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
• build.disk-image via binfmt taking 40mins doing a find/du on my /nix/store
• GTK application startup is slowed by lots of icon I/O

Status

Phosh

https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/pull/352 is a PR to add a phosh-demo to mobile-nixos. The author of this wiki page uses this PR.

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:

• Use the more generic device path for modem
• the following:

environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.calls ];
services.dbus.packages = [ pkgs.callaudiod ];

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
• when the screen is locked, incoming calls can only be answered after unlocking.

SMS

Working with:

• Chatty
• and the following:

environment.systemPackages = [
  (pkgs.chatty.override {
    plugins = [
      pkgs.purple-mm-sms
    ];
  })
];

MMS

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

Camera

pkgs.megapixels is the only known application to work with V4L2. Does not always start correctly, retrying might help.

• Front camera works out-of-the-box .
• Back camera works with this having been flashed to the boot partition: https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/pull/392

Mobile internet

Working (imperative), with:

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

Other distributions use Librem's fork of gnome-control-center which has a mobile internet panel. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/merge_requests/583 tracks the upstreaming of this functionality.

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;

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.

Torch

See https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/issues/379

Bluetooth

Not working in Phosh settings. Works on Pinephones according to https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html

I think we need to make the bluetooth kernel driver a module, so that the firmware has a chance to load.

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, including:

• pkgs.gnome.gnome-chess
• pkgs.gnome.gnome-podcasts
• pkgs.portfolio-filemanager
• pkgs.numberstation - TOTP

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