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PinePhone Pro [GNU/Linux smartphone] has been discontinued

(social.treehouse.systems)
172 points fsflover | 4 comments | 28 Aug 25 16:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.018s | source
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mystraline ◴[28 Aug 25 18:42 UTC] No.45055517[source]▶
Good riddance.

That pile of garbage had crazy critical hardware faults they never fixed.

1. If the battery is discharged, then in order to recharge it, you have to take out the microsd and sim cards, press an SMT button, and plug in with battery.

2. If you bought the keyboard/battery, and you plug in USB on the phone, you fry the keyboard/battery. Shit burns up, haha screw you.

And if you say anything, you the user are at fault. You didn't read, or follow their discord, or whatever, because it is 'Your Fault' ™.

Pine's primary game here has been to paracitize off of FLOSS folks, pump out incompetent and/or broken hardware, and summarily blame FLOSS for their not-working. At minimum, they should be funding the projects they want to build on/paracitize. But they do none of the sort.

We would be better if Pine died as a company. Then they wouldn't be sucking the oxygen out of the FLOSS arena, and might get more respectable orgs here.

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1. jolmg ◴[28 Aug 25 19:31 UTC] No.45056090[source]▶
> Good riddance.

Yes, we should be happy to have less options.../s

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2. exe34 ◴[28 Aug 25 19:58 UTC] No.45056375[source]▶
some options act like decoys - they take the pressure off and a proper alternative cannot arise.
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3. mystraline ◴[28 Aug 25 20:45 UTC] No.45056834[source]▶
Thank you. That was exactly my point - they camped in a niche they had no intent to do properly.

Worse yet, they screamed at users to lean on the community (read: unpaid FLOSS as support). They refused to provide even baseband images to do the things they were selling, like Pinephone Pro as as, you know, a phone.

At one point, I thought they were just an upstart trying to get off the ground. But in reality, its a complete grift that ends up taking community resources and nothing to show for it.

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4. exe34 ◴[29 Aug 25 05:46 UTC] No.45060654{3}[source]▶
I have their pinenote - as far as I can tell, the community has done a great job on the Linux image, but I ended up sticking with the android fw as I can't be bothered to reflash the Linux partition now in case I brick it.

I think it can be done this way, with the manufacturer taking care of hardware and the community taking care of software - but they should at least fund one or two people and some projects directly to make it work.

the pinenote is a great little ereader with the android fw.