Volla Phone Plinius is a rugged phone that ships with Ubuntu Touch or Google-free Android and mid-range specs
transparent back cover with glass coating
Plastic. What we want is plastic. It’s lighter and more durable, and isn’t slippery as hell
Edit: But still glad to see another non-Google-OS phone on the market. Hope they do really well.
Yea I do not understand why so many phones have a glass back. 99% of us put them in a case and the glass is usually shattered after a few years of use. It’s useless and is just more shit to break. Metal or plastic…also the curved edge screens…such a pointless design.
I thought those materials were used because of wireless charging and because they make the phone body double as an antenna.
I don’t think many people use wireless charging compared to just wired. Most people don’t want to spend the extra money on it. Plus it’s slower. Hell I’ve had one phone I tried to force myself to use wireless charging with…and in the end gave up after a few months. Just wasn’t worth it.
i use it ona stand on my deak becase i can interact with it as it sits at about 45° facing me.
I do the same.
Yea I think there are people who do like it, I’m just saying I think the general phone population doesn’t care for it. Do remember the amount of annoyed people, when companies stopped putting in charging bricks.
I was excited to use a magnetic car mount with wireless charging, then discovered that every bump in the road jiggles the contacts and produces error messages on my phone
O damn really? That seems like a terrible design. I saw that the magsafe stuff for my s24 ultra messes up the stylus and was like fuck that. So never touched it.
there are many phones with plastic backs that support wireless charging… is glass back more effective?
it’s probably harder to have good connectivity with metal housing + glass back, even apple suffered with death grips on the iphone 4 after switching from the 3g/s’s plastic body
Who is we? I rock an all glass phone with no case and it’s in perfect condition. If you damage your phone you are a child and should be watched over as such
The manufacturer’s website is hard to use. (Keeps switching between English and German)
Looks like a cool phone we need more Linux phones.
Usa here… Didn’t have issues with the website.
Putting rugged in the headline when there is basically no explanation of why that term applies to this phone and it just looks like a normal phone is very stupid.
We need non Google non apple phones.
Would love to see some with top tier cameras.
5,300 mAh battery for a rugged phone is not much. Most rugged phones have at least 8000 mAh.
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Is Ubuntu Touch usable now?
I just spent the weekend trying to get my non-techie anti-Google relative’s Pine Phone working. Ended up on Mobian with broken camera app due to (old) reports of Ubuntu touch crashing frequently.
Is there a better way?
I’ve been looking into non Google/Apple smartphone alternatives in a serious way since Google set a path to abandon sideloading (it’s happening, they will use a phased approach) as I use a lot of open source apps and I avoid Google Play whenever possible.
For whatever reason it seems Pine Phone is often very difficult to get up and running, this is of course just anecdotal evidence. I actually heard about Pine a long time ago when evaluating their Rock series SBCs; they looked good on paper, but practical implementations left much to be desired.
I am personally saving up for Jolla phone:
https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-sep-ii-2026
I want to get the 12/256 variant, so that works out to €800+.
Pricey considering I’ve been getting mid-range devices ($450 absolute max) for the last 10 years; but this seems like the most user friendly option for a phone that doesn’t run on a US-based software platform.
i only tried it on an android phone that supports ubports via halium and it worked just as well as android though app support was extremely poor. no idea how well it works on a pinephone…
