PinePhone Pro - Do Linux Phones have their flagship?
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The PinePhone PRO was just announced! I own a regular PinePhone, and while it's a great device to try out, and develop for mobile versions of Linux, I always felt the hardware couldn't really carry that phone into a daily driver state for me. It seems like The Pine 64 have decided to offer a more premium device this time around, so let's see what it will look like!
#PinePhone #PinePhonePro #LinuxPhone
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00:00 Intro
00:52 The Device
03:40 Who is it for?
04:56 The Strategy
It sports a Rockchip system on a chip, with 6 cores running at 1.5Ghz, paired with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and 128GB of internal eMMC storage. That SoC seems to be a variant of the RK 3399, fine-tuned to have as good thermals as possible, and better battery life. They also managed to enable suspend state, so your phone will still be able to receive calls and messages without using too much battery life.
Compare this to the regular PinePhone, which only sported a Quad-Core Allwinner SoC running at 1.152 GHz, with up to 3GB LPDDR3 RAM, although my model only had 2 Gigs. It should be a major improvement, and have performance levels comparable to a mid range current Android smartphone.
As a matter of fact, The Pine 64 says it should be about 20% slower than a PineBook PRO, which is a very capable ARM laptop. That should make our Linux mobile desktops run really well on this thing.
Cameras have been vastly improved as well, with a 13MP main shooter in the back, and a 5MP front facing camera.
The regular pinephone had a 5MP main camera and a 2MP front facing one, so there should be a very visible upgrade in terms of image quality. megapixels aren't everything, but you need to have a healthy amount of them to at least pretend to take a decent picture.
The body of the phone seems very close to the original, to the point that the Pro supports all accessories made for the baseline pinephone, including back attachments, the keyboard and the wireless charging case. The only things that won't fit are the covers.
You still get the same hardware killswitches under the case to disable the mic, Wifi and bluetooth, headphone jack and the modem.
The display uses a 1440x720p resolution, the same as the original pinephone. It's an IPS display though, it's covered by Gorilla Glass 4, and has an elevated bezel to protect the screen from scratches when lying on a flat surface or falling.
It does make the chassis 2mm thicker though. The back plate has also been modified to be less prone to fingerprints, which is a good thing, as the original one could quickly turn into a nightmare for neatfreaks like me.
The battery is the same as the PinePhone, a Samsung J7 compatible one, at 3000mAh. This might be an issue, as the new SoC is more powerful and thus might use more power. We'll have to see if the optimizations they've worked on with the manufacturer can offset that.
The PinePhone Pro is available for preorder already, at a 399$ price, and people opting to buy one should expect it to arrive in early 2022, unless component shortages intensify.
Of course, this thing isn't a silver bullet for Linux phones. Software still has a ways to go to be daily driver material for me, and probably for a lot of people as well.
So the PinePhone PRO is still geared towards developers, and super early enthusiasts who want a phone that can also be their Linux desktop when they need it to, but who don't rely on apps too much.