PinePhone

PinePhone is supported by Mobile NixOS: https://mobile.nixos.org/devices/pine64-pinephone.html

This guide is discusses how to use Phosh, the GNOME-derived UI used by Librem and Mobian.

Requirements

This document assumes you have set up NixOS on your PinePhone, as described in https://mobile.nixos.org/getting-started.html

Beware known issues:

• boot.growPartition has no effect
• how to cross-compile

Status

Phosh

Working with:

xserver.desktopManager.phosh = {
  enable = true;
  user = "alice";
  group = "users";
  # for better compatibility with x11 applications
  phocConfig.xwayland = "immediate";
};

Battery

Wake-on-modem works. Wake-on-WiFi is not supported. Something like https://gist.github.com/Peetz0r/bf8fd93a60962b4afcf2daeb4305da40 is needed.

Browsing

• GNOME Web is installed by default.
• `pkgs.firefox-wayland` works but doesn't scale down the UI well. https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/mobile-config-firefox is needed for that.

Sound

Working. Settings -> Sound ->Output -> Configuration -> HiFi

Calling

Working with:

programs.calls.enable = true;
# Optional but recommended. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/162894
systemd.services.ModemManager.serviceConfig.ExecStart = [
  "" # clear ExecStart from upstream unit file.
  "${pkgs.modemmanager}/sbin/ModemManager --test-quick-suspend-resume"
];

Known issues:

• incoming calls don't trigger music to be paused. Likely need something like https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/librem5-base/-/merge_requests/170/diffs

SMS

Working with:

environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.chatty ];

MMS

Unsupported. See https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/issues/30

Camera

pkgs.megapixels is the only known application to work with Pinephone. Does not always start correctly, retrying might help.

• Front camera works out-of-the-box.
• Back camera works, but autofocus does not ( https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/issues/393 )

Mobile internet

Working via gnome-control-center ("Mobile Broadband" section), or:

$ nmcli c add type gsm ifname cdc-wdm0 con-name $PROVIDER apn $APN

GPS

Working with GNOME applications with:

• allow Phosh to use geoclue
• and the following:

services.geoclue2.enable = true;
users.users.geoclue.extraGroups = [ "networkmanager" ];

Sensors

The acceleration, compass, and ambient light sensors provide working auto-rotation, compass, and auto-brightness, when you:

hardware.sensor.iio.enable = true;
hardware.firmware = [ config.mobile.device.firmware ];

Disk encryption

The boot process supports opening LUKS volumes. Creating an image to use LUKS is unsupported, but possible. The idea is to write an encrypted LUKS volume to the root partition, as described in https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/tree/master/examples/testing/qemu-cryptsetup.

Hardware acceleration for video

See https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/issues/398.

Torch

Working, per https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/issues/379

Bluetooth

Working with:

mobile.boot.stage-1.firmware = [
  config.mobile.device.firmware
];

Modem firmware

Per https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineModems#Upgrade/switch_firmware_via_fwupd , fwupd can be used to flash the FOSS Modem firmware. To enable fwupd:

services.fwupd.enable = true;

Alarm clocks

Not working:

• GNOME Clocks will not wake up the phone: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-clocks/-/issues/100
• https://github.com/Dejvino/birdie looks good, but is not packaged.

Recommended applications

See https://linmobapps.frama.io/ for a list of applications that behave well on small screens, and in particular https://apps.gnome.org/.

See also

• xnux.eu ("megi") is authoritative on hardware capabilities
• PinePhone multi-distro demo image is an easy way to see which functionality works in other distros.
• Arch Linux's Pinephone config
• Mobian's Pinephone docs
• PostmarketOS's Pinephone docs
• PostmarketOS's Pinephone config