PinePhone Pro [GNU/Linux smartphone] has been discontinued
80 comments
·August 28, 2025mrbuttons454
aeblyve
I think that finding an aftermarket keyboard solution for a smartphone using the android virtualization framework to run a debian VM (i.e. the "Linux Terminal" on Android 16) is your best bet by far.
The economies of scale (and compactness!) in mainstream smartphones are very hard to match, and they tend to have superior power management.
Do heavy lifting by logging into a remote server for best battery life and compute power.
RansomStark
Way back when I had a Nokia N900 [0].
I still miss it. Wonderful little phone, physical keyboard, Linux, perfect (almost).
sugarpimpdorsey
> I know it's a niche product, but I'd love a pocket sized Debian device with cellular, decent standby time, and a physical keyboard
yes they're called netbooks and x86 tablets but you may need a time machine back to 2015 to get one.
tempest_
You don't have to go to 2015
GPD has a bunch, they are not exactly cheap though https://gpd.hk/product
hnlmorg
Those aren’t netbooks. They’re another class of device which I’ve forgotten the name of. Something like umpc or something.
But the idea was netbooks were the bottom end of the market and this other class were the same form factor but at the top end of the market.
MrGilbert
GPD makes decent small devices, that can be equipped with cellular, and work fine with Debian. So no need for a time-travel here. :)
black_puppydog
I'm fighting myself on the Jolla C2 at the moment. I'm kinda in the same category as you I guess :D
detaro
not sure about standby time, but MNT Pocket Reform is a neat and unusual device in that category.
ethagnawl
This is a bummer. If there was ever a time this sort of device was needed, it's now / in the near future when Google (probably) starts requiring all Android apps to be signed by approved developers and further locks down the Android platform.
I kind of regret not buying one of these instead of a Pixel 7 but, unfortunately, I'm pretty tethered to the Android ecosystem at the moment.
jraph
I'm monitoring support for PostmarketOS on Fairphone models, with a mainline Linux kernel. They actually have someone working on upstreaming stuff to mainline, which is quite nice.
The FP6 doesn't seem there yet [1], but the FP5 is close! [2]
The FP5 is a comfortable device. With call support completely figured out, Mobile Linux would probably be enjoyable on it.
[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
[2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_5_(fairphone-fp...
fellowniusmonk
The situation with RCS means Google and Apple have a complete douopoly on the texting market.
CharlesW
SMS will outlive us all.
nrdgrrrl
You say that, but they're discontinuing it because they didn't sell enough of them. It may be the device we need, but it's not the device we're buying.
Aurornis
The product was never really attractive by itself. You had to be extremely patient and willing to overlook the serious problems with their software to even try to use it.
I would like to see some other company take a real swing at this product space but with a less strict approach around the hardcore open-everything ideals. They’re good in theory, but in practice people want a phone that works and you have to get to that stage first.
NoboruWataya
I never had a PinePhone Pro but I did buy an earlier model and the user experience was very far off what we have come to expect from modern phones. I'm sure the Pro was better but still probably not that close to an Android or Apple phone. That's not a sleight on the company at all, they faced some very high barriers and I respect what they did. But I don't think this is entirely on consumers for not putting their money where their mouth is. It's just yet another example that it's really hard to create something (in the phone space, at least) that is affordable, open and highly functional.
dotancohen
It's that "we" are too small a market. And I'm not convinced that most of us actually buy these niche devices, even though we say we will.
reorder9695
I'll buy them once I can access all of my banks on it, that is literally the only thing holding me to IOS or Anroid at the minute
mcflubbins
Pine has an attention problem, they produce a lot of different things but the ones that people really wanted like the PinePhone Pro just were never there, with they'd have just doubled down on something and made that REALLY good first.
I preordered the Pinebook, it was never really awesome but it was neat, I accidentally broke the screen and was never able to get a replacement (at least from the store - they were always sold out.) Turned into ewaste.
PinePhone Pro wasn't too good either, I really tried but had lots of flaky issues with basic phone functionality, eventually gave it away to a friend. It's collecting dust for sure and will eventually be more ewaste.
BariumBlue
I really like the phone/desktop convergence concept. Mostly I think because I want the freedom / open experience of my desktop on my phone though, I think.
But I think most folks interested enough in the concept are also rich enough to afford a phone and a laptop, and if you want a keyboard for your phone you might as well just use a laptop.
I still think conceptually it's the right direction for tech that our devices should be so flexible, but it's hard enough in practice that it's not generally done.
BriggyDwiggs42
I feel the same way, but while there are definitely actual hardware limitations preventing phones from being identical to computers, the problem is mostly a choice. Why aren’t ipads with keyboard cases able to be used exactly like laptops, for example? I think companies seized on the combined accessibility and restrictiveness of smartphones to justify design choices which are more about profit. Restricting the app library makes apple a great amount of money. Ads are hard to block across a mobile device, why else if not for more money? I think the circumstances of smartphone development gave them the opportunity to make these choices and we’ve gotten locked in since.
saidinesh5
I think the convergence concept still makes sense in big corporations where most of your work happens on a VM in the cloud, while you just use your device as a thin client. Especially in places they don't even let you use a thirdparty browser >.>.
Earlier this year, I was actually tried to replace my bulky 16" MBP with a Pixel 9 for work. Android's desktop mode just wasn't there.. Maybe I will try it again next year...
All I really need was a browser and a drop down terminal anyway.
solardev
Don't most Samsung phones and tablets already do this? Dex or something?
woodrowbarlow
yeah, but Dex lets you use your android apps with desktop ergonomics. PinePhone and Librem let you use your desktop apps with mobile ergonomics.
rchaud
It's not most phones, just the high end ones, Galaxy S series, Galaxy Z Fold Series, Tab S series and the A90 phone.
semi-extrinsic
Huawei as well. Used to have a P30 Pro. It felt like a true downgrade when I bought a Pixel 8 Pro two years ago and it had no desktop mode and a worse camera to boot.
Xss3
Tbf huawei got heavy subsidies and just wanted marker share, google actually tried to make a profit.
peaseagee
Android 16 (coming to Pixel 8 series if it's not there already) supports this.
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catlikesshrimp
if it is only the keyboard you want, A small foldable keyboard is less bulky than the laptop. I am talking about just a keyboard and a trackpad.
WorldPeas
the problem with keyboards like this and the ones on the surface is that they have no connective hinge and rigidity. with my UMPC at least, I like to hold it by the base while looking at the screen. I really wish there would be a clampable keyboard that used nice membranes like the GPD but had a phone clamp on top like a selfie stick and a single swivel-hinge like those fujitsu convertibles
mhitza
It costs 600 euros in europe (plus shipping?) I don't know why they expected that it would have sold more. Even the "200 dollars" PinePhone is 350 in euros.
It was on my list of devices that would have been fun to hack on, but not at that price.
marci
Those price are from the (non-official?) european reseller.
You can still get the pinephone at the original price from the original store
guywithahat
Honestly the company is kind of a nightmare. When I ordered mine, they shipped it with no packaging from Hong Kong. Obviously it arrived broken, and when I told them they said I could pay to have someone fix it in CA. It ended up taking 2 months for my chargeback to go through, and they were threatening me the whole time. It was only after they lost (which of course they would, it's like they've never worked with a credit card processor before) they got really sweet and sent me a return label.
Just a terribly run company. I'm sure it's better if you're buying bulk boards from them but after my experience I wouldn't work with them again.
storus
PinePhone Pro's main drawback was the low-res display for a price of a midrange Android with far superior specs. I was thinking about buying one but it was barely better than the regular PinePhone.
adamredwoods
>> On the other hand, the PinePhone (A64) will continue to be sold for around two years. It is currently still selling well.
Interesting! Well, there's a hint at your market.
dotancohen
Enough stock on the shelves for an expected 2 years of slow sales.
mystraline
Good riddance.
That pile of garbage had crazy critical hardware faults they never fixed.
1. If the battery is discharged, then in order to recharge it, you have to take out the microsd and sim cards, press an SMT button, and plug in with battery.
2. If you bought the keyboard/battery, and you plug in USB on the phone, you fry the keyboard/battery. Shit burns up, haha screw you.
And if you say anything, you the user are at fault. You didn't read, or follow their discord, or whatever, because it is 'Your Fault' ™.
Pine's primary game here has been to paracitize off of FLOSS folks, pump out incompetent and/or broken hardware, and summarily blame FLOSS for their not-working. At minimum, they should be funding the projects they want to build on/paracitize. But they do none of the sort.
We would be better if Pine died as a company. Then they wouldn't be sucking the oxygen out of the FLOSS arena, and might get more respectable orgs here.
jbm
I do not understand why so many companies have that charging issue with Linux devices.
Anbernic has the same issue with the RG35XX series. If the battery reaches 0, you may need to pull it out just to get the charging to work. And if you accidentally connect the wrong kind of usb-c charger, it won't charge, so you may have it plugged into the wall for days and come back to it being dead and needing battery surgery.
Great devices for hacking because they are cheap though — cannot understand why an expensive phone would have that problem too.
bpye
Anbernic cheaped out when trying to support USB host mode, as a result the device will not work correctly with an electronically marked cable. You can fix this - but you lose host mode - https://www.wirehead.be/2024/10/21/anbernic-rg35xx-h-charge-... . The article is for the RG35XXH, but pretty much all the XX devices have the same flaw.
numpad0
Some of pre-HSDPA Nokia phones had the same issue. You needed a clip-on raw cell charger to revive them. It's manufacturer skill as well as a bit of cost issue.
fakedang
> Great devices for hacking because they are cheap though — cannot understand why an expensive phone would have that problem too.
Because the more I read about Pinephone, the more it seems like a grift.
jolmg
> Good riddance.
Yes, we should be happy to have less options.../s
rpnx
Pinephone pro... The phone was not specced well enough and had issue. Hoping the FLX1 isn't vaporware.
OsrsNeedsf2P
Really sad about this. I recently bought another Android and was checking out the PinePhone Pro, but only wanted something with a little better specs..
ge96
Kind of sad, I had both PP and PPP
When they were "new" the tech was old already and then the lack of drivers for the camera for example which I can't talk, I'm not a driver developer. I thought it would make me get into developing drivers but I never did.
Or writing Qt/C++ apps vs. cross platform/web that I was used to.
For some reason I was obsessed with the thought of Dex/your phone being a computer if connected to a big monitor, it was cool using VS Code on the PPP but there would be problems. The external monitor I think was capped to 1920x1080 (if connected to a 1440P display a huge chunk was just static)
I had my fun with it
I was interested in the Pine 64 eInk tablet but that seemed to not be in stock at the time. I had the Remarkable 2 at one point, I want to get it again.
edit: looks like the PineNote is in stock right now
my consumer brain is getting tickled, might get a PineNote, what I liked about the RM2 is I didn't have to charge it for like a month was crazy, unfortunately PineNote doesn't seem to have that, and no tilt support on pen but ehhh. I don't know if RM forces you to have a subscription now, I didn't have it on mine when I got it in like 2022.
cosmic_cheese
Yeah for these kinds of things to work the hardware has to be at least somewhat competitive and the overall device reasonably usable. It doesn’t need to be a flagship or anything, just relatively recent, and the experience doesn’t have to be perfect, just actually suitable as a daily driver. That’s what gets people interested, inspires devs to contribute and fill app gaps. This kicks off a virtuous cycle where less technical family of those devs see the device and want to try it, which in turn creates more demand for apps pulling more dev interest and so on and so forth.
It’s critical to be good enough to clear that initial hurdle, though. Without that, the device is relegated to the most curious of tinkerers which just isn’t sustainable.
As far as dev experience goes, from my limited dabbling I think GTK+Adwaita might actually be overall nicer for mobile development than Qt, due to furnishment of a full set of widgets without having to pull in anything else, as well as bindings to way more languages. It’s considerably more comparable to UIKit and Android Framework at the very least.
bruce511
>> That’s what gets people interested, inspires devs to contribute and fill app gaps.
Alas, no, sorry. It's really not the number of apps that matters. Any phone OS could have less than 500 apps and be wildly successful. On the other hand you can have a million devs cranking out apps and the device would still be useless.
Turns out the only apps that matters are the ones everyone actually use. Your banking app. Facebook. Whatsapp. Uber. Airbnb. Etc. All the product of big corporates.
And my bank (to pick just 1) is simply not interested in developing their app for yet another platform. The effort in building it, supporting it etc simply makes no sense.
Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, ESPN, and the next 40 "must haves" simply don't care. And independent devs simply cannot fill these holes. Without these the phone is simply useless as a daily driver for anything other than complete techno fanatics.
Crumbs Microsoft couldn't convince this cohort to get on board. Some random Linux phone certainly won't.
I don't say this with glee. They're nice toys. But Joe public doesn't reject them because of the hardware specs. He rejects them because they're functionally useless in the actual world.
cosmic_cheese
I think this is wildly more individual-dependent than you may think. Speaking personally, while I do have a number of big commercial apps installed, the number that couldn’t be filled either with a web app or the Android version via a compatibility layer is tiny. The native apps I find most difficult to replace are those by small to midsize devs, which are exactly the ones most likely to be the primary contributors to a new platform early on.
I don’t think this is particularly unusual, either. Plenty of people have absoutely no need for video streaming on their phone outside of maybe YouTube for example, which works well enough on the web.
Microsoft’s not the best example here, because they had momentum with both devs and users but shot themselves in the foot repeatedly on both sides of the fence: warring internal factions reset Windows Mobile development multiple times consecutively and burned through dev goodwill and poor strategy on the consumer side killed things there. Mozilla’s foray into phones failed because they insisted on sticking to entry level devices which were both not interesting to most of the market and not powerful enough to handle a new unoptimized OS.
ge96
That is true, you have to have two phones
jolmg
> The external monitor I think was capped to 1920x1080 (if connected to a 1440P display a huge chunk was just static)
That happened to me with the PP, but I can reliably use a 1440P monitor with the PPP. Not sure if it's the phone, or the fact that I added a power cord to the phone while it was connected. I can't remember if I did that with the PP.
EDIT: Scratch that. It's because I used the official dock with the PP, and for the PPP I used one I got on Amazon.
The official dock is docked (:P) to 1080P.[1]
I wonder how it happened that the de-facto standard here is for the protocol going over USB-C to be DisplayPort, but for the hardware connection to be HDMI, and so leading to docks needed to be spec'ed to the resolution you want instead of being passive.
[1] https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pro-usb-c-docking-bar/
ge96
To be clear when I say 1440p I mean 3840x1440 which might be obvious
I was using random USB-C to HDMI/usb that I bought on Amazon, I primarily used Mobian
jolmg
I meant 2560×1440. Checking online, I didn't realize there were so many different 1440p resolutions.
zorgmonkey
The answer is boring and annoying, they almost certainly want it to work with TVs and cheap monitors both of which commonly only have HDMI inputs. It has been my experience that you typically have to pay more for a USB-C dock with displayport outputs, even though they don't have the chip just cause of economies of scale.
I bought one as soon as they were released, as well as the keyboard case. It never really worked correctly, but I loved the concept and wish they would have succeeded.
I know it's a niche product, but I'd love a pocket sized Debian device with cellular, decent standby time, and a physical keyboard. Anything out there I should look in to? I've tried to make various GPD devices work, but they are too big, and the standby time isn't great.