Jean-Paul Belmondo could have said in Breathless : “If you don’t like Android, if you don’t like iOS, fuck off….or switch to Linux!” » This is exactly the case of the PinePhone smartphone which is back in the Pro version. Pre-orders are open for a price of 399 dollars (excluding taxes and delivery costs), instead of 599 dollars, with delivery scheduled from the end of January.
Note that this version Explorer Edition is more for developers who are familiar with installing Linux on a mobile. Indeed, the smartphone comes with a pre-beta of the Manjaro distribution with the Plasma Mobile interface. So, some bugs are to be expected.
What are the differences with the first PinePhone? The Rockchip RK3399 SoC (8 cores) is more powerful than the original Allwinner A64 SoC (4 cores), while the RAM increases from 3 GB to 4 GB. The terminal benefits from 128 GB of internal storage, against 16 or 32 GB previously.
The manufacturer has also improved the photo/video part with a 13-megapixel Sony iMX258 rear camera module and an 8-megapixel OmniVision OV8858 front module.
The 6-inch IPS screen offers a definition of 1440 x 720 pixels, and benefits from Gorilla Glass 4 protection, also present on the camera.
The device has 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0, but no 5G. It has a removable 3000 mAh battery, a USB Type-C port and… a headphone jack.
As with the original PinePhone, the Pro model is easy to disassemble and repair. In addition, it benefits from interchangeable backs to add additional functions such as wireless charging, fingerprint reader, battery extension or NFC.
In addition, to preserve your privacy, it has switches that physically disable the cameras, microphone, 4G modem and GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as well as the headphone output. The manufacturer delivers pilots open-source so that the PinePhone Pro can work with most Linux distributions suitable for smartphones.
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Finally, the PinePhone Pro is not very powerful against the competition of Android models. But it will delight supporters of theopen-source who don’t want to be dependent on Google, Apple or a smartphone manufacturer.
Finally, note that Pine64 continues to sell its first PinePhone at the attractive price of 150 or 200 dollars, depending on the configuration.
Source : Pine64