PostmarketOS(Phosh) on the PinePhone in 2024
I wrote about my experiences with the PinePhone almost a year ago, concluding that with low expectations, the PinePhone is not bad; I was excited about further developments in hardware designed for non-proprietary Linux systems.
The Steam Deck, a handheld gaming computer, showed us that there can be success stories for hardware designed for Linux desktop, but I haven't seen much movement from PinePhone since I last experimented with it.
Still, in the fervent hope that one day I will be able to purchase a competitive smartphone designed for free Linux, I thought I would revisit and tinker with the PinePhone a bit more this month.
My conclusions haven't changed. The beta device I own is excruciatingly slow, and the battery drains comically fast, like a Bond film time bomb ticking away in your hand, but I have discovered that with PostmarketOS installed, the PinePhone functions well as a music player and RSS reader.
OS Choices
One of the issues I found in testing out the PinePhone is that you're spoiled for choice of operating systems.
This seems fun, even a kind of blessing for the tinkerer at first, but in the end, every OS I tried is broken in its own way, and so I ended up having to take detailed notes in order to be able to understand which might serve best as my daily OS.
In my previous article, I explained how I installed Ubuntu Touch as the default OS on the phone itself. But, as the wiki states:
The PinePhone will automatically boot from microSD if a bootable card is inserted.
When I tossed the device in my backpack last weekend to play around with it on a long-ish train journey, I'd forgotten that I had also installed PostmarketOS onto the microSD card in the device, and so that took priority when I booted up the device this time.
PostmarketOS (Phosh)
PostmarketOS gives you a choice of different user interfaces; the one I installed is called Phosh.
In any case, my overall experience with PostmarketOS was good—again, setting expectations in terms of speed and battery life low.
I found it works best to use the applications that come with the install. Testing out apps from the store is a slow and frustrating process, with few gains to be made. I will describe two apps I downloaded from the store that do work well shortly.
But first, a description of my experiences with the hardware and operating system.
Hardware and OS
The PinePhone I own is a Beta Edition with Convergence Package. It ships with 3GB RAM a quad core ARM 1.2 GHz CPU. On my device, PostmarketOS is installed on a 16GB microSD card.
My first challenge when booting the device was that the OS was out-of-date. PostmarketOS has a handy reminder application that links to clear, useful information on updating the OS with an existing installation.
I completed the upgrade with my laptop at home after the trip; this was a straight-forward, well-explained process with SSH. The firewall that is automatically on in PostmarketOS allows for SSH connections. I did have to install the sshd command on the PinePhone first, as well as screen for extra safety during the upgrade.
During normal use, even when no applications are active the battery drained a percentage every few minutes. That's a stress-inducing sight. I discovered later that the screen consumes a lot of power. Reducing brightness, turning on night settings, and even turning the screen off when listening to a podcast improved battery life noticeably!
WiFi worked with the data SIM card I used, also internationally.
Bluetooth works with the little Logitech box connected to my hi-fi system at home, but not with my Sony headphones on the road. Luckily, the PinePhone has an analogue headphone jack, which enabled me to listen to audio during the trip.
Screen navigation is awkward—you swipe up to see active applications in the upper half of the screen, and you swipe up on those to close them individually.
The virtual keyboard worked, but one time it got stuck and appeared on every screen.
I tried the included dongle for keyboard, mouse and monitor connections in 2023, but have not had a chance to try it out with PostmarketOS, though I believe 'convergence' (using the PinePhone as a mini desktop computer) should work.
I did not try calling or texting, as I only had a data SIM with me, and I rarely use my smartphones for such purposes.
Applications—a few hits, and many misses
While PostmarketOS has Software store, I found the app-browsing experience frustrating. One of the reasons is that the Software store gives access to a mixture of Gnome Linux applications designed for desktop and mobile use, but no way to filter out the non-mobile applications. In each app description, you can scroll down to see it if it is 'Adaptive', which means it may work in PostmarketOS. Most apps I was interested in were designed for desktop use.
Here are the apps I currently use on my PhinePhone:
Tweaks
With the Tweaks application, you can hide non-adaptive apps on your home screen in the Phosh tab. This is useful when you are trying out applications and want direct access to the ones that will most likely work.
You can also adjust other settings (appearance, power management, etc.) and read the system details under the About tab.
Tweaks is a simple and useful app.
Mobile Settings
The Welcome screen states you can 'Tweak advanced mobile settings'. It took me a while to figure out how to get to the menu, namely by pressing a back button on the top left—not intuitive.
There is quite a bit of overlap between the Tweaks and Mobile Settings applications, but the latter gives you more options, including control over the phone's light sensors and virtual keyboard.
Mozilla Firefox Web Browser (ESR, or 'Extended Support Release')
The Firefox browser works but is slow. Logging into my Nextcloud server in Firefox effectively created a bridge between my PinePhone and other devices. This was useful, for example, for downloading mp3 files to test audio players with, or for sharing URLs between devices.
I tried logging into my subscription audio streaming account, and that did not work; Firefox ESR could not keep up.
It took me a long time to find my bookmarks. I had to hold the phone screen horizontally to access Bookmarks and other settings in Firefox.
Lollipop audio player
The downloaded albums showed up right away in Lollipop, the interface is attractive, and the player has worked without any problems thus far. Great!
Console
It feels wonderful to have a working command terminal on your phone, and one that gives you access to everything. Some of the commands and programmes are different (the firewall is not ufw; updating is done with the apk command instead of apt or pacman) which is probably to do with the Linux system PostmarketOS is based on.
Flare (Signal client, unofficial)
Sadly, this did not work. Connecting my Signal profile to Flare seemed fine up to the point I scanned the QR code to establish a link. After that, I saw an error.
Software
As mentioned above, the store works and is fun to browse, but the lack of a general search filter for mobile-only apps is disappointing.
Other Gnome applications
Calculator, Clocks, Portfolio (for file management) and Text Editor—these were all simple in design and did the job.
Lifearea
Lifearea is one of the two Software store downloads not included in the OS installation. This is an RSS feed aggregator. You may wish to delete all the example streams in one go by deleting the top folder in order to clean up the interface.
Frustratingly, 'paste' did not work, so I had to type podcast URLs by hand.
I like the interface and blog reader, especially when the device is turned horizontally. You can easily adjust the sizes of the different windows in the app.
Shortwave
The second (and final) Software store app I got working well is a simple radio player called Shortwave. I had no problems listening to the radio over Bluetooth with it.
Megapixels and Image Viewer
The Megapixels camera application is functional, but the camera itself is still one of the noticeable weak points of the PinePhone.
I had no problem browsing images with Image Viewer, but it works more like a file management tool than a photo album.
It works, now what?
The PinePhone with PostmarketOS works well as a text and audio consumption device. I had a good experience on my train journey listening to a podcast episode with the screen switched off. The battery drained much more slowly, and the audio quality was good.
Blog or news reading on the PinePhone was also pleasant, provided you dim the brightness to stop the battery from running down quickly.
Surfing the web was hit-and-miss. It was slow, and some sites could not load.
Now that I finally got my freedom Linux-first hardware device to work well as a news reader and audio player, I'm not sure what I should do with it: I already have other devices that can do this and more.
The experience of achieving partial success with the PinePhone is an improvement from previous experiences, which felt experimental.
I hope that one day I will be able to replace my current (custom ROM) Pixel Phone with a hardware device that does everything well and fast and is 100% independent from Big Tech.1
I have been enjoying free and open source Linux desktop systems on laptops and PCs in my household for years now, and I would love to have the same experience on my smartphone.
But if I'm being totally honest, I am beginning to wonder how long the wait will be.
Updates
Coincidentally, someone on the Techlore Forum just posted a link to a new Linux phone: FuriPhone. It's great more companies are working on this idea.
Second, I found a technical and indepth review of the PinePhone here.
Documentation
"Upgrade to a newer postmarketOS release"
"Trying Out the PinePhone in 2023" by The Privacy Dad
-----Discuss on Mastodon-----
Subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed.
Find me on Mastodon and Twitter.
Back to Blog
In order to flash custom ROMs on mobile phones, you often need to go to the brand's site in order to unlock the phone, and you are dependent on the company's update cycle for security, which can be costly when support for older models ends.↩