You Can’t Buy This Linux Phone Anymore
Summary
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Pine64 abandons the repairable Pinephone Pro Smartphone due to low sales.
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The PRO version, intended for amateurs, has offered hardware improvements, such as 128 GB storage and better chipset.
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The original pinphone is still available for $ 200 for those who are not up to low specifications.
Pine64, the creator of the PINSPHONE range of smartphones focused on Linux, apparently kills the professional edition of the Pinephone. You can always get the original pinphone.
The list of Pine64 stores for the Pinephone Pro shows that it is currently out of stock, and according to Lilyput reports, the Pinephone Pro is officially interrupted thanks to low interest. He was always supposed to respond to amateurs and odds, and obviously, these people were not enthusiastic enough to justify the continuation of making this specific Linux phone.
When the Pinephone Pro was introduced in 2022, it joined the ordinary pinephone (illustrated in the photo above) as a dream of a Linux fan, although under-shedding. The two originally came with Manjaro Linux preinstalled, but it seems that the pro went to a pre-Bêta version of Sailfish OS. The two were intended for the first adopters, not for consumers in general.
Regarding the material, the pro was better than the regular, adding features and improving others while remaining humble to maintain low costs. For example, the pro added Gorilla Glass 4 protection and replaced the Allwinner A64 chipset with a better rockchip RK3399. The pro also had 4 GB of RAM LPDDR4, which beat the 2 or 3 GB of LPDDR3 memory from the original. The standard pinephone offers only a derisory of 16 GB of EMMC storage in the cheaper configuration and 32 GB still stimulating in the more expensive option, but the pro has actually provided 128 GB.
The pro and regular versions were to be repairable by the user, maintained with phillips screws so that you can open the phone easily. The replacement parts are sold directly to the owners by Pine64.
You can always buy the original Pine64 pinphone for $ 200. The ultra-budget model of $ 150 is currently out of stock. If you are really determined to get your hands on a Pinephone Pro, however, it seems that they have sometimes been sold on Ebay in the United States at prices ranging from $ 200 to $ 350. I have not found a current auction, but when they appear, they will probably be more expensive now than the Grim Reaper has come for professional edition. The Pine64 store always seems to sell all Pinephone Pro spare parts, so that you can theoretically continue to use it and repair it, if you put your hand on one.
The death of the Pinephone Pro adds to the complex history of Linux smartphones. Many of the best options are not sold in the United States, and when you get hold of one, the basic functionality can be uneven. It may be better to buy a regular Android phone and flash it with an alternative operating system such as post tickets. However, it takes a level of sense of technology, many do not have, and security and other forms of long -term support are at best questionable. Graphèneos, as far as I know, is the most reliable and secure option, but it is limited to Google Pixels devices currently supported.
Anyway, it is sad to see a Linux phone biting the dust when it was already difficult to find good options.
Source: Liliputing
