The Pine Phone Pro arrived earlier this week. After a few unfocused, false starts I finally got it booting into Gnome and currently installing Waydroid over ssh.

My wife uses a cheesey coupon clipping app (iOS/Android) for doing the groceries and such. I'll need to take a look at what traffic flows in-n-out of this app to see what is being farmed and segregate/container off if required.

We are heavy Signal users but I may use this as an excuse to set up a XMPP server. Twas on the 'roadmap'.

Initial impressions are good. Definitely not as shiny and smooth as an iOS or Android device but - it's a phone. We spent half our lives with dumb rotary dialing doohickeys - we'll survive. lol

Pretty impressed with Gnome on a touch device so far. This is my first real experience with it. No 'klunkiness' so far but just scratching the surface.

It will be interesting to see how a non-technical person takes to it. I'm going to monkey with it myself for the first week or so to find the hard edges to save her the frustration.

I want to experiment with Android Auto - see what (if anything) is possible.

I also obtained a Seeed Studio Sensecap T1000-E (meshtastic, lora, etc.) to connect to this device. We'll see how far I get with that.

I really need a staff... Ha!

I've been trying out running the PineNote at 100% scaling but with 2.25x font size with Noto Sans Bold. I think this might generally be a better experience but some icons in apps (Xournal++) and window control are kinda small. Not sure if I'll stick with it. But good thing is that the settings persist after a restart.

It came down to the wire but I did manage to finish a Week One PineNote video: https://makertube.net/w/cSDcWZVjFksZsxpPx5yo8j

@PINE64 has created an excellent device and the community around it is awesome, kind, and super helpful. There are rough edges for sure but it is totally usable out of the box and I'll go into application specific configuration in future posts/videos as long as people find this useful. Let me know what you'd like to see!

I reflashed the PineNote back to stock with the latest image from January. Even though I had updated via apt update to the latest kernel and software patches, the device feels more delightfully responsive after the re-flash. I would recommend it if/when you get one, AFTER you back it up.

I had to go look look in multiple places for backup and flashing instructions and some of the instructions are for version 1 so they didn't line up exactly. I plan to upstream this into the documentation if they'll have it, but it's published in a 'gist' on Codeberg now, so feel free to check it out. I would love any feedback you have.

https://codeberg.org/shom/gists/src/branch/main/pinenote-backup-flashing.md

Made an outline for the PineNote video. I'm going to put together a "good enough" video so it actually gets done and I can make more videos to cover different aspects later.

I'm surprised by the amount of interest but I'm so excited to see that. I want to do my part of the Community Edition contribution by sharing all the info I can. Software development isn't the only way to contribute to FOSS!

@piggz @PINE64 W00t #SailfishOS for #pine64 ! Piggz you are a genius!
(again!)
More #mobilelinux = more options = #bettertech for more people.

the #Pine64 #SOQuartz has a nice lil trick: a M.2 slot that i fit with a 6 port SATA controller thingy

basically, i get to add 6 harddrives to this, giving me the option to #RAID (basically, turn several disks into just one, with some built-in backups and protection)

i've ordered 6 2.5" harddrives from a laptop repair shop in Ireland on eBay that should arrive any day again, trying to reduce e-waste here :)

what am i gonna fit in there? well, some old #RaspberryPi's i had laying around.
NOTE: i am Not buying these new, but one thing i support even less than a "british SBC manufacturer obsessed with hiring police", it's e-waste, so these are going in

i also additionally have a #Pine64 #SOQuartz ComputeBlade which is a very neat form factor-y 1U computer that is very easy to fit in tiny spaces, ideal!

PineNote - Day One, my first 24 hours with the device and my thoughts so far (most of the posts above and a few others items).

Next week: note-taking and portable thin client workloads.

I have been really hoping the warm front light was decent. It is fantastic! That's about halfway up the brightness scale. The regular (white/blue) and warm front lights are separate sliders both in the quick access menu (white is totally off).

Garmin watch is still showing a bit more blue than white. I adjusted the color balance to correct for the camera and get it to a close as what I see in a pitch black room.

More updates later, send any questions you have. Quick (pine) note , the plastic back feels good but it's a fingerprint magnet but the folio cover is very nice.