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.

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 the following (pr: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/131695/ ):

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 Pinephone. Does not always start correctly, retrying might help.

Front camera works out-of-the-box.
Back camera requires:
- https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/pull/392
- https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/issues/393 tracks autofocus support. The camera is usable without this.

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;
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.

Torch

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

Bluetooth

Needs https://github.com/NixOS/mobile-nixos/pull/396

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