Six years ago the entire Linux enthusiast space was super excited for the PinePhone, then everything fell apart. What went wrong? Was PINE64’s favoritism towards Manjaro the sole issue or were there other problems?
Six years ago the entire Linux enthusiast space was super excited for the PinePhone, then everything fell apart. What went wrong? Was PINE64’s favoritism towards Manjaro the sole issue or were there other problems?
Did it fail? I hate headlines like this. Just because it isn’t popular now, doesn’t mean it didn’t make progress in its space.
It absolutely failed. Pinebook succeeded, they wanted to build a cheap Chromebook alternative for Linux enthusiasts and they did it. Pinebook Pro was a functional product and it was well received.
Pinephone failed, it made some progress but it never reached a point where a Linux user with basic needs could daily drive it. It seems like Linux phone space moved on to Halium at this point.
Yes… it did. I have both (details in this post) and I’d love to use either daily yet I don’t do it. I also don’t know anybody who does.
Was it useful? Absolutely but IMHO the fact that the 2nd version is not fully usable (camera, power usage, etc) without active progress despite being a 4 years old specifically targeting tinkers is not a success. I’m genuinely wondering who would want a PinePhone 2. I’d love to but based on what happened with the Pro, I’m not sure I would despite using my other Pine64 on a daily basis.