It has come to our attention that Marius' beloved grandfather has passed away. We are tremendously saddened by the news, and wish to extend our sincerest condolences to Marius and his entire family on behalf of our team and community.

May he rest in peace.

I'm told it works a lot of testing ahead to determine if its all OK, but for now it looks like we're at least on schedule

Originally tweeted by Marius https://twitter.com/Mariogrip/status/1166813051510755328

Hi all,
For those of you happy to help with development and testing, the PinePhone early batch (Brave Heart) edition are now available on our store. Do note: if you want an end-user ready phone DO NOT buy it.

@domubpkm To be honest, we don't have an estimate. Here is what we're thinking: late this year and early next year we will release two batches of Pinephones geared toward enthusiasts happy to accept some potential sw shortcomings. Which OS, if any, these early phones will ship with is anyone's guess at the moment - its still early in the process. Then there will be a pause in production (kind-of-forced and not up to us; CNY - which realistically lasts over a month). This will give us an idea of the interest in the device and, as a bonus, also give some time for the software to mature as phones end-up in the users hands and people report issues (perhaps you guys even help devs out in the polishing process).

Once CNY storm blows over (late Feb/ early March 2020) we may decide to ship the phones cyclically changing the OS per batch (batch 1 UT; batch 2 LuneOs; batch 3 Maemo Leste, etc.,). We are even toying with the idea of having different color back-plates for each of the projects (UT = Orange/ KDE = Green etc.,) - perhaps even with a stamped-in logos, for when a batch ships with a particular OS. The default black back-plate will obviously always be there as an option. And I hope its clear to all that you can run whatever you desire on your PinePhone ... I'm sure someone will end up running XFCE just because its possible So what the Phones ship with doesn't really matter all that much.

Anyways, we'll probably play it by the ear and see how it goes this years and early the next and take it from there. BTW, all I have written may not happen or may change - just letting you know what we're currently planning and thinking

Hi guys. The PinePhone is now real, developer pre-orders this month. Two enthusiast production-runs this year (Oct & Nov): https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinephone-is-real-shipping-soon/

Shipping starts tomorrow PINE64 community update post: https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/15/pinephones-start-shipping-all-you-want-to-know/

Hey all, a significant milestone has been reached - the PinePhone now supports OTA updates. If you have a BH phone, you can download the image here. You no longer need to reflash to stay up-to-date, just update. The image also features a significant performance improvement.

@domubpkm There will be world-wide shipping. As for RAM - the SOC supports up-to 3GB of LPDDR3 memory. So yes, in theory there could be more, but lets see if the devs are content with the current specs. If we buy more RAM then we will have to spend less on other components, so if the experience is solid with 2GB of RAM then its better to spend the money on better plastic, LCD panels, battery, etc., I hope this makes sense.

@Josele13 as @UniSuperBox said, lets take one step at a time. We think that the best chance to have a significant adoption of the PinePhone (and exposure to Linux on a phone in general) is by making a solid device, that performs well, and is inexpensive. As it currently stands, even the majority of Linux enthusiasts do not consider Linux on a Phone as a replacement for their iOS or Android daily driver - this is the reality of things. There is, however, a good chance that the same people will be willing to pick up the PinePhone... even if its just out of curiosity. This in turn will lead to exposure to the Linux phone OS platform such as Ubuntu Touch and help it grow.
The more people interested, the bigger the market, the more reasonable it is to create a higher-end device One thing at a time.

Here is an update to the general hardware development progress. A revised and final version of the dev kit PCB (v2.0) is now being laid out. It fixes a few issues with the first iteration of the PCB (like e.g. some GPIO mis-allocations) as well as adds community requested features, like the multi-color LED discussed in this thread few weeks back. If all features on this PCB work as intended - and devs are happy with it - then it will become the design to be shrunk down into the PCB that will go into the phone.

We're in talks with multiple factories to deliver the phone. This is good news because, well, they need to compete for our business and this translates to quality (as in any business they need to outdo one-another). I won't say more than this at this point - not because its a secret, but rather because I don't want to raise anyone's hopes for improvements to X or Y which may not happen in the end. Once we've got a deal you'll be the first to know. Regardless, this is good news for everyone.

Lastly, since 'battery' has now become a conversation point I'll learn more about it in coming days and see what is already known - perhaps we can add this information to the known feature-list by the end of next week.

@libremax Nope, there won't be any 'editions' of the PineTab per se, but we may rotate the OS it ships with

@libremax There will be some PinePhone announcements soon - they may not, however, be UBports related.
As for the number ... you're very close.

Hi Everyone,
It does seem that indeed the batch is nearly completely sold out (for the past 72hrs). The reason why I say 'nearly' is because some people have either added a phone to their basket and not checked out OR checked out but the payment didn't go though. As of 48hrs ago there wae approx. 100 such phones stuck in a limbo. Phones are held in such limbo for a period of 12 hrs before they are release for sale again. If there are still any left, then there are likely no more than 20 left.

@Loops Not at this time. It is, however, much less relevant on the PineTab as it can be charged via a barrel connector.

@poVoq Those silicone covers are usually absolutely terrible however.

For those with BH phones - if you want to try out location services and provide feedback, then here's the instructions

For the PBP we have considered both key cap stickers and empty keyboards which users could populate according to their need (the controller is open sourced, so you can program it to do whatever you wish). Not completely sure if either is really feasible with Pinetab keyboard ... would have to check.

Regardless, on a fundamental level the problem with both options is user-error and subsequent support nightmare for us. This is in general why we refrain from e.g. selling a PinePhone DIY kit ... we know people want to do DIY stuff, and I fully understand why it would be 'fun' to do this sort of stuff, but we also know that if end-users mess something up during assembly, we'll end up drowning in support tickets. Keyboard sticker sets and really delicate cap-hinges seem like something that will break frequently.

... You are welcome to try to convince me otherwise of course.

@kugiigi ... also do keep in mind these are Lima GPU drivers, under constant development. There are also tweaks to be made to other components and their kernel / dts settings. The PineTab will never be a speed-demon, but will ultimately perform (much) better than shown in the video.

@Loops - I think that production PineTabs will be available in less time than production PinePhones due to the lower complexity of the device, yes. It may in fact be the case that this PCBA revision is final - we don't know this yet however. Regardless, small tweaks for efficiency or aesthetics are likely to follow in future batches.

@kugiigi - Marius was using a (terribly crude and hand assembled) 1GB dev version of the Tablet in the video [edit] 2GB version. I also believe that his demo ran from a SD card and not internal eMMC flash. Answering your implicit question: you can expect the production version to run slightly better due to more RAM + running from eMMC