LaoBlog

PostmarketOS is an operating system for smart devices. It runs on the Pinephone too, and it runs well enough. It is based on Alpine LInux, a tiny distribution with focus on security, which requires few HW resources and therefore fits well the Pinephone. Since it's tiny, don't expect to find all the packages of most common Linux distributions, but the list is long enough; and don't forget that you can always compile the packages by yourself.

PostmarketOS is widely used by Pinephone's users: it's stable, and all the basic functions of a smartphone work, although something isn't perfect yet. It is actively developed.

I must add that the last version 22.12 works much better for me, respect to the previous.

Phone calls work, SMS work, wifi works, camera works (can be improved), GPS works but lacks accuracy.

About the last one, from my tests it's 50 - 100 meters wrong, and it loses the signal quite often. I also tried to use it as car navigator. For this I installed Osmin, an offline navigator which "emulates" the famous OsmAnd for Android, and is Imho the best option so far. In my test, following the GPS signal I was swimming in a river, while the truth was that I was driving my car on a parallel road: anout 150 - 200 meters of difference. Surely the GPS needs improvements. Another issue I have had on older PostmarketOS (but not only there) is that GPS apparently didn't work with KDE's Plasma Mobile. I didn't test it with PostmarketOS 22.12+Plasma.

About the mobile network (calls, SMS...), I didn't test MMS. My mobile phone carrier relies on a third part network. Until PostmarketOS 22.06, to get make a call I had to manually set to use the 2G network, despite other more performant available. Weird, I could get calls while on 4G, but I couldn't make calls, nor send SMS. Now, with version 22.12 that problem finally has gone away.

I don't own a data plan, but once abroad I bought a SIM card with a data plan. I still had an older version of the OS, but I couldn't get data automatically work. I had to manually set the APN (to "default"). Then it worked.

The camera resolution of the Pinephone, as you probably know, is quite poor, therefore don't expect the sw to make a miracle. Generally speaking for our device, you can take pics in raw format (which takes some time and sometimes freezes the phone), but the result is not always very exciting. The default app for taking pics, Megapixel, has gone through several improvements in the last year, further development is expected.

A big plus for PostmarketOS is the possibility to encrypt the whole phone to keep your own private business away from nosefickers.

The battery consumption looks to me a bit high. Sometimes I turn the device off before going to bed, with a charge of 35%, for example. On the next morning I turn it on, and the battery is completely discharged. With other distros this doesn't happen. Maybe there is something with the suspension of a component?  Even when leaving it turned on without doing anything (screen off), it doesn't last for a long time, but this is a known issue with the Pinephone, Usually I charge it in the night and it lasts until the late afternoon at least, but I don't make calls like crazy during the day, maybe only one, just to give you a generic idea.

When I still had an older version of the OS (probably it was 21.xx), the upgrade went  ... With 22.12 I will need to wait for the next release to see whether it works. You will be notified by the system when an ugrade is available.

I use the phone shell, called Phosh, is based on Gnome; quite minimal but also intuitive end responsive. It is developed by Purism for the Librem-5 (their Linux phone) . The dafault apps, developed for Phosh, work, but when you install something different, like Firefox browser or a KDE app, you will find out that often the windows don't scale well, they are too big. There are apps for tweaking this and usually you can fix teh problems. I did that for example with Firefox, Telegram, Kalendar (KDE) and they are usable now. More difficult it was with Geary (email) and Kwallet; for the last one, the problem persists, the OK and Cancel buttons are half hidden, but changing the screen orientation usaully solves the problem.

Something i really dislike about Phosh, is that you can't set your own ringtone / notification sounds (not in an easy way at least). I know, this can't be a high priority for the developers, as well as the possibility of setting custom themes, colors etc, which is quite limited (light / dark). 

I am not satisfied by the default apps, therefore, as previously written, I installed Geary, Kalendar, Tootle, VLC (UPNP support still doesn't work, but that's an Alpine issue) and others. Updating, installing, removing them from both terminal and SW discovering app work. Only occasionally from the SW app I couldn't find the package I was looking for; for example if you look for a library, and not a "proper" app. This can be easily solved by using the terminal.

As you probably already guessed Phosh isn't the only available phone shell on PostmarketOS. There are Plasma for Mobile (also for desktop), SXMO based on WM, and others more or less bleeding edge. Personally I tried KDE's Plasma too. Like the desktop version, it's highly customizable (themes, colors, ringtone, notifications...) but it is less stable, from my experience coming from version 21.xx. It can be that now it became more stable but still, the scaling of the Settings app of Plasma gives problems. It randomly freezes (especially when looking for themes etc, or updates; the forms where to input files' paths span outside the screen and it becomes difficult to write there.

The language support in PostmarketOS still need improvements. From Phosh (Plasma is better in this case) to the apps which lacks localization, to end with fonts for arab, asian languages wich aren't installed by default, and keyboards support. This last is really a weak point of PostmarketOS. Id you are a non English user and neeed to type for example in Chinese, you are in troubles. Here you can find some hint about what fonts to install on Alpine Linux to support the wanted language. I installed all the Asian fonts from that page.

Quick note: for Chinese lang. begin by installing the package miilit-keyboard (from the repo). I still have to figure out how to make it working with Chinese, but I've been told it's the only choice for the moment. Plus, if needed, libpinyin, libchewing... changing keyboard map through ibus or similar daemons seems to be unsupported on Wayland at the moment, and this is a big problem for those who badly need it. Obviously this is not a PostmarketOS issue. Running ibus demon works, but setting it up often causes the freeze, unable to select the input method.

Well, sorry for the digression. Just some more note about the other GUI. I din't try SXMO at all. About Plasma Mobile, I used it for a while on PostmarketOS, Mobian and Manjaro. The worst experience among those was with Manjaro: the update didn't work and I found myself locked out from the system withaou a virtual keyboar (nor ssh). On PostmarketOS it was a bit better, but the common problems of Plasma, described above, pushed me back to Phosh. With Mobian the situation was a bit more stable. However there's still a lot to do Common troubles I experimented with Plasma were occasional frozen phone when I get a phone call or do something heavy, by rotating the screen.In the meanwhile the phone keeps ringing... but you can't answer... . About GPS I already wrote smt before.

The settings menu looks good, many choices  to create your custom phone desktop, etc. you can also set ringtones and notifications (beware that if I remember well, mp3 aren't suitable for that). The language support is the same of the Desktop version, the only problem is, as usual, the keyboard. As noted before, Plasma is heavier respect to Phosh, and therefore generaly less responsive, enough usable though. If you only could get rid of those stuff you don't need on a smartphone...

In conclusion, at the moment PostmarketOS(+Phosh) is, in my humble opinion, one of the most stable os for the Pinephone. I use the Pinephone as my daily phone with that setup. There are limits, even heavy for me (localization, GPS....) , but I trust soon or late they will be solved, at least on the SW part.

Ah, I forgot... to dim the screen, you need to tap the power button twice.

And something which really bothers me, is that stampede-like noise when the phone finishes to charge.

Last, another not so funny feature (not bug ), is that it drains the battery when it's off... WHY????