PinePhone Linux phone first launched as an early adopter phone without any OS when the “Brave Edition” was first introduced in November 2019. Since then Pine64 launched variant with different Linux mobile OS including PinePhone Community Edition: UBports, the PostMarket Edition that also added support for mobile/desktop convergence with a model with more RAM and storage, as well as a USB-C Dock, and more recently there was a batch with PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition.
If you haven’t already gotten your hand on one of the earlier models, you’ll be glad to know the PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available for pre-order for the same $149.99 price tag for the phone only or $199.99 with the convergence package.
PinePhone comes with Allwinner A64 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor that been around for many years. It’s not a performance beast, but it’s well supported by the open-source Linux community, and affordable. For $150, you’ll get 2GB RAM and 16GB storage, while the $200 model bring that up to 3GB and 32GB, plus you’ll get a USB-C hub with two USB Type-A host ports for keyboard and mouse, an HDMI output port, and a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port.
The KDE Edition features Plasma Mobile, based on Plasma Desktop, built upon Manjaro Linux. It includes apps such as KDE Connect to connect phones and desktops, the Okular document reader, the VVave music player, AngelFish web browser, and others which are available on both desktop and mobile.
Just like all other previous models, those are aimed at developers and early adopters with extensive Linux experience, and come with a short 30-day warranty. Pre-orders are scheduled to ship in mid-January 2021, and $10 will be donated to KDE e.V. non-profit organization to sponsor software development.
If you’d like to try out KDE on earlier models of PinePhone you can get the image and instructions from the Wiki, or alternative you could install the MultiBoot image currently supporting 17 different distributions.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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