title:PinePhone Update
date: 2022-11-02 12:40
tags: pinephone postmarketos
summary: The Pinephone basically works
---

When I was using Mobian GNU/Linux, I had some issues with the PinePhone. Namely,
my phone no longer received SMS text messages. I switched to [PostMarketOS](https://postmarketos.org/), and
my issues seemed to have gone away, at least if I keep using the phone as a dumb
phone.  I have disabled wifi on the phone, because I really don&rsquo;t use it.

It would be nice if I could get the PinePhone to work well with [JMP.chat](https://jmp.chat), but
currently the texts from my desktop machine do NOT sync well with the phone.  So
if I use two devices, I end up in a weird situation with out of sync text
messages, which is really confusing.  Plus using the internet on the phone
drains the battery.  So I have just disabled the internet on the phone via the
hardware kill switches.

Texting works flawlessly, but I cannot get SMS images.  Also the phone volume
for calls is pretty poor.  And sometimes when I make phone calls, I cannot hear
what the other person is saying.  So that is a little odd.

I highly recommend installing the reversed engineered and nearly [libre custom
firmware](https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk) for the PinePhone&rsquo;s modem. It was actually [super easy to do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aokclNgnIbE).

It might also not be a bad idea to edit the official PinePhone wiki and mention
that [Tello](https://tello.com/) is a fairly cheap provider. I pay them $8 per month and I have no
data and unlimited calling and texting texts.  That&rsquo;s pretty good.

That&rsquo;s the main update for today!

