A common complaint with modern smartphones is that they are black boxes. Android and iOS are complicated pieces of software, each with hundreds (if not thousands) of independent functions running in the background. Even when we explicitly turn off certain functions, our phones don’t always do as they’re told. That’s part of what makes the PinePhone so alluring — it’s one of the few mobile devices with hardware switches for common features, giving you full control over your smartphone.
The PinePhone is a smartphone developed by Pine64, a company that has been selling ARM-based products since 2015. The first fully-functional versions went on sale earlier this year after years of development, but Pine64 has also started selling Community Editions with various Linux distributions pre-installed. That’s right, the PinePhone is built to run Linux.
We talked about the PinePhone’s general hardware and software in a previous article, but there’s one feature that deserves more attention — the hardware killswitches found underneath the rear case. Once you open up the PinePhone, you get access to six induvidual dip switches that control the modem, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microphone, rear camera, front camera, and even the headphone jack…
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