PinePhone Mobian Edition Is Coming on January 18, Powered by Debian Linux

PinePhone Mobian Edition

The PINE64 and Mobian Linux communities proudly announced today the upcoming availability of a new community edition of the popular PinePhone Linux phone, PinePhone Mobian Community Edition.

I know many of you out there have been waiting on a Debian-powered PinePhone, so here it is. PinePhone Mobian Community Edition is running Mobian Linux, an embedded operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux’s ARM64 (AArch64) port.

Mobian offers a pure Debian GNU/Linux experience on mobile devices and uses Purism’s GNOME-based Phosh (Phone Shell) user interface by default.  Mobian Linux on the PinePhone has been tweaked to greet users with an installer where they can choose a password and enable full disk encryption.

“With Mobian, this (truly smart) phone comes with a distribution tons of Debian users are already familiar with, optimized for the PinePhone while still giving them access to the 50,000+ packages already in the Debian archive,” said the Mobian Project.

The good news is that the PinePhone Mobian Community Edition promises full phone functionality, including voice calls, SMS, Wi-Fi, mobile broadband, as well as support for both front and back cameras from day one.

On the downside, the Linux phone will ship with an old version of Mobian Linux pre-installed, from half a year ago. As such, the Mobian Project recommends you update to the newest Mobian version as soon as you receive the mobile device.

As for the price tag, nothing changed. You’ll be able to purchase the PinePhone Mobian Community Edition starting January 18th, 2021, for as low as $149 USD for the standard PinePhone version with 2GB RAM and 16GB eMMC internal storage.

If you want the Convergence Package, which includes the PinePhone Mobian Community Edition with 3GB RAM, 32GB eMMC internal storage and a USB-C dock to easily turn the Linux smartphone into a personal computer by attaching a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, you’ll have to pay $199 USD.

As with all previous PinePhone editions, PINE64 will donate $10 USD for each unit sold to the Mobian Project, which in turn will donate a big part of the donations received from PINE64 to the Debian Project, so they can continue developing Debian GNU/Linux and Mobian Linux for many years to come.

Image credits: Mobian Project

Last updated 3 years ago

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