Pine64-Arch

Yeah, I've got the Danctnix version of Arch running on a PinePhone original with the keyboard case. I've found the original PP is too slow for any serious use and haven't even attempted to use it as a phone. I got it with the idea of it being like some kind of cyberdeck when used with the keyboard, but the screen is too small for it to be of much use like that and it's also quite chunky with the keyboard case fitted. The keyboard also isn't very good, even after I took a dremel tool to the top line of keycaps to make them work properly. I might well try the new UBPorts version on it as I've got an older UBPorts running on a JingPad. Basically, the original PP is very much a toy device unless you've got some very specific need for one. https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases

I was using the danctnix arch build running Phosh - https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases At the time (about 10 months ago) it was the most solid I could find. I'm a little out of date at this point, but I'll probably check back in on it some time in the next few months. And I agree - even at the time it was a usable phone. A tad slow for my tastes, but hard to argue with the performance given the low cost of the hardware.

I use Arch on my Pinephone (https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch) and I have used it for the last year. Call audio quality (outgoing) is very poor for me (I think I need to configure ALSA or something). SMS and MMS now work well. Web browsing works. Everything is quite slow (2-10 second delay to open calls/messages/web browser). Previously I used SXMO and Mobian. SXMO is fun to script. I got tired of having to script everything after a while. Mobian works out of the box. But they don't have the newest software, so I switched to Arch.

Oh, phosh is developed by Purism... Shows what I know. It runs very poorly on the PinePhone and uses way too many animations and gestures for my taste. This is part of the reason I'm still not able to use the phone reliably. If there was a keyboard as good as Android or iOS options in terms of speed and accuracy, then I would expect to see good text based interfaces popping up. But the keyboards I've seen have still been pretty clunky. The SXMO image for Pine64-Arch [1] seemed pretty nice, but clearly still in development of the basic features. [1]: https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases/d...

I mean its two different things: Nokia a mega corp (at the time) and Pine64 (a few hardware enthusiasts + small overworked dev community). I get your frustrations and as a PinePhone owner myself I would not consider it anywhere near usable as a real Smartphone replacement. However after installing Arch it is pretty snappy and has certainly sparked some new hope in me. I really recommend you to check it out. For Signal there is (or will be) Axolotl [-1] which looks promising and when it comes to developer support both KDE and GNOME devs show some support for it. E.g. GNOME recently announced libadwaita [0]. Give it some time and check out the Arch release for PinePhone: [1]. [-1]: https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl [0]: https://aplazas.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/blog/blog/2021/03/31/... [1]: https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch

I tried Mobian but eventually switched to https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch - the phone is much more usable for me including Firefox. I am waiting to receive my updated board and look forward to further improvements.

Yes, Anbox is working pretty well on Arch Linux ARM [0][1], although I haven't tried Signal specifically. [0] https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases [1] https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/wiki/Anbox

I was miserable with my PinePhone until I found out about https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch - this is an Arch-based distro that works very well, ime. Previous attempts results in glacial response times, sub-day idle battery drain, broken software updates, and overheating.

Anbox already works quite well on Arch Linux ARM. https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/

The beauty of the PinePhone is that there's literally nothing tying it to UBPorts, I've flashed Mobian[1] on mine an am supper happy with it. The Arch builds are also coming together nicely. [2] 1 - https://mobian-project.org 2 - https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases