We offered support for PINE64 devices since the very beginning - with high-quality OS builds now available for nearly all of Pine64 SBCs and devices - and the PinePhone is no exception in this regard. There are currently working on three Manjaro PinePhone build variants (Lomiri, Phosh and Plasma Mobile). We are looking forward to announce which of these we will ship on the device.
This edition will ship in a custom presentation box designed by our artwork team, and the PinePhone itself will feature a sleek-looking Manjaro branding on the back-cover.
This PinePhone CE will be available in two hardware configurations:
Both configurations of the Manjaro CE PinePhones feature rev. 1.2a PCBA, introduced with postmarketOS CE that is currently shipping. The $199 hardware variant, called convergence package , also features a USB-C dock equipped with 10/100 Ethernet, 2X USB type A ports, HDMI digital video output and power-in via USB-C.
Pine64 will give $10 per unit sold to the Manjaro development team. To learn more about their scheme please click here. More info about this Pinephone Community Edition also on the Pine64-Blog.
Pre-orders for the Manjaro Community Edition PinePhone open mid-September. To be notified when pre-orders go live make sure to subscribe to their blog, the Telegram PINE64 News Channel (not chat) and follow them on Twitter and Mastodon. You can follow us additionally on our Twitter handles: Twitter Manjaro, Twitter Manjaro ARM.
I am am evaluating all recent Manjaro and UB-Builds on an regular base. All of them have some bugs or at least “specialties” who CAN make problems for the non-power-user. Principally all is OK but…
But the Manjaro-Phosh build is really fast and uses less battery than others.
It is a singe-SIM phone. Having to do dual-SIM is a little harder. We are happy that primary functions work as is. Currently we are working on adding Android Apps via Anbox.
What is the current state of power managment and which of the variants (Lomiri, Phosh or Plasma Mobile) is performing better? Lomiri could have a big pottencial, specially if we could use all the app ecosystem.
Yes, that should be no issue. AFAIK you can either have it running on a separate microSD, or even install it on the internal eMMC (and replacing the postmarketOS it came originally with).
Well, i wish my next phone will be PinePhone. I currently have OnePlus 6 with custom kernel.
Congratulations, keep going!
In the past i had think about some points to help catch attention to more people.
I want phone with open-source software, it’s brilliant idea, but there is a something to tell.
Big and important points.
We need bring popular social network apps from Android to Linux - Instagram, Facebook, FB Messenger, Reddit, etc. (These apps in the browser on the small screen will be painful.) Anbox could be solution, but i don’t know if PinePhone have enough perfromance. Creating Linux apps variant could be better - lower waste performance and battery.
Camera, yes i said camera. Smartphones seriously need decent camera performance, because people on the social network want to share photos for memories with family, friends, animals or events, festivals.
PinePhone have 5Mpx camera, it doesn’t good, but enough to start. We can push image quality without new hardware.
Ways to improve image quality in PinePhone.
Save as .dng - raw format. Users have chance to manual edit images in the RawTherapee, Darktable or proprietar softwrae - Adobe.
Method from Google camera - stacking images. Take 3, 5, 15 or more images for stacking, it’s famous way to remove noise and improve dynamic range. This need some time for processing, we have lower performance, but it’s still possible.
My recommendation as for camera in next PinePhone.
We don’t need get crazy way to add tons of Mpx, Google Pixel, iPhone have 12Mpx camera and these phones capture high quality photos. So i think 12Mpx sensor in the next PinePhone will be superb.
Thank you Manjaro team! You make internet and technology world better place.
@Soong, most of the social network ones have very good web interfaces for mobile. FB and Twitter are great example of having better web implementation than their respective android counter-parts.
The usual problem with proprietary platforms will remain - you are at the mercy of the company.
Whether there will be enough interest or demand for those companies to take any action, remains to be seen (and no action from a few of those behemoths may not be a bad thing in the long term )
For camera - there is a limit coming from SoC as well. It will remain 5 megapickles until PinePhone v2 comes around. On the quality of the camera - that is work in progress and will take time.
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