I meant to write this up as a "state of my experience as a PinePhone daily driver". But while just starting to compose the post, I stopped using it. Allow me to explain.

Three Years of PinePhone. Well. Nearly.

I ordered my PinePhone 1.2b in March of 2021. At the time, I was still daily driving my (second) trusty Nexus 5, kept modern and usable with LineageOS. The experimental phone arrived in May, and for some months I tinkered with it at home as a project device. It still had some major usability issues at this stage—the modem connection was unstable, MMS was hacky at best across the leading distros, the camera barely worked.

Being a longtime Debian user, I quickly adopted Mobian as my OS of choice, with the Phosh UI—at the time, Plasma Mobile lagged behind significantly in performance, and Phosh felt comfortable and intuitive.

I carried two phones for a while—my cellular-connected N5, and the PinePhone tethered to it. I tried to favor using the PinePhone as much as possible, to see if I still relied on Android for anything. I found two applications I could not find suitable replacement for: MPDroid, and Kore. I had tried out Anbox, a since-discontinued compatibility layer to let me run Android apps, but it was clunky and had issues talking to the hardware (for audio, etc) anyway.

After a few months of dual-wielding, MMS support reached the point of barely usable—it was hacky and broke about as often as it worked (I had scripts to shortcut the AT commands to the modem to unclog it). That was enough to get me to take the plunge. I moved my SIM card over (leaving my "backup" Android device on-hand, just in case). Not long after, "The Modem Distro", a "(nearly) free" operating system for the EG-25 modem itself, showed more than enough improvement over the stock stack to fix the modem connection reliability issues—I was no longer rebooting every few hours (though still once or twice a day, for various other reasons).

I didn't miss Android. The competent GNU/Linux user I was and am, I felt right at home with familiar repositories and package manager, a "(close to) mainline" kernel, and speedy improvement with excellent developer communication (if you know the right channels). There were rocky moments—several times I broke my userspace or boot process, and had to boot to a recovery device to restore from a backup, or mkinitramfs. The migration to Pipewire also stands out as a period of considerable friction. But the flexibility to even do these things, was unmatched by any mobile device I've ever known. I could tune and hack and implement clever conveniences which I could never dream of on Android.

Let's be clear, though. With a 10+ year SoC and modest RAM (I even got the better, 3 GB variant), performance was abysmal. Applications could take 10 seconds to launch. Many modern websites (in a custom, mobile-friendly Firefox build), were borderline unusable. Battery life was awful; I got a power bank and a spare battery for hotswapping, and still couldn't get through a day (though swapping the battery took seconds!). Call audio was terrible—crackling and echoing. Pictures all had this awkward blue-green hue to them.

In some respects, the usability issue was its own boon. Not having traditional "mobile apps" (sure—there were small-screen, touch-tailored applications), and furthermore a browser barely worth using, pushed me out of some habits I really didn't need to hold onto. Social media, chat platforms, time-wasting internet dives—they either weren't worth it, or weren't possible to begin with. It was easier to shrug off prompts to use some Android/iOS app with "I don't have a compatible device" than it was to try to explain a de-Googled Android ecosystem. Some simple curiosities were left acceptably unsated—a quick search to look up some trivia? Suddenly I'm okay just not knowing. When at home, I'd rarely even the phone on my person. Reminiscent of a simpler time! It was refreshing.

In late 2022, a bad power adapter fried my wifi/bluetooth chip. I plugged it in one night, noted the battery charge indicator flickering, shrugged, went to sleep, and woke up to the battery dead and the device not detecting the wireless hardware anymore. Weird, but so be it. By then, the flagship PinePhone Pro had landed. A mere $400 (double the base model) for a non-ancient processor, a RAM upgrade, and better cameras. Despite the knowledge that the rear camera didn't yet have drivers, I sprung for the upgrade. I opted for the same stack as the prior device, though gave it a fresh install for a clean slate, rather than try to mess with backups and work around boot differences and hardware-specific driver quirks. The performance difference was incredible! Web browser usage didn't suck! The UI didn't stutter from basic navigation!

As much as I tried to get by using a terrible front camera (the same hardware as the rear one of the older model), I took too many pictures on the day-to-day to not continue to keep a backup device on hand—I still carried two phones, and described them with "this is my phone-phone; this is my camera and Kodi remote". The model of backup shifted over time, retiring the Nexus 5 to a fixed-mount position at home in favor of a Pixel 1, to quickly upgrade to a Pixel 4a. The PinePhone Pro saw some replacement itself, though more in-place—the (pleasantly easy to replace) screen cracked once, and another fall broke the mainboard, prompting a full-device replacement.

Then, early in a long weekend on a road trip nine hours out East for a convention and some visits, I dropped my phone yet again, shattering the screen (yet not the screen protector, which I never use a device without...). It still turned on, but crumbling bits of glass deterred me from returning it to my purse. I fell back to my backup Pixel, and used it through the convention.

And it was... nice. Battery management didn't require constant attention. My camera was on the same device already in my hand. Performance from many years of Android optimization showed in my crisp build of non-Googled LineageOS. I didn't have to tether another device when the schedule website was unusable on my main device.

After a wonderful weekend I returned home, and had some soul-searching to do. I was amidst a technological crisis, deciding whether I wanted to repair my beloved reparable PinePhone (an $80 part and 15-minute swap) and restore usage of it, or just accept Android again. The biggest loss, would be the freedom and hackability with the modem. Having a FLOSS (well, as much as legally and practically possible) stack on the modem is incredible, and adds some cool functionality, and restores now-rare call-recording. I've grown accustomed to the unified userspace experience across my devices as well—"Debian everywhere" is incredibly comfortable, and being able to sync between machines and use the same software to for various workflows is so convenient. That said, some use cases never quite found a home on a mainline Linux stack: I never quite found a good MPD client for the form-factor, and Nextcloud sync was spotty or nonfunctional (specifically for pictures and notes; calendar and contact worked well through GNOME account management). Furthermore, with my increasing number of implants and integration of NFC into my workflows, the lack of NFC on the PinePhone was becoming a problem. Even if/when I could get the camera situation sorted out, I couldn't fully consolidate to one device until the rest of these backs ever came to be.

The nonserviceability of modern Android devices leaves a horrible taste in my mouth—my Pixel 1 was retired as backup due to failing battery; guides for self-service said "expect to lose the screen in the process", and picking up a newer used device (as I prefer to do) was a much more practical option. But was only a matter of time until the 4a followed. I'd long followed Nexus/Pixel devices for their proximity to upstream and powerful community support for aftermarket operating systems; many other vendors (looking at you, Samsung) were not even on my radar, with some blatant disqualifying factor in hackability. Why can't there be a repair-capable, eco-minded, community friendly device? Maybe even with vendor-supplied replacement parts, and maybe some ethical and sustainability commitments as a core value.

A bit on the nose? Yeah, I got a Fairphone.

FP4—a generation back; found a nice lightly-used one for a deal. Still a touch larger than I prefer my phones, yet the upgrades over the smaller FP3(+) were noteworthy and struck me as worthwhile—plus, while not preferred, I had already sort of adjusted to this size, with the PinePhone and recent Pixels measuring up about the same.

Now, this was four months ago (when I started this post, mind you). I've had some time to use this thing.

Wow I love having a phone with a removable back again. And removable battery. And easily-serviceable, replaceable parts. The NFC performance is even better than the 4a, which has been great for reading and testing my in vivo electronics. The 48 MP (front and rear!) cameras are also a notable upgrade over my prior devices. It has great support for LineageOS, which is generally the only Android distribution I bother with nowadays. The unlocking the bootloader introduces an annoying boot delay, but that happens infrequently enough that it's not such a huge deal (plus one can double-tap the power button to bypass it). It's a bit thick—much thicker than a pixel, and I think even thicker (and heavier) than the PinePhone (Pro), but an acceptable trade-off for the openness of the inside it enables compared to the slicker-bodied flagships.

I'm much enjoying using the Fairphone. I have still yet to replace the PinePhone screen. I don't mean for this to be permanent—I'm looking into some PinePhone NFC hacking which would make it a competitive solution for my present workflows and use cases. And indeed there are still things I miss about the PinePhone regularly: the openness of the modem, the once-hacky but now-flexible MMS and VVM management, and various familiar Debian packages I like to have around. I'll follow up with the NFC project if it ever gets anywhere (and maybe even if it doesn't), and re-evaluate my needs and the options at that time. But for the moment, I'm comfortable daily driving an Android device I can feel good about.