As of mid 2020, I'm not able to stay on top of PinePhone developments due to other demands on my time, so my periodic updates are more or less stopped for now. For latest accurate info on the hardware, consult the Pine64 wiki, forum, and website, and for latest info on UBPorts on the PinePhone, consult other threads on this site, or Telegram, or the UBPorts website.

postmarketOS community edition now on preorder for late August, 2020 shipment with motherboard v. 1.2a with the USB fix and in two versions:

[2GB/16GB for $150 + shipping](https://store.pine64.org/product/pinephone-community-edition-postmarketos-limited-edition-linux-smartphone/)
or
[3GB/32GB + a USB dock with 2 x USB-A, digital video out, and 10/100 ethernet for $200 + shipping](https://store.pine64.org/product/pinephone-community-edition-postmarketos-with-convergence-package-limited-edition-linux-smartphone/)

Probable specifications of Phase 3 (the shipping phone) of PinePhone were posted by tllim and lukasz of @PINE64 on the #pinephone IRC channel on 2019-02-21. Subsequent details have come from the Pine64 forum, @thepine64 on Twitter, @PINE64 here on the UBPorts forum, and now the Pine64 wiki entry for Phase 3 of the PinePhone.

I haven't yet gotten the hang of text formatting on this forum so not sure how to add colored text, so I'm putting my annotations in bolded italics.

• Dimensions 160.5mm x 76.6mm x 9.2mm thick
• Weight between 180g and 200g
• Screen type: IPS capacitive, 16M colors
• Screen size: 5.95" 1440x720, 18:9 aspect ratio - At least one screen protector for the Iphone XS Max has been shown to fit this screen
• Screen surface still hardened glass, NOT plastic
• The LCD panel that will soon be delivered on the Phase 2 dev kits is the same as the PinePhone LCD panel but smaller (5.7" vs. 6.0").
• Modem: Quectel EC-25G with worldwide bands
• SIM size: micro
• Quad GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz bands 2, 3, 5, 8
• WCDMA bands 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 19
• LTE bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25*, 26, 28, 38, 39, 40, 41. Per this post by tllim on the Pine64 forum, the modem will be soldered in place in order to keep the phone thin. *probable, per the Wiki and @PINE64's post below.
• VoLTE support obviously this depends on both software support (Ubuntu Touch does not currently support VoLTE) and carrier support (e.g., AT&T in the US currently restricts VoIP to a small list of devices, though rumors say they will open VoLTE to all BYO devices by then end of 2019).
• Wifi: 802.11 b/g/n, single-band, hotspot capable
• Bluetooth: 4.0, A2DP
• Chipset: Allwinner A64
• CPU: Quad-core 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex A-53
• GPU: MALI-400
• Memory: 2 or 3GB LDRR3 / 16 or 32GB eMMC
• micro SD supporting SDHC and SDXC. Bootable so you can test an OS build without erasing the eMMC (Source)
• Edited post to remove mention of a potential upgrade in specs. Let us see what happens and not put any pressure on Pine64 one way or another.
• USB: USB-C with USB host, 15W 5V 3A Quick Charge following USB PD specification, and alt-c 1080P DisplayPort
• Stereo headphone/mic jack (on bottom of phone) with serial console, same as Pinebook
• Vibrator
• RGB status LED
• No IR LED
• Camera position same as in the image below, but speaker position may change
• Main Camera: Single OV6540, 5MP, 1/4", LED Flash
• Selfie Camera: Single GC2035, 2MP, f/2.8, 1/5"
• Sensors: accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, ambient light
• 3 external switches, up down and power
• The hardware privacy kill switches will be placed inside the case, meaning you'll need to peel off the back of the case to access. This prevents accidental switch off. this tweet refers to the case back as easily removable. tllim later posted on IRC "back case can peel off using finger nail."
• Kill switches: 6 in total, for LTE/GNSS, Wifi/BT, Microphone, rear camera, front camera, and headphone.
• Case is matte black finished plastic
• Phone structure is plastic
• Samsung J7 3000mAh battery - "they are reliable, relatively inexpensive and easily attainable in most places we checked ... they will also be around for quite some time." A higher capacity batter in the same form may be possible.
• Battery is easy to replace, so that user also can carry a spare battery.
• No glue - disassembleable with only a screwdriver.
• SIM and micro SD card slot also located inside phone
• GNSS: GPS, GPS-A, GLONASS EG25-G appears to have additional capabilities, but let us not count on them for now.
• No NFC
• No FM Radio
• No fingerprint reader
• Price: $150 for 2 GB/16 GB configuration
• $10 of each sale will be donated to partner Linux-on-Phone projects (e.g., UBPorts, Plasma Mobile, postmarketOS, etc.)
• Proceeds of sales of PinePhone cases will fund donations of original model PineBooks to needy causes.
• PinePhone prototypes ship to core Linux-on-Phone OS developers (not app developers) October-November 2019
• Open-to-all production run in 2019, ordering starting November 15, 2019 at 8:00AM (GMT+0), 3,000 phones will ship without an installed OS to “Brave Heart” enthusiasts capable of installing the OS themselves; these should ship in December 2019 and January 2020.
• Large scale production in March, 2020, by which time at least one OS is expected to be ready.
• Availability: at least 5 years

Video: UBPorts on the PinePhone Dev Kit

Updated render:

Tentative motherboard layout:

Prototype motherboard and daughterboard:

Prototype phone with back removed and battery inserted:

Links to the Dev kits on the Pine64 Wiki:

Project Anakin - Phase 1 Dev Kit

Project Don't be Evil - Phase 2 Dev Kit

PinePhone - Phase 3, the shipping phone.

Lukasz Erecinski's comprehensive 2019-09-05 update on PinePhone status:

https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinephone-is-real-shipping-soon/

Lukasz' November update, chock full of PinePhone info:

https://www.pine64.org/2019/11/05/brave-heart-edition-pinephones/

UBPorts' PinePhone dedicated gitlab repository

PinePhone User Manual, v. 1.3

It seems our friends at @PINE64 are working on yet another FOSS-friendly device in yet another form factor, this one to go on your wrist.

Dimensions:

• 37.5mm (wide?)
• 40mm (tall?)
• 11mm thick
• 20mm straps (appears to use standard springbars)
• 38g (watch head only, it seems)

Construction:

• Plastic and zinc alloy
• Water resistance of 1m (IP67) on final watch, not prototypes - (Watch people: note that water resistance ratings for electronic and traditional watches are defined differently and are not directly equivalent.)

Hardware:

• 1.3" IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 240x240, 65K colors (about 260 dpi if my math is right)
• NORDIC Semiconductor nRF52832 SoC (final product may use nRF52840)
• 64MHz ARM Cortex-M4F CPU
• 512KB Flash, 64KB DRAM on SoC
• Additional 8MB Flash (final product may use 16MB Flash)
• Bluetooth 5 (including Low Energy)
• Accelerometer
• Heart rate sensor
• Vibrator motor for notifications
• 170-180mAh lithium polymer battery, hoping to provide ten day battery life, minimum of one week
• USB A charger

Potential open source real time operating systems:

• FreeRTOS (Wikipedia)
• Mbed (Wikipedia)
• Mynetw (? I'm not finding any info about this one)
• NuttX (Wikipedia)
• Zephyr Project (under the Linux Foundation umbrella) (Wikipedia)

Pricing and availability:

• Expected price with charger of $23
• Straps to be offered from $2 and up
• Possible to manufacture as early as January, 2020, but availability will wait until OSes are ready for it and PinePhone OSes are ready to work with it.
• Availability lifespan 5+ years
• Dev kits shipped to developers in October, 2019
• Dev kits may be opened up for general order, though as of Pine64's November update, that hasn't been decided yet

General:

• Brainchild of Pine64's Lukasz Erecinski (Thank you, Lukasz!)
• A side project of Pine64, with no particular deadlines, and lower priority than PinePhone, PineBooks, etc. Its development will not interfere with those other projects
• Core functionality hoped to be Pebble-like
• Intended as a companion for Linux smartphones for notifications, etc., not a smartphone replacement (as evinced by the hardware specs, the latter wouldn't be realistic)

Relevant links:

Pine64 forum thread
Pine64 wiki page
Pine64 wiki comparison of PineTime OSes
Pine64 October, 2019 update
Pine64 November, 2019 update

Prototype on wrist:

It's a real watch already, less than a month after the development kits shipped! Here seen running TinyGo:

Prototype USB charger:

My PinePhone arrived!

Have gone further on the PinePhone and copied all of the writable data into a new luks-encrypted partition.

I now have a shell script in my home directory as initially booted that will:

1. check to see if cryptsetup is installed and if not kick off an install script
2. turn off swap so we don't end up with encryption keys in swap
3. unlock the encrypted partition
4. cd to /tmp (because not doing so was tripping me up in the next step)
5. force umount /userdata using "umount -l"
6. remount the encrypted partition on it
7. in sequence force umount each userdata-mounted writeable part of the filesystem using "umount -l" then bind mount it back on the new, encrypted userdata (the bind mounts for your system can be found with findmnt)
8. turn swap back on using a new swap file in the encrypted partition with the same -1 setting that the original swap had (a larger swap file, in my case)
9. force-reload lightdm

Is anything aside from updates writen to permanent storage other than to bind mounts on /userdata? I didn't find anything, but there's always the possibility that I missed something.

All of this adds a couple of minutes to getting the phone ready for use, of course, and there may be things I've not yet discovered which will turn out to be broken.

Given how much is not yet working in the PinePhone, I should probably replicate this on an Android-based UBPorts device like the OnePlus One or the Nexus 5 for further testing. I'm thinking it should probably work with a large container in /userdata, skipping the umount of /userdata and mounting the decrypted block file (and the consequent bind mounts) on a file within /userdata, but this isn't testing I plan to pursue for now, as other tests take priority.

I am not posting my script here because it only applies to how I have set up my PinePhone. There are a few choices I made which would break completely for someone who made different setup choices. Anyone capable of getting this working on their device will need to understand what is meant by each step above so should be able to develop a process that works for them. If anyone who does want to try this and does know what they're doing hits a snag and has a question, I'll try to answer it.

Standard caveat applies: this could break everything on your phone, and UBPorts developers will not support this or help you fix it. Proceed at your own risk.

Librem 5 vs Android — Which boots faster?

The tl;dw is that the Librem 5 booted in 13 seconds including PIN entry, and the Android phone in about 45 seconds. Of note, they used an 6 year old, carrier-crippled Android phone (Verizon HTC One) for their comparison, somewhat damning their own cause.

For further comparison, I just timed these phones, with PIN unless otherwise indicated:

• Iphone 7 (3 years old) running IOS 12.3 w/encryption (file encryption, as I understand it): 18 seconds
• Pixel 3a (just released) running stock Pie w/file encryption: 16 seconds without PIN (not set up yet), probably about 19 seconds with.
• 1st gen. Pixel (3 years old) running LineageOS/MicroG Pie w/file encryption: 29 seconds
• OnePlus One (6 years old) running LineageOS/MicroG Pie, no encryption: 28 seconds without PIN, probably about 31 seconds with.
• OnePlus One (6 years old) running OTA9, no encryption: 35 seconds with password instead of PIN, probably about 32 seconds with a PIN instead.
• Nexus 5 (6.5 years old) running OTA 9, no encryption: 48 seconds
• Nexus 5 (6.5 years old) running LineageOS/MicroG Oreo, with "full disk" (actually only data partition) encryption: 66 seconds

The 3a is a mid-range phone. The Pixel and Iphone 7 were flagships of their day. The OpO and Nexus 5 were upper midrange phones.

I don't know if PureOS is running with any sort of encryption in this test. From the video it would appear that if they are, they are using some form of file-based encryption.

Hard to draw any firm conclusions except that the comparison was severely stacked to make the Librem five look as competitive as possible. It wouldn't sound as impressive to say that it beat a three year old Iphone by five seconds.

Congratulations and thanks to all of the developers.

And the best is yet to come!

OP updated with info that popped up on the PinePhone Wiki today:

• Dimensions now 160.5mm x 76.6mm x 9.2mm (up from 157mm x 56mm x 8.9mm)
• Base model fixed at 2 GB RAM, 16 GB eMMC, with a strong hint of a 3 GB / 64 GB version (@PINE64, can you confirm?)
• BT included by the WiFi kill switch, addition of camera kill switch, demise of speaker and USB OTG kill switches. (Those who were looking forward to the OTG kill switch for chrarging at public USB chargers might look into USB power-only filters instead.)
• $150 base price clarified to refer to 2 GB / 16 GB model.

Of note, the PinePhone will support microSD, so even the base model should have access to greatly expanded (if slow) bulk storage on SD.

OnePlus One has the advantage of strong custom Android support if you decide Ubuntu Touch isn't yet mature enough for your needs or is simply not to your tastes. The initial build list for LineageOS 16 indicates the OpO will be a supported devices on LOS 16 from Day 1 (whenever that release day arrives).

The Nexus 5 has good developer support across the board, though a persistent bluetooth headset bug has kept it from getting official support on LOS 15 or (presumably) 16. Notably, it's among the best supported devices by PostmarketOS, who have it running on the mainline kernel and have most major features either working or close to working.

I like these two devices because they have plenty of alternative options, but it doesn't hurt that they're both old enough to be inexpensive, to be easy to work on, and to have plenty of dirt-cheap parts on Ebay. Of my four OnePlus Ones and four (currently) Nexus 5s, 3 of the OpOs and at least 3 of the Nexus 5s were built by combining parts from various broken examples (my brother and I have combined to kill at least four Nexus 5s, hence why I qualify the number I have in hand now with the word "currently" ).

I'd defer to someone with more experience to say if there are notably better performing devices than the OpO or the Nexus 5, but I'm content with these to start with. Both seem fast enough for the admittedly limited (thus far) use to which I've put them under UBPorts.

@dobey said in Ubuntu Touch On Librem 5 Important Update:

Now, if only I could convince people to give me a million dollars for something that's expected to fail.

My guess is most of the people who funded it expected it to succeed. It seemed like a moonshot to me, but they were the only people publicly touting a phone platform at that time that was not tied to a proprietary operating system in some form or another, so I gave them $600 (or whatever it was at the time) to see what they could do.

I backed the Ubuntu Edge too, FWIW. Got a refund for that. Have no idea what I'll get from Purism. I do hope they succeed, and I do hope I get a phone from them someday, but they're being the opposite of transparent at the moment, which is worrisome.

@PINE64 said in PinePhone:

Posted this month's news update https://www.pine64.org/2019/06/06/june-2019-news-pinephone-pinebook-pro-and-pinetab/

Fantastic update. Thank you for posting.

I updated the OP with the new render and the front motherboard layout. Also updated mention of the camera kill switch to include both front and back cameras, which I should have added earlier.

@kugiigi said in Librem 5 Phone, progress reports:

To be fair the specs of Librem 5 is not that great right? but that's still a bad comparison that shouldn't have happened

My thoughts exactly. Not too bad a result, but absurd test. It would have been better to show that the boot time was comparable to a modern phone, which it is.

Of note, the test appears to have been done by Bryan Lunduke, who can be a bit of a showman.

@arubislander said in Librem 5 Phone, progress reports:

I am struggling to even see the relevance of this comparison. How often do users boot their iPhones? How often do Purism expect it will be necessary to boot the Librem 5?

I tend to agree with you and @3arn0wl about the irrelevance. After all, it's not like it's a ten minute server boot either way. Still though, I do appreciate the fast reboots of the Iphone on those rare occasions when I have to do it, and I'm looking forward to the same on the Pixel 3a when I get around to degoogling and microgifying it. It also may matter to some for other reasons:

Notwithstanding the presence of the kill switches, the set of users to whom the Librem 5 appeals might have significant overlap with the set of users who prefer to keep a phone turned off when not in use. From what we have seen so far of the user experience and what we can expect of the app ecosystem at launch, those making heavy use of existing platforms may chafe at the compromises of Phosh. "Leave the phone off most of the time" users already making minimal use of a smartphone might get by just fine, and those users will be booting a lot.

Also, do we know if the phone version of PureOS is using a ro root like Ubuntu Touch and Android? If it instead uses the rw root of a typical Debian system, then perhaps it will also see typical Debian frequent kernel increments and need to be rebooted more often.

@hummlbach said in Librem 5 Phone, progress reports:

so you have to look very closely here what you get for these 13 seconds... for example which services are running and which not... just wanted to say that these figures can be misleading easily.

Very true. While boot time is slightly faster than a three-year-old Iphone or a contemporary midrange Android (and I suspect comparable to a current Iphone or a current Android flagship), given what we know so far of the rather minimal environment of PureOS/Phosh, it seems improbable that it's doing as much in that boot time.

Still, going back to what @kugiigi said, this is on hardware that's quite weak by today's standards.

@C0n57an71n said in Security on UT:

@kugiigi said in Security on UT:

However, there's no support yet for encryption and such so your device is vulnerable when someone else gets a hold of it.

@kugiigi That applies everywhere: don't let your stuff be accessed by people you don't trust :))

Even people who are careful not to lose or misplace things cannot guarantee that their phone won't be stolen.

If a modern Iphone or Android is lost or stolen, no one is getting your data off it without a great deal of time, expense, and trouble.

Ubuntu Touch has unencrypted data and adb always on in recovery, so anyone who knows the adb command is going to extract your data quite easily.

Ubuntu Touch is a promising OS and is taking huge strides thanks to the devotion a great group of developers, but I feel that celebrating it for what it is not yet (secure, or any more private than a de-Googled Android phone with carefully selected apps) detracts from celebrating what it is.

@arubislander said in Librem 5 Phone, progress reports:

@trainailleur
It is on the official website because Bryan Lunduke is director of marketing at Purism.

Aha, thank you for that info. Now it makes more sense to me. Well, the man has a following and a certain panache at times. Let us hope he does more good than harm.

@advocatux said in OTA 3 suggestions: your wanted features:

Many good proposals, I just want to add -> full disk encryption.

Registered for this forum simply to agree with this post.

Filesystem encryption is the only absent feature I care about. The lack of encryption is the only reason I don't run UBPorts as a daily driver.

Though I've never yet lost a phone or had one stolen, someday I might. Encryption frees me from worries over the sensativity of the data I store on mobile devices.

@gimenez said in After one month with UT on nexus 5:

• You can have a good knowledge of what is the OS only once you've installed it. I mean it was difficult to find demos and description of the actual content. I could only find either those empty "commercial" descriptions on the official page, or homemade community videos on youtube... I totally understand that the priority is not on maintaining the PR side, but I guess it can make the difference for a hesitating personna willing to find alternative OS.

As to priorities, there are probably a great many more people capable of contributing documentation - including demos and publicity - than there are capable of contributing code, so filling in some of these gaps would be a great contribution for anyone who has the time.

Good documentation is time consuming however. For my part, I tried to do help with improvements to install documentation last year but hit a wall in finding time for it (as well as being limited by owning only two of the supported devices).

There used to be a writers' group for UT on Telegram, but it's been gone since last November. @wayneoutthere is there a replacement for that group?

OP updated with a lot more info @PINE64 posted to their Wiki, forum, and October blog update. I'm sure there are a ton more details on IRC and/or Telegram/Matrix, but I've unfortunately not had the time lately to follow the chats. If you see anything notable I've missed, please let me know, and I will add it.

As both a watch fan and a smart watch fan, I find the PineTime very exciting, and I look forward to seeing what developers of the various RTOSes can do with this hardware. The hardware may not look very powerful, but I'm sure there are many on this forum old enough to remember when the PineTime would have seemed like a supercomputer. With luck, the PineTime can prove out this space for more future FOSS-powered options.

A set of questions on a few different topics:

It would be interesting to hear about the state of the UT "market share" (yes, I know, it starts with some number of zeros ). What's a current WAG of the number of Ubuntu Touch users on UBPorts builds? Now that we're a couple of years out from Canonical's dropping UT, is that number growing or shrinking? (Based on number of forum and Telegram group users, I'd like to think it's growing.) How many users (if anyone knows) did Canonical ever have on UT?

Also, updates on PinePhone (I saw @mariogrip got the screen on the dev kit working!) and Librem 5 (if any) are always welcome, and of course as always, I'm not asking for an ETA, only interested in news.

(The PinePhone in particular seems like a great opportunity to remind the world that Ubuntu Touch is alive and well in UBPorts care. Meaning no ill will at all towards GNOME or the Plasma Mobile team, I haven't heard of anyone working to port Purism's Phosh work to PinePhone or any other platform, and Plasma Mobile still seems a long way from being a feature-complete shell, so UBPorts stands to be in the limelight when the PinePhone debuts.)

Finally, what do you feel of the state of core development and the community with respect to each other? What are the pain points for core developers, i.e., things they wish the rest of us would do/stop doing/do better? Also, what are the things about the community or that the community are doing that excite the developers, i.e., things the rest of us should continue and improve?

@AppLee
Agreed. It is a worthy cause, and it is slowly improving in the US

My point was less "abandon all hope ye who enter" than "people shouldn't extrapolate their good experience with OSM in other countries or small parts of the US to the majority of the US, where it remains barely usable." In most of the US, I would not recommend Ubuntu Touch as a daily driver to anyone for whom navigation is especially important until such a time as GPS is usable within Anbox.

(Android navigation programs are of course data leaks, but some of them work okay with microG.)

But if one is happy to use OSM for the maps themselves and less for the addressing, and one can live with GPS alone, the navigation apps on Ubuntu Touch are decent and easy to use (far nicer than OSMAnd on Android IMO).

@trainailleur said in Librem 5 Phone, progress reports:

Purism said:

3 - WiFi, Cellular, Microphone/Cameras (all 3 will turn off GPS)

Does this mean the GPS will be available to hardware unless all three of the kills switches are off, or does it mean that GPS cannot be used unless wifi and cell modem and camera are all switched to available?

I asked for clarification and will post it here if I receive it.

Purism replied: if all three kill switches are engaged, GPS will be disabled in hardware.

Marius recently mentioned the possibility of supporting Debian and other OSes in the future. Recognizing that would be a very long-term effort, I'm less interested in how or when this would happen than a more immediate concern, namely should we be evangelizing the brand, UBPorts, instead of OS, Ubuntu Touch?

I'm very interested in spreading the word that there is an up and coming alternative to the A/A duopoly, and I've shown Ubuntu Touch to a number of people. I tend to talk to people about "Ubuntu Touch," since many people have heard of Ubuntu and some even know of Ubuntu Touch (though most who have believe it to be dead). If the long-term future of UBPorts is broader than Ubuntu alone however, perhaps I should be starting from scratch and introducing people to UBPorts first, then explaining that it was started by Canonical and based on Ubuntu, rather than speaking about Ubuntu Touch and then explaining that it's developed by UBPorts now?

Or is the entire subject simply putting cart before horse? If so, please feel free to disregard the question. It would be useful to know though - regardless of this question - how the team would like us to speak about the OS.