Intro
The Pine Phone (with docking station) for this review is about 7-8 months old. Pines are their own devices designed as “privacy phones” built to an open spec with a number of OS options. It’s not clear how many “Pine projects” there are, but Pines definitely appear to have quite the following.

Ultimately, however, and knowing the phone remains beta, while having some interesting features and adequate hardware, it seems early for Pine’s practicality and instead best left to hobbyists.

Different than “regular” phones
Pine makes its own phones that are essentially computers first, phones second. Whereas this may provide certain compute benefits (with dimensions of typical phones and an Ethernet, USB, and HDMI docking station), even usage requires Linux knowledge–and likely the more, the better.

Hardware
We referred to the hardware as “adequate” since, and perhaps to keep the price reasonable, some is “older generation” as described in Pine’s documentation and its performance tends to corroborate. But, while the device does seem well-built, it runs extremely hot, a problem acknowledged in the documentation, including risk of fire leaving “thermal tweaks” (and a fire extinguisher) to the customer. This is ultimately a deal-breaker, but our review continued.

Configuring the device to boot/install is not unlike a Raspberry Pi. Also like a Pi, once up it’s a complete Linux machine. Reviewing Pine’s site, including whether to use its own SD tools, may be worthwhile.

Software
We first used the recommended stock OS but could not get phone functionality. Eventually “mobian” (not an official Debian project) was found stable enough to use and handle wireless, although only with one provider.

However, and having tried several OSes, while mobian has been the least problematic, stability remains challenging and with significant interface lag.

Final thoughts
Let’s assume “kill switches”, headphone jacks doubling as serial ports, bootability, and open spec are cool. Regardless, while Pine seems interesting, features, reliability, and OSes have a way to go. It may be better for those preferring a computer first/phone second, understanding the device remains in beta, and may literally halt and catch fire. Privacy phone alternatives are aplenty.