Pinephone Pro

• Performance: 3/5
• Affordability: A bit expensive for the performance but great for primary linux devices
• Compatibility: 4/5
• Battery Life: 2/5

Setup information

• OS: Danct Archlinux 2025/07/28 (2025/08/05)
• Kernel:
• DE: Phosh

Hardware Supported

Hardware	Supported
GPS
aGPS ¹
Cameras
Microphone
Bluetooth
Modem
Accel/Tilt
Orientation/Gyroscope
Light/Proximity

¹ Not hardware but important usability feature and is optional

Cell Service

Cell service was tested in the US utilizing US Mobile MVNO, referral link, as it allows for easy testing of the 3 major US network providers. The only downside is the TMobile service has deprioritized download speeds so your speeds can be on the slower side like mine based on location and network traffic. Download/Upload speed tests were done using ookla speedtest.net and netflix fast.com with the data waster option enabled. As service seems to vary from moment to moment, I ran multiple tests and grabbed the best results for each section. Light Speed (Tmobile) seems to work perfectly without any issues.

I also put in my JMP.Chat eSIM with their data plan and while the phosh settings says AT&T, speedtest says its T-Mobile and I dont have a reliable way to validate it since they route it so you come out of Poland for privacy reasons. The eSIM works on my PPP and but doesnt have a built in way to change profiles easily. It does not work with eSIM Manager, hopefully it will in the future as I see there are discussions and even commits related to enabling AT backend support.

US Mobile Light Speed (Tmobile)

Phone	Tech	Speedtest down	Fast down	Fast up	VoLTE / VoNR
PPP	4G
Pixel 6	5G
Pixel 6	4G

JMP.Chat Data Plan

Performance

The PPP is not a fast device, while leagues faster than the original pinephone it does not hold a candle to other devices in its price point. The RK3399s with its 4GB of memory can be pretty limiting but is decent enough for non demanding end users that have some patience. Where it falls flat though is when it comes to doing development work that requires compliation or even with any application or framework that is compute heavy that isn't accelerated somewhere in hardware. The RK3399s even though is binned is still not really designed for such a small form factor so it gets very hot and as a result will start to throttle in any sustained workload, the modem itself also generates significate heat when in use which only exasterbates the problem when trying to use the device out in the real world. Luckily GTK4 and QT6 "should" all be accelerated automatically so most applications run just fine without any hassle. Browsing the web is not fast but is decent enough to not be painful to use and can even handle video playback in software.

Compatibility

The PPP is almost compatible with everything, its a mainline device running a downstream kernel that has been built into pretty much every mobile linux OS and works with every mobile linux DE. The SOC is way newer than the one in the pinephone so it has support for opengl ES 3.1 so it doesnt run into the same issues that the pinephone is running into now adays with GTK dropping GLES 2.0 support. It is sadly lacking support for vulkan so applications that are vulkan only or even applications that implement GLES as an after thought might run into issues. One example of this is the rust WGPU library which is the main library used most rust applications for getting hardware acceleration. WGPU gles implementation seems to be spotty on mobile linux so it doesn't actually work on the PPP so all rust GUI applications need to be forced to run in software. Some of the other qualcom mainline devices work around this by just running WGPU in vulkan but that isn't an option on the PPP. The good thing though is those are far and few in between and pine has a large community around it so when new mobile linux applications are developed they are usually tested on the PP or the PPP.

Other OS have varying levels of community support such as Sailfish, Ubuntu Touch, postmarketos and mobian. While sailfish and ubuntu touch are prodominetely OS used in halium devices they run on the PPP perfectly fine utilizing the mainline drivers for everything. UT on the PPP though does lack some features that make it hard to daily, OTA/Camera/Spotty Calls, compared to other halium UT devices. All the OS that the PPP runs though are all community supported with no involvment usually from the parent companies, with the exception of mobian with the mobian team officially supporting the PPP.

Android

Android support is handled by the (upstream waydroid)[https://github.com/waydroid/waydroid]. Setting it up is pretty easy by installing waydroid from the danctnix repo or from aur. Another helpful tool is (waydroid-helper)[https://github.com/ayasa520/waydroid-helper] which is also in the aur for easy install. Waydroid does not integrate with the system in anyway so theres no settings for it in the gnome settings app but waydroid helper does atleast make it easy to manager certain features such as mapping in folders and even stopping and starting the container from a GUI. Sensor passthrough is pretty limited which some work arounds existing such as for GPS with the following script (geobridge)[https://gitlab.com/papiris/geobridge]. Waydroid performance is actually better than expected though there is a slight delay when tapping. Leaving it running will eat up limited resources so its best to keep it off, luckily startup time is under a minute so you can start it up just when needed and then shut it down.

Sensors passed to Android

Tested using Sensors Toolbox app

Sensor	Passed through
GPS
Cameras
Microphone
Bluetooth
Modem
Accelerometer
Geomagnetic
Orientation
Gyroscope
Light
Pressure
Proximity
Gravity
Linear Acceleration
Rotation Vector

Docking

The PPP similar to the original PP has excellent docking support. It supports video out natively through DP-Alt mode so you can use any dock that utilizes that standard or even plug directly into something like a NexDock for a laptop like experience. This level of docking support is what all other mobile linux devices should strive for and makes it great for using it as a single device to cover all your needs. It makes it super handy for traveling as it allows you to keep all your files in a single location and research information in a bigger screen and then take it to go with you when you are heading out.

What is missing though is a way to handle wireless docking such as the halium devices running UT that can wirelessly cast to a remote display via miracast. If the PPP does support miracast in hardware then no one has gotten around to getting the software side of it implemented and UT on the PPP does not have this feature implemented. There is limited development around miracast in general though so not sure if this is something someone will ever develop/research for the PPP.

Web Browsing

Web browsing works decently. Firefox runs well and comes with postmarketos mobile-config-firefox for a better experience on the mobile screen. Benchmarking results with speedometer 3.1 with scale set to 100% are below, based on results it seems like all choices are valid and in the same ballpark with firefox actually being the slowest. Waydroid firefox actually has really good performance and scales really well since its an android app, just know video playback in it is awful and there is a slight dely when tapping on things including the keyboard.

Media Playback

Below is a table of different video codecs and their playback performance. The hardware has support for decoding h264/h265/vp9 and there is work being done on adding in the software support though no timeline on when it will be widely avaliable in everything. Results seem to be pretty mixed though luckily almost everything is able to play h264 which is still pretty much everywhere. It does struggle to play some of the newer codecs that are starting to take over such as AV1 being limited to just 720p. Waydroid firefox struggles with everything so if you need a browser for video playback just stick with native firefox.

Player Information

H.264/AVC

Player	1080p@30	720p@30
MPV
Clapper
Livi
Celluloid
Firefox
Waydroid Firefox

H.265/HEVC

Player	1080p@30	720p@30
MPV
Clapper
Livi
Celluloid
Firefox
Waydroid Firefox

AV1

Player	1080p@30	720p@30
MPV
Clapper
Livi
Celluloid
Firefox
Waydroid Firefox

VP9

Player	1080p@30	720p@30
MPV
Clapper
Livi
Celluloid
Firefox
Waydroid Firefox

Camera

Library	Supported
Libcamera

Abstraction Layer	Supported
LibMegapixels
Gstreamer
Pipewire

Example

Flashlights were pointed at the ceiling and everything left on auto, Pixel 6 and Iphone 12 both have a night mode where it took 3s for the low light photos

Versions

Normal Temp Medium Light

Normal Temp Low Light

Low Temp Medium Light

Low Temp Low Light

Battery Life

The phone has

Testing was done using the following settings:

• Screen brightness set to 50%
• Screen timeout disabled
• Measured from 100% battery to device shutdown
• Without android unless specified
• With sim unless specified
• With Wifi enabled
• Video playback is 720p 30 fps
• Charge time tested on pinepower v1 desktop
• Prometheus polling every 15 seconds

Screen Time

Video Playback

Standby

• prometheus polling every 30 mins

Charging

Charging Curve

• Prometheus polling every 5 seconds
• Measured from Sonoff S31 running esphome

Support

Conclusion

My Involvement / Disclosures