A few months ago, I bought a pinephone with the "convergence package", knowing full well that the operating systems - all of them, including the pre-installed Manjaro - are beta level (at best).
The hardware itself seems to be just fine but there's been little progress in the software moving toward full usability. Of course it doesn't help any that I've been using TC for so long that I barely know how to navigate the desktops on some of the heavier distros.
The operating systems I've tried all seem to boot ok, but various bits of functionality and usability just aren't there - At the application level, none of the operating systems has a usable camera app nor a usable POP3 client. At a lower level, other bits of functionality/usability are lacking also. Something as seemingly simple as the date/time setting widget not working, for instance. So I haven't even activated my simm card in order to try out actually making calls and such - there's no point until I can use it more fully. So it's a $200 dollar toy at this point.
Assuming the operating systems for the "PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition" are in a similar state (which I think is a good assumption), I wouldn't recommend paying twice as much for the newer model because the hardware does not seem to be the limiting factor.
I downloaded a handful of updated OS images just yesterday - postmarketos, opensuse, manjaro, mobian and maemo-leste - but I haven't tried them out yet. I'm not optimistic as it's only been a couple of weeks since the last time I tried them, but I'll post here if I see some success.
In the mean time, TC on the pinephone would be fantastic even if it -didn't- have all of the telephony stuff.
Welcome
FAQ
Downloads
Wiki
