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by blendergeek 1467 days ago
I have been using a Pinephone as my daily driver for the better part of two years.

Here is my wishlist for hardware changes to the Pinephone:

1. Fix the emmc so that it runs fast. There is a known issue with the emmc that it runs at half its max speed. It can be trivially fixed in hardware (and Pine64 even recommends a solder based hardware mod) but Pine64 keeps selling phones with slow EMMC. This would solve some (though not all) of the perceived slowness of the Pinephone.

2. Usable hardware kill switches. You will notice that the article doesn't even mention the hardware switches for the camera/microphone/WiFi/BT/cellular. This is because the switches are A) under the back cover and B) too small to flip with a finger (requiring a toothpick or similar). Purism got this right by making the switches usable.

3. Add a "diffusor" to the LED notification light so that it is more visible from all angles and doesn't make an obvious spot on the ceiling in a dark room.

The software bugs are numerous and I would not yet recommend a Pinphone to anybody who doesn't enjoy using the command-line on a phone.

Also, Pine64 for years has listed replacement battery in their store but they have listed it as Out of Stock. As batteries are the part of a phone that must be replaced every couple of years and because it can be dangerous to use batteries of ill repute, Pine64 should actually sell replacement batteries.

1 comments

Regarding 2.: I asked about that for the PinePhone Pro, and I was told that changing the case is super expensive, as it requires new molds. From what I've heard elsewhere, PINE64 reused another companies case design (and molds) for the PinePhone, and that (duh, it was just some regular phone design) did not have kill switches.

Regarding replacement batteries: There are some brands that make okay/fine replacement batteries, I am quite happy with the one I've written about in another comment on here. But yes: They should be available in a perfect world, but given current global supply chain problems, it's understandable that they are not at all times.

Unfortunately shipping li-ion batteries is not easy as well. IIRC, this is actually one explicit reason Pine64 is making an EU store, so it is easier to ship things like li-ion batteries to folks.