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

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.

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

Working with pkgs.megapixels. Back camera is crashy, but front camera should work. Does not always start correctly, retrying might help. Works in other distros.

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;

Disk encryption

See [1]

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

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

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