Removable battery and open source os is really tempting me to move from android. I swear, the fact that every single android manufacturer no longer makes a phone without removable batteries is fishy to me.
@default well, samsung galaxy s5 had removable battery and ip67. Its not impossible, but just doesnt make sense to make it removable since its only desired by few percent of their userbase
@default I had submerged my Pinephone in the river, looks like the modem is the only part, really allergic to water. I smell a modem manufacturer conspiracy XD.
The bezel is still small in term of screen to body ratio compared to other types of device with displays like monitors, laptops etc... It's just that smartphones bezel and design technoligys is hyperaccerate.
agreed, i need bezels because my hands are on the smaller side, so i need to pinch-grip my phone when im using it horizontally, and i cant do that with a bezel-less design without contacting the touch screen
@@WyldMoonChild Bluetooth or a dongle. Do you really need to charge your phone while using wired headphones? Plus they make USB C to USB C and 3.5 splitter, lightning too I believe.
I think treating the pinephone as a Linux "flagship" isn't really the right mindset. It's not designed or intended to be the best phone, it's made to be a reasonable phone with reasonable specs at a reasonable price. More appropriate comparisons would be to entry level phone of a similar price.
Well, flagship by pinephone standards. I think this model is exwctly what I was looking for. It would still be a downgrade, but still a reasonable spec list to make the swap not painful.
Calling it a flagship and comparing it to android phones, definitely not. But you can definitely consider it a flagship among the base PinePhone and Librem 5.
I honestly dislike modern smartphones’ obsession with removing bezels. I like having somewhere to grab the phone without touching the screen. Also, my biggest concern with the PinePhone is and always has been the lack of decent software support. I haven’t kept up on the scene in quite a while, but last I checked, mobile Linux outside of Android and Sailfish is kind of abysmal when it comes to basic phone features like calling and SMS. As much as I’d like to not need anything besides LTE/5G, there are way too many normies still holding onto the old ways.
You can put de-googled android if you really need it it has an unlocked bootloader which means it acts like a computer , no need to work into getting root access like other phones that means you can dual-boot linux with android if you want
yeah I would kill for a phone i could use for VR tracking and cloud VR gaming. if they can fit dual core laptop performance into a phone size near the future, thats even better too
@@paulosullivan3472 And cost as much as a second hand car 😭 If the Microsoft Surface Duo was a keyboard instead of the second screen, I'd have bought one... And I hate MS. Edit: yes, I know the MS one is super expensive too. But they're an established, well known company with international presence.
its such a stupid fad with the bezels. it makes the phone uncomfortble and leaves no space for proper speakers and physical buttons / sensors or space for holding the thing. and people like to call this downgrade "modern" . worst part is that you cant make a new phone with the old syle cause people have a hatred for stuff that is old or looks old even if its better
I think that one of the reasons why Pine64 went with a simple, rectangular screen is that nothes, terdrops, rounded corners, etc. are going to be a huge pain for mobile developers and users who just want to run a linux app that most likely wasn't designed with a non-rectangular display in mind.
@Steve Dave They look a lot better than fatass bezels. They'll become the past once hiding the camera/speakers behind the screen becomes common, and the phone will essentially be a perfectly smooth screen with nothing in the way.
I actually like the fat bezels on the PinePhone. It give me a place to grip the phone without accidentally pushing buttons on the screen. I freaking hate those wrap-around screen things Samsung sells.
@@lawsen3719 Not all software and screens are created equal. It's up to the devs of their respective companies to code a very capable palm rejection algorithm.
I've got a samsung s7 edge and I've had it for like 5 years. I feel very unsecure with it due to privacy concerns, I tried to root it but couldn't figure it out. I'm really hoping to see more privacy oriented smartphones in the future. I LOVE how that Pinephone has a killswitch for cameras and mics. I hate how my phone doesn't have such feature.
Well, compared with a laptop which you can get for the same price, and which is much stronger, you'll have to be REALLY into the phone part to be interested in the device. But that part isn't fully working yet. I felt more comfortable with the price to power ratio of the original, which ran without much competition.
I run a Fairphone with /e/OS on it, cost $450 and /e/ has been recently independently verified to remove OS-level tracking entirely. Would love to hear your take on it, since it's been kicking around a while.
7:06 honestly i think the resolution is fine. I have phone with higher res but i lowered it in settings to get better battery life. I can't tell the difference in image quality. I wish pinephone had oled but its not too big deal for me.
that's not how it works, you still have the same amount of pixels on, and with how stupid capable mobile processors are nowadays dropping the resolution won't make the processor run much slower
Some years ago i saw someone on behalf of Pine64 commenting how they were planning to implement a sabre DAC/AMD in the Pinephone just like the LG Vxx series of phones. Sad to see that didn't happen (yet). I'm personally as much of a linux phone enthusiast as I am an audiophile. So for me de-googled LG V50 with LineageOS will still be the way to go, however this seems like a very nice phone.
Youre running an LG v50 with lineage os? It doesn't interfere with the quad dac at all? It detects it? Because i had heard you have to fiddle around to make the phone detect it supposedly
I'm all good with the bezel. Wall to Wall screens are a pain in the ass for me to hold how I naturally hold a phone my fingers touch the interface and start doing things. It's not so much an issue once there is a case on it but with a removable battery being an option, I doubt I'd be using a case. As for resolution, I'm going to agree with you on that, although I'd prefer a 1440.
I like the top/bottom bezel as well as I have clumsy bear paws for hands. It is easier for me to hold the phone with a thumb on the bezel then contorting my fingers in the Jobs approved proper way of holding a phone.
A pressure sensitive stylus and this works for me perfectly. All I really need in a phone. Linux compatibility with some repos could get some programs a mobile mode.
excellent. I hope they keep making better hardware, and it'll definitely be what I'll be upgrading to from my very comfy LG-V20. Things I'd like the pinephone to have: NFC IR blaster a good DAC for the AUX port and I disagree with the no bezel thing you said. The bezel is fine. I guess though when you attach the keyboard, it'd be like a pillarboxed screen, but I think that's still fine. Good video, catman.
It's great to see the active development of Linux phones, but it's still really unfortunate how most $150 androids easily beat what is pretty much the best linux phone out there
The extra money is basically the development costs. Also, cheap Android devices are almost guaranteed to sell, where these are not. That means a no-name vendor can still ask a manufacturer to do a run of 10,000 phones, and not have much risk of them failing to sell. These on the other hand are lower batch volumes and higher sales risk.
Those $150 Androids are sold at a loss, which is then paid for by Google harvesting your data ... Which I guess is better than paying a hefty profit margin AND having your data harvested by Google still.
Personally i didn't need a phone because i don't have many friends and i can communicate with my friends on Instagram. I was fine with it. I didn't have a phone for the last three years. But now I have to get one because I'm going to college next year. It's too damn nice to see the phone that I've been wondering about for a while from my favorite youtuber.
@@egg5474 Like what the russians are doing with Kolibri OS. Didn't Russia come 2nd barely behind china in top programming countries along with Ukraine coming first in security?
@@yudhok Android is not Linux. Google forked the kernel, mutilated it to support only one distro (AOSP), and then mutilated that distro by moving just about everything to Google Play Services.
Yeah, I'm getting one. Sick of the short update span for Android phones, they're basically abandoned after a few (if you're lucky) years. And with all the bloat gone with proper Linux, I bet they can be pretty snappy.
Really, I decided to buy it, even though I don’t have any previous experience in Technology, but I care about privacy so I will learn everything about Linux in this phone. Camera and call are not important to me, and I will keep my old phone for call and SIM. Thank you for your video.
I'll be quite honest I miss bezels like this. I prefer to have a little space on the sides and the top/bottom. These phones with edge-to-edge screens drive me nuts and probably why I've not gone past the Pixel2.
The Oneplus 7t was one of the only phones with a practical camera layout, one for high megapixel normal shots, one for wide angle shots, and one with telephoto (optically zoomed).
I don't want to deal with random notches and unviewable pixels on a screen when I'm writing a fullscreen application. A rectangular screen is the best screen.
Don't the notches normally just slice the OS's status bar in half? You're not missing out on application information, the application is still presented in a perfect rectangle, it's just blended into the notch where the bezel would've been.
@@mgord9518 Then it's not a fullscreen application. And not every OS has a "status bar". Many programs don't even need an "operating system" to work. That's especially common with diagnostic tools like memory testers etc.
@@tikkasen_urakointi You're right, it's way more integrated than a square application presentation on a rounded phone, along with effectively using more surface real estate that would otherwise just be a black bar. The operating system would obviously have to be tweaked for it
Better specs than my laptop and that runs my Arch setup I put on all my devices perfectly fine, so I think I’ll be getting the Pinephone Pro. Plus I don’t really game on pc or mobile so it should be perfect. I can’t wait to finally ditch my spyPhone 11
@@ZachyHassell not sure about the pro performance but the og pp's 40nm a53 performs way worse than pentium m on my 2005 laptop. The 28nm on the pro might be much better (plus the two high performance core) but they'll need to throttle voltage for battery life and cooling. The chips can do most things for you, but don't attempt heavy (or preferably, any at all) compilations on the device.
@@McSinyx yeah that’s fair.. Maybe I’ll just get a decent android and put a distro on there, I haven’t really looked into what distros work on what phones yet, but I’ll have a look and see if there’s anything I like the sound of
@user I don’t like spyware. But also, downgrade? It depends how you look at it, because you get close to 0 control with an iPhone, and you can’t actually verify the control you do get over your own data, you’re just taking their word for it.
I'm nostalgic of the Windows phone UI. I know MS is not very nice with personal data, but the UI was well though. I hope Linux will make possible to get various UIs, like the PC desktop environments.
I have been eyeing the PinePhone for a few months now and I really think I'm just going to get it once the bugs are worked out. I don't use my phone for anything except calling, texting, and browsing the web tbh. My only concern is the compatibility with service providers.
4:07 I was under the impression that Snapdragon is Qualcomm’s brand of ARM chip and is still an ARM chip. Rockchip is another brand of ARM chip. I understand they’ll have different firmware and blobs and whatnot, but they are the same architecture.
Can you cover Fxtec? It comes with a built in keyboard, has pretty good specs and isn't too expensive. Its not as focused on FOSS and privacy, but since the booloader is unlocked, you can despook everything.
One thing that l'd I want in a device is a mobile that uses normal smartphone hardware (namely a proprietary baseband processor, etc.), and then just have it isolated from the main device. In other words you'd technically have two separate devices built into one package. One device takes Wi-Fi and cell signals and passes it through to the main device, while the main device is the thing that actually has the beefy CPU and RAM and storage and such. This way the proprietary baseband stuff is effectively stuck in a sandbox, while the wi-fi is also essentially routed through a proxy, such that any software that queries the wi-fi won't be able to find out location info about it since it is always going through the static middleman rather than seeing any nearby devices or APs. _Technically_ this isn't a sure-fire way of preventing any issues, since in theory the baseband could still be told to modify the packets that it passes on (in either direction), but I'd say it's not a big deal, since I doubt the power of any sort of baseband exploits/backdoors could extend that far when kept exclusively within the baseband processor itself, and even if that wasn't the case that sort of capability is more limited than it may seem (namely due to the existence of encrypted communication, so most of the stuff that it passes on of any importance would just be encrypted)
@Mental Outlaw Careful with that camera comparison. As you probably know this is all about software and that software makes something of it which wasn't there. It might have been there, it might not, the software kind of speculates the gap between what the sensors can detect and what really was there. In my opinion Apple and Android tend to oversaturate those pictures. That random picture which you took with Oneplus6 might look prettier but also it is quite unrealistic, it didn't look quite that if you would have been at that spot at that time and looked at that flower and plant. But yes, for now we have to choose between privacy+security or better hardware. That is fine at the point where the additional hardware is not required. Of course there also is the option to not use a smartphone at all. ;)
Not really, a main camera + depth sensor covers 90% of use cases for most users, 2MP macro or 5MP macro, x100 zoom, etc are kinda useless. Anywho, what really matters now is sensor size
I dont like that all the phones coming out have 4+ cameras driving the price up unnecesarily. I'd gladly get a phone less focused on camera quality at a lower price or with better specs for the price
I'm sure you could, although getting touch input working right might be a challenge, at least that was a challenge with the mobile distros on the first pinephone.
im exited cos now old pinephones will be affordable for me i was thinking of buying a fairphone 3 but i actually didnt realise the pinephone had a removable battery or those killswitches
Yeah, I guess instead of a case camera you could connect it to a kind of "dumb" cam corder that just has a lense and sensor and uses the pinephone for input, storage of video, and of course the screen to see what you're recording
Still way go a looooong way to go. The phone is better than PinePhone but still very very expensive for its hardware. I'm glad we are getting there tho!
Nice video. Noticed you said you have a OnePlus 6. You can actually run mainline Linux on that and have a pretty decent feature set. Theres also ubuntu touch ofc
I'd still go for self made de-Googled phones bought from second hand deals or with actual phones that I possess for getting in practice with it. I rather wait few years for pinephones to have better specs even if it's Linux based.
@Izaic’s Linux, Mental Outlaw has a fairly big following on social media, so I really think it would be in your best interest to send/sell him and other interested youtubers the phones as soon as possible. That way they get the most coverage.
Mental Outlaw being one of the most known and respected Linux content creators on TH-cam not sending him one of your phones is shooting your company in the feet. Also is just one phone right? Not thirty.
"really legit" sounds like a bit of a stretch when they still have a 720p screen on there, honestly. But I've been disappointed by the budget Android phone market's return to 720p screens as well.
I have a regular pinephone and pinephone pro isn't a good idea unless they fix some issues (with no workarounds) that the regular pinephone has: 1. Battery life The battery life is very bad and is the main reason i cant daily drive it. No matter how optimized and minimal software i use, the battery barely lasts 1 hour. If i try to connect a usb dock to it and to a monitor and charge it at the same time then the battery drains faster than it charges so I cant even use it docked. And no, you cant boot the phone without plugging in the battery. The battery is needed even when you charge the phone directly from the wall! 2. Unstable modem The modem will sometimes stop working after you wake it up from sleep. So you may miss calls or if you wake up your phone you may not be able to call others or use mobile internet. The solution is to reboot the phone. 3. Crashes/freezes The phone crashes or stops responding randomly, no matter what software you use. I believe this is an issue with firmware/drivers. I believe all of these issues are in software so hopefully they can be fixed. Lets see if pinephone pro has these issues.
@@makuru.42 oh.. well the battery life in the regular pinephone isn't an issue in suspend either. It can already do low power mode in suspend. The battery lasts 100 hours in suspend. I dunno if there is any distro that does it properly but i have tried it myself
your issues don't seem to be hw bugs. source: I've been driving hương tràm sxmo for a few months now and it lasts 3-4 hours using firefox and around 8 listening to music (screen off) and hương tràm only charge to 80% of physical capacity. In order to drain the 2.8Ah battery in an hour you'll need to consume approximately 10W and that isn't logical at all
Those pogo pins at the back are actually I2C pins, I2C is not fast enough for use in high speed applications like high res camera, however it's good for connecting some small sensors and devices like: temperature, humidity, imu, gpio expanders, pwm drivers.
I really don't get the hate for notches/teardrops . Bought a oneplus 6 on release and it has really grown on me, i don't notice it at all. Obviously completely bevel-less would be better but idk how feasible that is for a smaller manufacturer like pine64.
i still like how that the purism phone is like "yea the price is high but that's because of the killswitches.. it's a custom design bla bla" pine64: "hold my terminal"
Hopefully this one is more reliable as an actual phone. Unfortunately the previous model was VERY unreliable as far as SMS and calls, and MMS didn't even work. As far as a portable Linux device, it was awesome as I could hook it up to my server via SSH and browse it with the standard file manager. Also could run command line apps with a real linux terminal.
I just switched to CalyxOs (because of your channel) and the only thing I miss is Pokemon Go. I know that PoGo is developed by a Google owned company and some amount of gps data is def being sent to them but damn I miss PoGo so much. If this phone can play Pokemon Go I would absolutely pay $400 for it.
If the camera is going to be replaced, you'd want high throughput IO to handle it. I imagine they're using MIPI or some similar camera optimized link to run the stock camera which will be a module attached using flatflex to a low-profile socket, since that's how basically all phone cameras are hooked up. My thought is that exposing this camera interface would be an ideal way to permit camera upgrades. The easy way to expose it would be to just leave a slot cutout region in the chassis so that all a user / aftermarket upgrade kit needs to do is insert a flatflex cable into the connector the stock camera uses, replacing the stock camera entirely from an electrical perspective. Alternatively there's USB, which doesn't need to use an actual USB connector if it's an optional addon, you just need any low profile connector that can expose the USB lines electrically for use.
I installed Linux and the feeling of freedom and privacy hit me so hard that I immediately began committing crimes, knowing that the FBI could never track me. Piracy, sexual assault, trademark infringement, petty larceny, tax fraud, you name it. I also own several fully automatic firearms even though I live in the state of California, but it doesn't matter. Ever since I removed Windows 10 from my computer and replaced it with Arch Linux, and began using a PinePhone as my daily driver phone, police can't even stop me in traffic. Windows may have a lot of video games, but the benefits of Linux should not be understated.
i know samsung's touchwiz / samsung experience is fairly bloated, but I do enjoy the features once it has been rooted and debloated a fair amount. Sometimes users are looking for more versitility and not just a simple experience. For this reason I likely wont ever upgrade from my rooted note 9.
Great video. From all that I've seen and read : Appears to be possibly the most awesome phone ever. Liquidating some crap I own to buy one now / soon. This is optimized for the things that it is for - and it IS completely fair to call any and all of their phones "Flagship models" in their league -- it is unfair to compare them to standard normie phones. For one thing : Stuff like hard switches, removable batteries, modular repairable screwed-together construction, hphone jack etc. all chew up space -- and so it is straight up unfair to compare it to glued-together non-repairable non-modular slim phones with built in batteries, no hphone jack, no hard switches, and no bezel. Also, having a bezel probably makes it more robust, modular, repairable, which is also a feature which extracts it away from standard phone competition. I think the Fairphone is another possible competitor : Don't care about crap like cameras and max spec for the things I intend to use this phone for, I have another phone for general normie shite like that.
Megapixels dont really matter anything above 8 mp is fine 99% of the time, the processing and software behind the camera are way more important on modern phones just saying
CPU: "just" 2 cores and 1ghz less makes a big difference - modern flagships often use 2 very powerful cores for single core applications and they are significantly faster than A72 cores here Display: 720p really sucks (at least for reading). And they didn't specify anything about brightness or refresh rate (I expect it's going to be bad) Cameras: megapixels don't mean anything nowadays. You can have 42mp camera on your not-flagship phone and have garbage photos - it's ALL about algorithms and photo processing and it will probably take ages for opensource community to come up with good photo processing pipeline here. Also, optical stabilization, anyone? Telephoto lens? Wifi/BT: 11ac? ..so it's not wifi 6. BT4.1... I'm not sad, I'm just disappointed But it sound interesting as a hobby device. Not a primary phone (since my $250 smartphone has better specs and usability), but just to fiddle with it - basically a very weird laptop. I do believe that one day, if they won't abandon this idea, it will be good enough to actually compete in mainstream market.
Thanks for the video. I wonder if the GPU will be sufficient for smooth operation and if the screen resolution will be sufficient to display small text legibly. I'm already curious about your benchmark results. And just as an aside, let's go Brandon!
I currently use an iPhone because it happened to be the cheapest in the store, and I'm going to replace it with a de-Googled Android phone, and use the Pine Phone on the side. I'll tell you what though, as much as I hate the lack of software freedom, this phone is pretty fucking tough. I've dropped it on concrete caseless several times, despite the back being shattered, the front is completely untouched. We're not in 2013 anymore, phone glass has gotten VERY strong, to the point where a thin, rubber case is more than enough to protect your phone. Plus, the bezel is almost always made of the same glass anyway, so I'm not sure how that'd somehow protect your screen.
@@mgord9518 My previous Crosscall phone lasted me more than 2 years or me throwing it around whenever people asked me "wtf is that phone?" and I would answer by "it's indestructible" and a demonstration. The day it died was under the solid rubber wheels of a 2 ton forklift that I didn't even bother to stop because I thought "eh. it'll survive..." Although, as other commenters have pointed out, there maybe isn't a link between bezel size and solidity, I know it impacts repairability : instead of a layer of glue, the front and back are held together by 14 screws : that's what the space is for.
Removable battery and open source os is really tempting me to move from android. I swear, the fact that every single android manufacturer no longer makes a phone without removable batteries is fishy to me.
@default Hmm that does make sense, thanks
Spyware
@default well, samsung galaxy s5 had removable battery and ip67. Its not impossible, but just doesnt make sense to make it removable since its only desired by few percent of their userbase
@@CinnamonByte No one cares about removable batteries till the battery gets nerfed from regular use.
@default I had submerged my Pinephone in the river, looks like the modem is the only part, really allergic to water. I smell a modem manufacturer conspiracy XD.
I would watch the hell out of a series dedicated towards the development of gnu/linux mobile.
100% agreed, deffinitly wanna grab one of these little fellas to play around with too, especially with the keyboard case
Big bezels, one camera, no notch, no holepunch, open source, removable battery, expandable storage. This is actually perfect
Agreed. Not to mention a freaking headphone jack, lol.
The bezel is still small in term of screen to body ratio compared to other types of device with displays like monitors, laptops etc... It's just that smartphones bezel and design technoligys is hyperaccerate.
agreed, i need bezels because my hands are on the smaller side, so i need to pinch-grip my phone when im using it horizontally, and i cant do that with a bezel-less design without contacting the touch screen
@@WyldMoonChild Bluetooth or a dongle. Do you really need to charge your phone while using wired headphones?
Plus they make USB C to USB C and 3.5 splitter, lightning too I believe.
@@Veela666 But a native headphone jack, the quality is perfect...
I think treating the pinephone as a Linux "flagship" isn't really the right mindset. It's not designed or intended to be the best phone, it's made to be a reasonable phone with reasonable specs at a reasonable price. More appropriate comparisons would be to entry level phone of a similar price.
Well, flagship by pinephone standards. I think this model is exwctly what I was looking for. It would still be a downgrade, but still a reasonable spec list to make the swap not painful.
Calling it a flagship and comparing it to android phones, definitely not. But you can definitely consider it a flagship among the base PinePhone and Librem 5.
True, I think the only fair competitor for the pinephone is the fairphone (no pun jntended.)
@Rlaziken bubugoogoo
@Rlaziken average linux user
I honestly dislike modern smartphones’ obsession with removing bezels. I like having somewhere to grab the phone without touching the screen.
Also, my biggest concern with the PinePhone is and always has been the lack of decent software support. I haven’t kept up on the scene in quite a while, but last I checked, mobile Linux outside of Android and Sailfish is kind of abysmal when it comes to basic phone features like calling and SMS. As much as I’d like to not need anything besides LTE/5G, there are way too many normies still holding onto the old ways.
It's quite a bit better in terms of just running. Depending on your expectations, mobile Linux will either be exciting or disappointing.
my oneplus 6t is totally unusable without the case, my hands always interfere with the screen. bezels are a good thing
You can put de-googled android if you really need it
it has an unlocked bootloader which means it acts like a computer , no need to work into getting root access like other phones
that means you can dual-boot linux with android if you want
If I were Pine64 I would go full into marketing it as a phone-laptop, I can see a lot of people wanting that
there have been phones with full keyboards but afaik none of them have succeeded that well
yeah I would kill for a phone i could use for VR tracking and cloud VR gaming. if they can fit dual core laptop performance into a phone size near the future, thats even better too
The pinephone phaptop
Things like the cosmo communicator already do that
@@paulosullivan3472
And cost as much as a second hand car 😭
If the Microsoft Surface Duo was a keyboard instead of the second screen, I'd have bought one... And I hate MS.
Edit: yes, I know the MS one is super expensive too. But they're an established, well known company with international presence.
how many years off you reckon we're from linux based high end phones with really modern features
I'm a say bout ocho
I hate high end phones. This is already the perfect tool for me.
After steamdeck i think there will be more developed on linux
not anytime in the future. As pinephone devs mentioned in a reddit thread, its not possible because those high end phones use locked down hardware
We only need viability
I'm not a fan of bezel-less phones and multiple cameras, I think this phone would be really good for someone like me🙂
yeah i hate when notches get in the way and all.
Old pixel 3 have the best bezel imo, or iphone 8 and samsung s9
its such a stupid fad with the bezels. it makes the phone uncomfortble and leaves no space for proper speakers and physical buttons / sensors or space for holding the thing. and people like to call this downgrade "modern" . worst part is that you cant make a new phone with the old syle cause people have a hatred for stuff that is old or looks old even if its better
yea i hate notches
I would rather have a bezel than some notch.
My pixel 3a had a chunky bezel but it never bothered me
I think that one of the reasons why Pine64 went with a simple, rectangular screen is that nothes, terdrops, rounded corners, etc. are going to be a huge pain for mobile developers and users who just want to run a linux app that most likely wasn't designed with a non-rectangular display in mind.
also notches / rounded corners are ugly af
But it's only matter of time when all laptops will have rounded screens i notches sodevelopers will need to adapt their display environments anyway
@@HarbAlarm but they are the future :( New macbooks have notches and rounded corners, so there'll be lots of laptops with notch next year
@@HarbAlarm its cool imo but functionally it's quite trash
@Steve Dave They look a lot better than fatass bezels. They'll become the past once hiding the camera/speakers behind the screen becomes common, and the phone will essentially be a perfectly smooth screen with nothing in the way.
I actually like the fat bezels on the PinePhone. It give me a place to grip the phone without accidentally pushing buttons on the screen. I freaking hate those wrap-around screen things Samsung sells.
Curved screens???
I've got a curved screen samsung phone and there's no accidental button touching happening.
@@lawsen3719 Not all software and screens are created equal. It's up to the devs of their respective companies to code a very capable palm rejection algorithm.
I like the big fat bezels, it atleast makes it not fragile as all hell lmao.
Thank god they stopped that shit. I dont understand why theyre the only ones that dont do that anymore
Between this and the steam deck a lot of new Linux products are comming to the market
I've got a samsung s7 edge and I've had it for like 5 years. I feel very unsecure with it due to privacy concerns, I tried to root it but couldn't figure it out. I'm really hoping to see more privacy oriented smartphones in the future.
I LOVE how that Pinephone has a killswitch for cameras and mics. I hate how my phone doesn't have such feature.
I have the same. This phone has great hardware, but I hate that there are no ROMs for it.
Yes... thinner bezels. Because we all love accidentally triggering things on our phones just by holding it normally.
dont know what kind of bezels your past phone had but thats never happened to me
I actually like the big bezel. It is way more comfortable to hold in certain positions. Also big bezels allow for better front cameras and sensors.
„real fake fed money“ - Mental Outlaw, 2021. Love it!
I would definitely use it as a secondary phone, the price isn't unreasonable at all
Well, compared with a laptop which you can get for the same price, and which is much stronger, you'll have to be REALLY into the phone part to be interested in the device. But that part isn't fully working yet. I felt more comfortable with the price to power ratio of the original, which ran without much competition.
@@BlommaBaumbart A laptop isn't as nearly as portable and cool as a Linux phone
@@tashima42 As I said: "You'd have to be really into the 'phone' part."
For hardware specification, it's definitely not worth the price...
For it's functionality, mainly the modification freedom, it's totally worth it.
at production scale of tens of thousands of units, i think the price is justified. expensive, but justified
I run a Fairphone with /e/OS on it, cost $450 and /e/ has been recently independently verified to remove OS-level tracking entirely. Would love to hear your take on it, since it's been kicking around a while.
7:06 honestly i think the resolution is fine. I have phone with higher res but i lowered it in settings to get better battery life. I can't tell the difference in image quality. I wish pinephone had oled but its not too big deal for me.
On a screen that small you get enough pixels per inch that it’s not a big deal
@@tylerdean980 That's what I'm sayin. In that 720p on a phone is like 1080p on a desktop.
that's not how it works, you still have the same amount of pixels on, and with how stupid capable mobile processors are nowadays dropping the resolution won't make the processor run much slower
Some years ago i saw someone on behalf of Pine64 commenting how they were planning to implement a sabre DAC/AMD in the Pinephone just like the LG Vxx series of phones. Sad to see that didn't happen (yet). I'm personally as much of a linux phone enthusiast as I am an audiophile. So for me de-googled LG V50 with LineageOS will still be the way to go, however this seems like a very nice phone.
You could always pitch them making a back case with a sound card. Not sure I see the market over dedicated devices though.
I'm using a V40, it's so sad LG pulled out of mobile. I'm debating if I should get a V50 or just give up and get a Xiaomi
Youre running an LG v50 with lineage os? It doesn't interfere with the quad dac at all? It detects it? Because i had heard you have to fiddle around to make the phone detect it supposedly
I'm all good with the bezel. Wall to Wall screens are a pain in the ass for me to hold how I naturally hold a phone my fingers touch the interface and start doing things. It's not so much an issue once there is a case on it but with a removable battery being an option, I doubt I'd be using a case.
As for resolution, I'm going to agree with you on that, although I'd prefer a 1440.
I like the top/bottom bezel as well as I have clumsy bear paws for hands. It is easier for me to hold the phone with a thumb on the bezel then contorting my fingers in the Jobs approved proper way of holding a phone.
4:17 you missed the chance to say 'apples to pineapples comparison'
Lovely take on a cellphone and it only gets better from here. The only thing I'd like to remark on is the Bluetooth 4.1.
A pressure sensitive stylus and this works for me perfectly. All I really need in a phone. Linux compatibility with some repos could get some programs a mobile mode.
excellent. I hope they keep making better hardware, and it'll definitely be what I'll be upgrading to from my very comfy LG-V20.
Things I'd like the pinephone to have:
NFC
IR blaster
a good DAC for the AUX port
and I disagree with the no bezel thing you said. The bezel is fine. I guess though when you attach the keyboard, it'd be like a pillarboxed screen, but I think that's still fine.
Good video, catman.
It's great to see the active development of Linux phones, but it's still really unfortunate how most $150 androids easily beat what is pretty much the best linux phone out there
The extra money is basically the development costs.
Also, cheap Android devices are almost guaranteed to sell, where these are not. That means a no-name vendor can still ask a manufacturer to do a run of 10,000 phones, and not have much risk of them failing to sell. These on the other hand are lower batch volumes and higher sales risk.
Those $150 Androids are sold at a loss, which is then paid for by Google harvesting your data
... Which I guess is better than paying a hefty profit margin AND having your data harvested by Google still.
Personally i didn't need a phone because i don't have many friends and i can communicate with my friends on Instagram. I was fine with it. I didn't have a phone for the last three years. But now I have to get one because I'm going to college next year. It's too damn nice to see the phone that I've been wondering about for a while from my favorite youtuber.
Let's go, Brandon!
ебать Джо Байдена
@@egg5474 I'm not russian, but I used DeepL to translate.
@@火災のアイスクリーム all my homies hate google translate
You got hearted! Wow, didn't see that one coming. lmao
@@egg5474 Like what the russians are doing with Kolibri OS. Didn't Russia come 2nd barely behind china in top programming countries along with Ukraine coming first in security?
I was waiting for you to make a video on this
I love the new privacy centered market that has been popping up in recent years.
hoping to see librem try to challenge this soon, year of the linux phone??
Not at that price they won't 😂
Does Android count as linux?
Librem 5 is hardly faster than the original PinePhone lmao.
@Rlaziken ah, you had to be that guy.
@@yudhok Android is not Linux. Google forked the kernel, mutilated it to support only one distro (AOSP), and then mutilated that distro by moving just about everything to Google Play Services.
Yeah, I'm getting one. Sick of the short update span for Android phones, they're basically abandoned after a few (if you're lucky) years. And with all the bloat gone with proper Linux, I bet they can be pretty snappy.
Really, I decided to buy it, even though I don’t have any previous experience in Technology, but I care about privacy so I will learn everything about Linux in this phone. Camera and call are not important to me, and I will keep my old phone for call and SIM.
Thank you for your video.
I didn't buy the last model because it lacked 5ghz WiFi. So glad they made a better version. This looks like the real deal. Keen to see a review!
I'll be quite honest I miss bezels like this. I prefer to have a little space on the sides and the top/bottom. These phones with edge-to-edge screens drive me nuts and probably why I've not gone past the Pixel2.
The Oneplus 7t was one of the only phones with a practical camera layout, one for high megapixel normal shots, one for wide angle shots, and one with telephoto (optically zoomed).
you just described most mid to high end cellphones from the past couple years.
I don't want to deal with random notches and unviewable pixels on a screen when I'm writing a fullscreen application. A rectangular screen is the best screen.
Bezels are a good thing unless you can hold your phone up with telekinesis.
@@randgrithr7387 or use a case and lose useable space. Like a "normal" user.
Don't the notches normally just slice the OS's status bar in half? You're not missing out on application information, the application is still presented in a perfect rectangle, it's just blended into the notch where the bezel would've been.
@@mgord9518 Then it's not a fullscreen application.
And not every OS has a "status bar".
Many programs don't even need an "operating system" to work. That's especially common with diagnostic tools like memory testers etc.
@@tikkasen_urakointi You're right, it's way more integrated than a square application presentation on a rounded phone, along with effectively using more surface real estate that would otherwise just be a black bar. The operating system would obviously have to be tweaked for it
Wow, the editing has become real slick
Better specs than my laptop and that runs my Arch setup I put on all my devices perfectly fine, so I think I’ll be getting the Pinephone Pro. Plus I don’t really game on pc or mobile so it should be perfect. I can’t wait to finally ditch my spyPhone 11
which laptop do you have that has less specs than this phone?
@@theodiscusgaming3909 an old Toshiba Satellite from like 2015ish.. it might’ve been an exaggeration, but either way
@@ZachyHassell not sure about the pro performance but the og pp's 40nm a53 performs way worse than pentium m on my 2005 laptop. The 28nm on the pro might be much better (plus the two high performance core) but they'll need to throttle voltage for battery life and cooling. The chips can do most things for you, but don't attempt heavy (or preferably, any at all) compilations on the device.
@@McSinyx yeah that’s fair.. Maybe I’ll just get a decent android and put a distro on there, I haven’t really looked into what distros work on what phones yet, but I’ll have a look and see if there’s anything I like the sound of
@user I don’t like spyware. But also, downgrade? It depends how you look at it, because you get close to 0 control with an iPhone, and you can’t actually verify the control you do get over your own data, you’re just taking their word for it.
I'm nostalgic of the Windows phone UI. I know MS is not very nice with personal data, but the UI was well though.
I hope Linux will make possible to get various UIs, like the PC desktop environments.
there’s already GNOME, Phosh, and KDE Plasma, and there will be more so probably yeah
That phone would totally fit my needs.
I have been eyeing the PinePhone for a few months now and I really think I'm just going to get it once the bugs are worked out. I don't use my phone for anything except calling, texting, and browsing the web tbh. My only concern is the compatibility with service providers.
Same here. The only other thing I would want is a nice camera, but we'll see.
this vid makes my wanting to buy this phone more than any ad i have ever seen
Bezels are fine! I'm more worried about the app environment on it.
4:07 I was under the impression that Snapdragon is Qualcomm’s brand of ARM chip and is still an ARM chip. Rockchip is another brand of ARM chip. I understand they’ll have different firmware and blobs and whatnot, but they are the same architecture.
I really hope we can see some Anbox usage with it!
If its possible to run android apps okay then I would use this as my driver over pixel
Awesome! I’m looking forward to when Linux phones get great!
I'm looking forward to see the review
Good to see more developments on linux phones.
Can you cover Fxtec? It comes with a built in keyboard, has pretty good specs and isn't too expensive. Its not as focused on FOSS and privacy, but since the booloader is unlocked, you can despook everything.
Damn, never heard of them. I’m curious to see how it turns out and how well Ubuntu Touch runs on it.
One thing that l'd I want in a device is a mobile that uses normal smartphone hardware (namely a proprietary baseband processor, etc.), and then just have it isolated from the main device. In other words you'd technically have two separate devices built into one package. One device takes Wi-Fi and cell signals and passes it through to the main device, while the main device is the thing that actually has the beefy CPU and RAM and storage and such.
This way the proprietary baseband stuff is effectively stuck in a sandbox, while the wi-fi is also essentially routed through a proxy, such that any software that queries the wi-fi won't be able to find out location info about it since it is always going through the static middleman rather than seeing any nearby devices or APs.
_Technically_ this isn't a sure-fire way of preventing any issues, since in theory the baseband could still be told to modify the packets that it passes on (in either direction), but I'd say it's not a big deal, since I doubt the power of any sort of baseband exploits/backdoors could extend that far when kept exclusively within the baseband processor itself, and even if that wasn't the case that sort of capability is more limited than it may seem (namely due to the existence of encrypted communication, so most of the stuff that it passes on of any importance would just be encrypted)
@Mental Outlaw
Careful with that camera comparison. As you probably know this is all about software and that software makes something of it which wasn't there. It might have been there, it might not, the software kind of speculates the gap between what the sensors can detect and what really was there. In my opinion Apple and Android tend to oversaturate those pictures. That random picture which you took with Oneplus6 might look prettier but also it is quite unrealistic, it didn't look quite that if you would have been at that spot at that time and looked at that flower and plant.
But yes, for now we have to choose between privacy+security or better hardware. That is fine at the point where the additional hardware is not required. Of course there also is the option to not use a smartphone at all. ;)
For phone cameras, software processing is much more important than hardware. This is why apple and samsung can get away with 12mp cameras.
3:00. Am i the only one who like phones with quite thick bezels? The Pinephone in the video is perfect for what i want.
Multiple cameras isn't a dumb trend, it is on budget/*some*midrangers but on flagships each camera serves a purpose and contributes to image quality.
Not really, a main camera + depth sensor covers 90% of use cases for most users, 2MP macro or 5MP macro, x100 zoom, etc are kinda useless. Anywho, what really matters now is sensor size
I dont like that all the phones coming out have 4+ cameras driving the price up unnecesarily. I'd gladly get a phone less focused on camera quality at a lower price or with better specs for the price
@@coffeedude"why are you taking pictures, you just saw the f****** thing" -george carlin
I hope you can install Gentoo ARM64 on it.
I'm sure you could, although getting touch input working right might be a challenge, at least that was a challenge with the mobile distros on the first pinephone.
@@MentalOutlaw That would make for an entertaining video series, as some sort of project. Just sayin' hehe
People have, although some portions of the hardware aren't yet fully supported.
i would be more concerned with cpu power, cooling and battery life if you are to compile everything on the pp, @@MentalOutlaw
im exited cos now old pinephones will be affordable for me
i was thinking of buying a fairphone 3 but i actually didnt realise the pinephone had a removable battery or those killswitches
To add a bigger sensor you also need to add a bigger lens. And that's where the challenges reside
Yeah, I guess instead of a case camera you could connect it to a kind of "dumb" cam corder that just has a lense and sensor and uses the pinephone for input, storage of video, and of course the screen to see what you're recording
Would really appreciate a video comparing browsers for mobile Linux. I can't see to find anything snappy that isn't spooky.
why are u one of the few interesting content creators?
Through Gentoo Linux on with with all the hardware working and software to support it all, minimal window manager like i3 or awesome
I'm fine with a bar on the top, just if you don't have physical buttons, don't put a bar on the bottom.
Still way go a looooong way to go. The phone is better than PinePhone but still very very expensive for its hardware. I'm glad we are getting there tho!
It's a good effort. I hope it does well but a bit out of my price range and still no fm radio.
I am excited for the future! Going to be holding on to my 2016 SE until pine is ready to go mainstream.
Nice video. Noticed you said you have a OnePlus 6. You can actually run mainline Linux on that and have a pretty decent feature set. Theres also ubuntu touch ofc
I'd still go for self made de-Googled phones bought from second hand deals or with actual phones that I possess for getting in practice with it. I rather wait few years for pinephones to have better specs even if it's Linux based.
Looking at the I/O specs for the Pro, I didn't see any mention of a 3.5mm headphone jack. Is that going to be on the main edition?
@Blenux Okay, good
Don’t be a pinecone, buy a pinephone.
jokes on you pinecone is an actual product by pine64
™️
Sorry to say it Mental, but unless you've applied to help do kernel or other low level development, it's unlikely we'll be accepting the application
😢
Yeah whatever, outside of a few obese redditors that don't shower this thing won't really sell anyway
@@NitroDubzzz Cope
@Izaic’s Linux, Mental Outlaw has a fairly big following on social media, so I really think it would be in your best interest to send/sell him and other interested youtubers the phones as soon as possible. That way they get the most coverage.
Mental Outlaw being one of the most known and respected Linux content creators on TH-cam not sending him one of your phones is shooting your company in the feet. Also is just one phone right? Not thirty.
"really legit" sounds like a bit of a stretch when they still have a 720p screen on there, honestly. But I've been disappointed by the budget Android phone market's return to 720p screens as well.
I mean, this phone caters to an audience whose top priority probably isn't resolution. And given the price point, well...
@@TheMinecraftACMan yeah but it didn't have to be terrible and expensive.
@@TheMinecraftACMan i mean 1080p is just a standard
And if you want to make it a full fleshed computer, you need to have 1080p
720p on a phone looks like 1080p on the desktop to me.
>90% won't realize the difference between 720p & 1080p in daily use on a screen of that size.
try out the dock/convergence where you turn the phone into a desktop linux by connecting it to a screen.
>Front camera Killswitch
I would still put tape over the camera
It's a hardware kill switch, not some dumb software solution.
@@jan-Juta
Ok goldstein, I'm still taping the camera.
I have a regular pinephone and pinephone pro isn't a good idea unless they fix some issues (with no workarounds) that the regular pinephone has:
1. Battery life
The battery life is very bad and is the main reason i cant daily drive it. No matter how optimized and minimal software i use, the battery barely lasts 1 hour. If i try to connect a usb dock to it and to a monitor and charge it at the same time then the battery drains faster than it charges so I cant even use it docked. And no, you cant boot the phone without plugging in the battery. The battery is needed even when you charge the phone directly from the wall!
2. Unstable modem
The modem will sometimes stop working after you wake it up from sleep. So you may miss calls or if you wake up your phone you may not be able to call others or use mobile internet. The solution is to reboot the phone.
3. Crashes/freezes
The phone crashes or stops responding randomly, no matter what software you use. I believe this is an issue with firmware/drivers.
I believe all of these issues are in software so hopefully they can be fixed. Lets see if pinephone pro has these issues.
The first thing the pro will help because it has now an low power mode in its arm chip
@@makuru.42 is that only used in suspend or also when the cpu usage is low?
@@notuxnobux in suspend
@@makuru.42 oh.. well the battery life in the regular pinephone isn't an issue in suspend either. It can already do low power mode in suspend. The battery lasts 100 hours in suspend. I dunno if there is any distro that does it properly but i have tried it myself
your issues don't seem to be hw bugs. source: I've been driving hương tràm sxmo for a few months now and it lasts 3-4 hours using firefox and around 8 listening to music (screen off) and hương tràm only charge to 80% of physical capacity. In order to drain the 2.8Ah battery in an hour you'll need to consume approximately 10W and that isn't logical at all
I'll probably buy it. Won't be my daily driver, but it'll be fun to play around with and it'll help with making an app I'm making work on Linux phones
Those pogo pins at the back are actually I2C pins, I2C is not fast enough for use in high speed applications like high res camera, however it's good for connecting some small sensors and devices like: temperature, humidity, imu, gpio expanders, pwm drivers.
I really don't get the hate for notches/teardrops .
Bought a oneplus 6 on release and it has really grown on me, i don't notice it at all.
Obviously completely bevel-less would be better but idk how feasible that is for a smaller manufacturer like pine64.
i still like how that the purism phone is like "yea the price is high but that's because of the killswitches.. it's a custom design bla bla" pine64: "hold my terminal"
Do we have decent navigation software for linux? That's the only mobile app I actually use.
Navigation is something being actively worked on. Decent? Sure, great? Not really quite yet.
Could always use a desktop website/application in the browser.
Hopefully this one is more reliable as an actual phone. Unfortunately the previous model was VERY unreliable as far as SMS and calls, and MMS didn't even work.
As far as a portable Linux device, it was awesome as I could hook it up to my server via SSH and browse it with the standard file manager. Also could run command line apps with a real linux terminal.
Year of Linux baby!
I just switched to CalyxOs (because of your channel) and the only thing I miss is Pokemon Go. I know that PoGo is developed by a Google owned company and some amount of gps data is def being sent to them but damn I miss PoGo so much. If this phone can play Pokemon Go I would absolutely pay $400 for it.
2:42
That meme. Got me right there.
If the camera is going to be replaced, you'd want high throughput IO to handle it. I imagine they're using MIPI or some similar camera optimized link to run the stock camera which will be a module attached using flatflex to a low-profile socket, since that's how basically all phone cameras are hooked up.
My thought is that exposing this camera interface would be an ideal way to permit camera upgrades.
The easy way to expose it would be to just leave a slot cutout region in the chassis so that all a user / aftermarket upgrade kit needs to do is insert a flatflex cable into the connector the stock camera uses, replacing the stock camera entirely from an electrical perspective.
Alternatively there's USB, which doesn't need to use an actual USB connector if it's an optional addon, you just need any low profile connector that can expose the USB lines electrically for use.
Looking like a great phone. I recently degoogled my oneplus 7 pro.
Might be a bit of a stretch to call it a flagship, I would consider it to be more so a midrange.
It's a Linux phone flagship, which means comparing it to the base model PinePhone or Librem 5.
It's a flagship because it is the most powerful smartphone Linux is ever going to get before they make the concept of open firmware illegal.
I installed Linux and the feeling of freedom and privacy hit me so hard that I immediately began committing crimes, knowing that the FBI could never track me. Piracy, sexual assault, trademark infringement, petty larceny, tax fraud, you name it. I also own several fully automatic firearms even though I live in the state of California, but it doesn't matter. Ever since I removed Windows 10 from my computer and replaced it with Arch Linux, and began using a PinePhone as my daily driver phone, police can't even stop me in traffic. Windows may have a lot of video games, but the benefits of Linux should not be understated.
i know samsung's touchwiz / samsung experience is fairly bloated, but I do enjoy the features once it has been rooted and debloated a fair amount. Sometimes users are looking for more versitility and not just a simple experience. For this reason I likely wont ever upgrade from my rooted note 9.
Great video. From all that I've seen and read : Appears to be possibly the most awesome phone ever. Liquidating some crap I own to buy one now / soon. This is optimized for the things that it is for - and it IS completely fair to call any and all of their phones "Flagship models" in their league -- it is unfair to compare them to standard normie phones. For one thing : Stuff like hard switches, removable batteries, modular repairable screwed-together construction, hphone jack etc. all chew up space -- and so it is straight up unfair to compare it to glued-together non-repairable non-modular slim phones with built in batteries, no hphone jack, no hard switches, and no bezel. Also, having a bezel probably makes it more robust, modular, repairable, which is also a feature which extracts it away from standard phone competition. I think the Fairphone is another possible competitor : Don't care about crap like cameras and max spec for the things I intend to use this phone for, I have another phone for general normie shite like that.
I've recently switched to carrier pidgeons, paper maps, and vinyl instead of a smart phone. Easiest switch I've ever made.
I'm currently considering switching to a rock as my daily driver. Just need to practice my aim a little.
I wished it had 8gb ram option, considering that you can attach external monitor to it and use as work machine.
I'm not 100% sure but I think this chipset supported up to 4GB of RAM currently. It's a good amount but yes 8 would make it great :)
Megapixels dont really matter anything above 8 mp is fine 99% of the time, the processing and software behind the camera are way more important on modern phones
just saying
Yeah. 4K is 8 megapixels, and 4k is really high res. So i do confirm that 8mp is more than enough.
Yep, iPhones have a 12 MP camera
I can almost guarantee that this'll be better than my current phone. I'm currently using a flip.
CPU: "just" 2 cores and 1ghz less makes a big difference - modern flagships often use 2 very powerful cores for single core applications and they are significantly faster than A72 cores here
Display: 720p really sucks (at least for reading). And they didn't specify anything about brightness or refresh rate (I expect it's going to be bad)
Cameras: megapixels don't mean anything nowadays. You can have 42mp camera on your not-flagship phone and have garbage photos - it's ALL about algorithms and photo processing and it will probably take ages for opensource community to come up with good photo processing pipeline here. Also, optical stabilization, anyone? Telephoto lens?
Wifi/BT: 11ac? ..so it's not wifi 6. BT4.1... I'm not sad, I'm just disappointed
But it sound interesting as a hobby device. Not a primary phone (since my $250 smartphone has better specs and usability), but just to fiddle with it - basically a very weird laptop.
I do believe that one day, if they won't abandon this idea, it will be good enough to actually compete in mainstream market.
Thanks for the video. I wonder if the GPU will be sufficient for smooth operation and if the screen resolution will be sufficient to display small text legibly. I'm already curious about your benchmark results. And just as an aside, let's go Brandon!
Bezels are useful when using phone with one hand
The smartphone makers have apparently never heard of the Abbe limit, which is why the megapixels are increasing without a real benefit
it's for marketing, consumers are dumb, engineers aren't
What are some of the supported carriers for LTE services?
Tbh I hate thin bezels. It makes the phone harder to use imo. Definitely might get one.
Having almost no bezel increases the chance of cracking when the phone is dropped
Laughs in my indestructble CrossCall M5 phone. That phone is like 25% bezel and I could'nt give less fukcs.
How? The bezel is usually still covered in glass...
how though? just because there is no bezel doesn't mean it'll crack easier. if you meant curved display then yes.
I currently use an iPhone because it happened to be the cheapest in the store, and I'm going to replace it with a de-Googled Android phone, and use the Pine Phone on the side. I'll tell you what though, as much as I hate the lack of software freedom, this phone is pretty fucking tough. I've dropped it on concrete caseless several times, despite the back being shattered, the front is completely untouched. We're not in 2013 anymore, phone glass has gotten VERY strong, to the point where a thin, rubber case is more than enough to protect your phone.
Plus, the bezel is almost always made of the same glass anyway, so I'm not sure how that'd somehow protect your screen.
@@mgord9518 My previous Crosscall phone lasted me more than 2 years or me throwing it around whenever people asked me "wtf is that phone?" and I would answer by "it's indestructible" and a demonstration.
The day it died was under the solid rubber wheels of a 2 ton forklift that I didn't even bother to stop because I thought "eh. it'll survive..."
Although, as other commenters have pointed out, there maybe isn't a link between bezel size and solidity, I know it impacts repairability : instead of a layer of glue, the front and back are held together by 14 screws : that's what the space is for.