I’ve been using my OnePlus 6t since launch and love it, but I am very interested in Linux phones now. I’ve been an early adopter before, but it’s finally getting where I think I need it to be to try. I pretty much only do basic phone functions and emulation. Would a Pinephone Pro have the power to run something like a Wii or 3ds game? What about an older ported game like STALKER? Curious just how much it could do
The OnePlus 6T outperforms the PinePhone Pro by quite a bit. The OnePlus 6T is actually a pretty good Linux phone these days with postmarketOS. I picked one up to use as a Linux phone (as well as a OnePlus 6 now, but that one’s running Android). I used the PinePhone for about a year, the PinePhone Pro for about a year, and now I’ve been using the OnePlus 6T as my daily driver for 6 months or so. I ended up getting the OnePlus 6 (non-T) and leaving it as an Android phone though, picking up a second SIM card because I had call audio issues on both Linux phones so I told people to just call me on my Android number. I still mainly use the Linux phone for everything else because the software ecosystem works so much better for me.
Pros of OnePlus 6T:
Much better battery life (can last most of a day with screen off)
Much better performance
Much better GPU - Full OpenGL and Vulkan support on the OP6T
Much lower power consumption (doesn’t get anywhere near as hot)
Louder speaker
Better Bluetooth (my BT headphones lag to an unusable degree on the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro when there are other devices around, but are usable on the OnePlus 6T)
Higher resolution, brighter, OLED screen
Cons of OnePlus 6T
Bootloader is proprietary and cannot be replaced
Android boot and partition scheme
Call audio doesn’t work reliably, sometimes calls will have no sound
Modem doesn’t receive calls unless it is forced to 2G mode, which limits Internet speed (texts seem fine though) likely due to missing VoLTE
Sensors (rotation, ambient light, etc) require testing an open merge request at the moment, but it does work
No USB host mode support (software/driver limitation)
No external display support (apparently hardware limitation)
No headphone jack (the OnePlus 6 does have it though)
No SD card slot
No removable battery
Cameras don’t work at all
No keyboard case option
Pros of PinePhone Pro
Better Linux support overall
More OS choices
More bootloader choices, which include completely open options
SD card slot
Headphone jack
Removable battery
Keyboard case option
Cameras work to a degree
Much more repairable
Cons of PinePhone Pro
Eats battery like no other phone I’ve ever used, the keyboard case is almost a must-have just for usable battery life
Gets quite hot while eating battery
Lacks more modern OpenGL versions, Vulkan support
Modem has a tendency to disconnect and reconnect occasionally, even with open source modem firmware
Call audio can have some static or distortion, especially on your end (the microphone)
Keyboard case makes using it as a phone cumbersome
@CalcProgrammer1 @LeylaLove
Extra point regarding power consumption:
It’s possible to trade a small sub-part of the open U-Boot bootloader and use a proprietary T-FA and DRAM initialisation from Rockchip that enables DRAM downclocking on the phone’s RK3399 and this saves a ton of power, bringing the PinePhone Pro to a much more usable range.
See here: https://xnux.eu/log/091.html
I’ve been using that together with SailfishOS on mine.
I might try this rk2aw+drbin+U-Boot on my PineBook Pro, too.
Ouch no openGL or Vulkan? That’s rough. I expected the native Linux phone to have better hardware support :/
It has OpenGL 3.1 IIRC. The Panfrost developers have said that Vulkan is not going to happen for Midgard GPUs, which is what the PinePhone Pro has. Later OpenGL versions still may be possible.