. A few are
close. Like all the parts are there but not everything is quite connected.
I liked the Phosh interface the best of the few that are available across Linux
distros. Ubuntu Touch was a good runner up but after I updated it wouldn't boot
anymore and I gave up on it.
I loved the UX of Sailfish. I really wanted to stick with it but the included
apps were pretty much all broken. The web browser didn't work, mail didn't
work, etc. I am hopeful for Sailfish to improve but it's not officially
supported so my expectations are low. It's almost worth buying a supported
phone for.
In the end, I settled on Mobian. Debian with the Phosh interface. Well
supported, lots of software, lots of users, drive encryption. A lot of the
applications are just the desktop versions so using them can be frustrating but
at least you can find something that actually works.
All that said, I haven't actually stuck my SIM card in the phone to use it as a
phone at all, yet.
