Pine64 starts presale of PinePhone Community Edition with Ubuntu port UBports

Pine64 has announced a developer version of the PinePhone. The smartphone runs on a port of Ubuntu Touch, and is mainly intended for tinkerers and hackers who want to experiment with UBports.

The phone is officially called the PinePhone UBports Community Edition. The device runs on UBports, a community-adapted version of Ubuntu Touch. That operating system is available for a handful of Android devices, and works on the original PinePhone. Until now, however, the community of developers behind Ubuntu Touch did not have their own model of phones to properly test the operating system on. The Community Edition of the PinePhone is aimed at those developers so they can experiment with how the operating system interacts with phone features such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and hardware such as the microphone. The makers of the Community Edition phone say that most functions work, but that the device is not suitable as a daily driver. The UBports Community Edition is aimed at community members who want to run their OS on a primary Linux machine and provide feedback to other developers.

In terms of specifications, the phone is in the lower segment. It has an Allwinner A64 cpu of 1.2GHz and 2GB of ram, a camera with 5 megapixels, and an HD screen of 5.95 inches with a resolution of 1440 x 720 pixels. The device does have a battery that can be removed, and a 3.5mm port. The makers write that the phone should be available at the end of May, but that it may take longer due to the corona virus. The phone will then cost $150.