Some more info about the PinePhone

Pre-order page on the Pine Store

The early adopter edition of the PinePhone is now available for pre-order. This batch is 3000 units, from what I know ~1000 are already sold. These units are currently being produced, and are planned to ship in December/January. Mass production of the consumer edition of the phone is planned to begin in March 2020.

I just pre-ordered mine, is anyone else getting one? Any thoughts on the state of Linux smartphones, whether it's the PinePhone, Librem 5, or something else?

Currently I have the Moto G5 Plus that I purchased a little over two years ago for $200. For the most part, it has been a good phone as the gestures to turn the flash light on, turn the camera on, and use the finger print sensor as a swipeable button, has had me pretty satisfied. This was a lower middle range phone when I purchased it so it has lately started chugging even doing basic tasks like internet browsing. Couple that with the battery dying pretty quickly, and battery saver making the phone even slower, and now I am in the market to buy a new phone. Right now I am looking at the OnePlus 7t but the price looks pretty hefty to me at $599. I could make payments but in general I don't like going into debt for small purchases. I'm curious if anyone went from low-tier phone to mid-tier or higher and if you felt the purchase was worth it?

Some other general questions:

• What is your phone?
• Did you finance it?
• Are you looking to upgrade?
• What features are the most important to you?

The Apple Keynote is on September 10th, at 10am Pacific Daylight Time (daylight savings is in effect). I'm making this thread as a place to discuss the announcements here on ~tech.

TIme:

• 10:00am PDT (California / Apple time)
• 5:00pm GMT (Greenwich time)

Livestream Links

• Apple's website stream -- requires a browser that supports both HLS and HEVC (safari and edge)
• Apple's Youtube stream -- first time Apple is streaming on youtube. Should work anywhere that Youtube works :) They'll probably break the stream record.

Tl;Dr of actual announcements (updating right now)

• Apple Arcade announced
  • $4.99 / month and one month free.
  • 100 indie exclusives on launch
• Apple TV+ announced
  • $4.99 / month, launching November 1
  • New originals every month! 100 countries at launch
  • Including 1 year free with device (iPhone, iPad, or mac) purchases starting today.
• New base model iPad
  • 10.2 inch display, Runs A10 Fusion chip, (optional) smart keyboard
  • New iPad is made from 100% recycled aluminum (like the new MacBook air)
  • Starts at $399 (competing with chrome books). $299 for education customers.
  • includes Apple Pencil support
• Apple Watch Series 5!!!!
  • Health and Fitness video
  • 3 New health studies!!!
    - Apple Hearing Study
    - Apple Women's Health Study (How cycles affect various health conditions)
    - Apple Heart Study
    - Enrollment is voluntary. OPT-IN by downloading the app and getting enrolled.
  • Apple Watch Series 5
    - ALWAYS ON LTPO OLED display, with Dynamic Refresh Rate (1Hz - 60Hz VRR)
    - Same 18 hour battery life
    - International Emergency Calling on all cellular models
    - 100% recycled aluminum.
    - Stainless Steel, Titanium, Ceramic
    - Series 3 watch starts at $199, Series 5 starts at $499
• iPhone 11!
  • Aluminum and Glass, comes in a bunch of colors
  • Spatial audio + Dolby Atmos for next level smartphone sound
  • New Camera -- 120º FOV Wide angle camera, 12MP with 100% Focus Pixels
    - 0.5x Optical Zoom out :)
    - New Image processing pipelines, with semantic rendering and adaptive tone mapping
    - Portrait mode improvements (wider portraits, and more) (yay, now for pets!)
    - Night Mode has adaptive image slicing and fusion for reducing blur in long exposure.
    - 4K HDR video at 60fps (was previously 30fps!)
    - Front Camera is now 12MP wide angle
    - 4K 30fps HDR video, Slowmotion Video for front facing camera! :)
  • A13 Bionic processor
    - fastest GPU and CPU ever in a smartphone
    - Game demo showing off Metal 2 Shaders, Bloom, and AA in realtime at 60fps
    - Battery is now 1 hr longer than the previous XR
    - U1 Chip? (on slide, not mentioned)
  • Wifi 6 support!
  • 2m water resistance for 30 minutes
  • 6.1 inch Liquid Retina display
  • Priced sanely at $699
• iPhone 11 Pro
  • 3 camera array
  • Matte Textured Glass
  • Super Retina XDR Display.
    - 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio
    - 1200 nits of brightness
    - 426 ppi
    - Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos
  • A13 Bionic Chip Design
    - Machine Learning Matrix Multiplier Accelerators make matrix operations 6x faster on iPhone
    - Best ML platform of any Smartphone
    - Lower power design using 7nm+ lithography
    - 8.5 Billion Transistors
    - 4 High Efficiency CPU cores
    - Hundreds of Voltage domains and clock domains
    - Each region of the chip is at least 20% faster, and uses at least 20% less power
  • 3 camera system
    - 4x zoom range (0.5 to 2x)
    - 53-13mm focal lengths, and f1.8 to f2.4
    - Deep Fusion camera system - stitches together burst photos + long exposure to maximize detail and reduce noise.
    - Filmic Pro demo -- allowing multiple camera use at the same time.
  • iPhone 11 Pro at $999, Pro Max at $1099
  • iPhone 11 at $699 and XR at $599 and iPhone 8 at $499 to complete the lineup.
• Apple Store Updates
  • Apple Watch Studio - pair any watch with any band of your choice. Configure as you want
  • iPhone trade ins can now be used for a lower monthly rate if you buy an iPhone, rather than simply taking off the purchase price.
  • 5th Ave Store is being redesigned and re-opening Sept 20th!

Other miscellaneous / fun stuff

• Apple Keynote Bingo Card -- 5 in a row to win! :)
• Upgrade Podcast Draft Card -- the hosts have predicted what they should see at the event. Person with the most points wins.

Edits:

• fixed part about browsers with HLS support, and added a table showing compatible browsers.
• remved "what we're expecting" section, and started updating the event live feed.

So I kind of want to try the Nokia 8110, it's a feature phone with an app store that contains it's own version of Google Maps and Assistant. I use my phone an awful lot, and I'm thinking that a less capable phone would be helpful in using my phone less for browsing the internet, news, and discourse and using it more for what I would want to do with it, calls, texts, navigation, music and podcasts.

Unfortunately, the Nokia 8110 is only available on AT&T in the States, and they stink, so I was wondering if anyone had any picks for devices that would scratch that itch, specialized apps, or other tools that could be used. I like the idea of another device that I could use as a daily driver so I can put some physical distance between myself and my current phone, but if you have an app or a system that you swear by, I'm down for it.

Also kind of interested in maybe combining the ZeroPhone Raspberry Pi with support for Alexa or Google Assistant, but that seems like a time waster and a half.