After shipping five different PinePhone Community Edition models, each with a different operating system and/or user interface pre-installed, Pine64 ended the Community Edition program this month. So what’s next? A few things: Pine64 has announced that future PinePhones will ship with Manjaro Linux and the KDE Plasma Mobile user interface pre-installed. If you already have […]
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DIY smartphone keyboard made from salvaged Psion 5 PDA parts
An official PinePhone keyboard accessory is on the way, and a handful of modern phones even have physical keyboards built-in. But some folks have been making their own DIY keyboard solutions for the PinePhone and other smartphones for a while. One hardware hacker decided to do that by pairing a bit of new tech with […]
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Comments Off on Hackers develop open source firmware for the PinePhone modem, use it to make phone calls
Hackers develop open source firmware for the PinePhone modem, use it to make phone calls
Comments Off on Hackers develop open source firmware for the PinePhone modem, use it to make phone callsThe PinePhone is an inexpensive smartphone designed to run free and open source operating systems like Manjaro, postmarketOS, Mobian, or Ubuntu Touch. But the phone isn’t 100-percent open hardware: its modem ships relies on proprietary, closed-source firmware. A team of independent developers are working to provide an alternative – and it looks like they’re getting […]
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PinePhone Community Edition program comes to an end
Over the past year Pine64 has shipped tens of thousands of smartphones loaded with GNU/Linux distributions as part of its PinePhone Community Edition program. Each new batch of phones shipped with a different operating system pre-installed, with $10 from the sale of each phone going to the developers of that operating system. Now after shipping […]
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JingOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distro designed for tablets (and maybe phones)
There are a plenty of Linux-based operating systems that can run on desktop computers or servers. And there’s a growing number that run on phones (although most are pretty rough around the edges at this point). But JingOS is one of the first Linux distributions that’s designed specifically for tablets. It has a touch-friendly user […]
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Pinephone software updates: Manjaro releases daily builds, postmarketOS gets easier to install to internal storage
Comments Off on Pinephone software updates: Manjaro releases daily builds, postmarketOS gets easier to install to internal storageDevelopers for two different smartphone Linux distributions have announced updates in the past few days that make it easier to install and/or try out new features on the PinePhone. PostmarketOS Installer One of my favorite things about the PinePhone is how easy it is to try out different operating systems. Just download the latest build […]
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PinePhone news roundup (1-24-2021)
It’s been a busy week for PinePhone hardware and software developers. If you’ve been following LinuxSmartphone on Twitter you may have noticed that developers have made progress in making several different Linux distributions more usable, while other developers have been working to bring open source firmware to the PinePhone’s modem. The PinePhone KDE Community Edition […]
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$1 PinePhone pogo pin breakout board lets you connect add-ons without removing the back cover ($8 microSD card extender too)
3 Comments on $1 PinePhone pogo pin breakout board lets you connect add-ons without removing the back cover ($8 microSD card extender too)There are a lot of things that make the PinePhone different than most smartphones. It’s designed to run GNU/Linux-based operating systems. It has physical switches that can disable the camera, mic, and wireless features. And it has a set of pogo pins that make it possible to connect add-ons like a keyboard, fingerprint reader, or […]
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Lilbits: Linux on Apple Silicon and the uncertain future of the LG Rollable smartphone
4 Comments on Lilbits: Linux on Apple Silicon and the uncertain future of the LG Rollable smartphoneApple launched the first Macs with Apple Silicon a few months ago, delivering a big boost in performance while also reducing power consumption. One downside of Apple’s switch from Intel processors to its own ARM-based custom chips though, is that you can no longer easily install Windows alongside macOS using Boot Camp, and for a […]
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First postmarketOS service pack brings major PinePhone improvements
PostmarketOS is a smartphone operating system that grew out of a dream of providing a 10-year lifecycle to smartphones. So it’s probably not a surprise that the developers focus on stability, with major new releases coming to the stable channel every six months. But with the rapid pace of development in the Linux smartphone space […]