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:

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

SMS

Working with:

Chatty
pkgs.purple-mm-sms

MMS

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

Camera

Working with pkgs.megapixels. Front camera causes it to crash? 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

Not all applications scale down well to mobiles. https://linmobapps.frama.io/ has a list of those that do, including:

pkgs.gnome.gnome-chess
pkgs.gnome.gnome-podcasts
pkgs.portfolio-filemanager