TL;DR: Pine64 discontinued the PinePhone Pro in August 2025. It didn't sell. At $400 (twice the original PinePhone's price) buyers balked. Developers never finished the software. Meanwhile, postmarketOS now runs better on a $50 used Pixel 3a than on Pine64's flagship. The company's pivoting to RISC-V boards instead.
The Announcement Nobody Wanted
Pine64 dropped the news in their August 2025 community update: the PinePhone Pro is done. No more production runs. No surprise successor waiting in the wings.
"It didn't sell well enough to keep production going," the company stated. After nearly four years on the market, the flagship Linux phone experiment is over.
The PinePhone Pro launched in late 2021 with genuine promise. A Rockchip RK3399S processor (custom-tuned with Rockchip's engineers for mobile use), 4GB RAM, 128GB storage, Gorilla Glass 4. Real upgrades over the original's aging Allwinner A64 chip. Pine64 priced it at $400 and positioned it as the serious Linux phone for serious enthusiasts.
The market disagreed.
Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts
The Pro's failure wasn't one catastrophic flaw. It was everything, compounding:
The price problem. The original PinePhone sells for $200. The Pro cost twice that. For a device that couldn't reliably make phone calls for its first year, that premium was a tough sell. Even Pine64's core audience (tinkerers who accept broken software) had limits.
Software never caught up. The Pro used a different SoC than the original, which meant separate driver development. Four years later, the device tree still wasn't mainlined in the Linux kernel. Power management remained "not ready for daily driver use" according to Pine64's own wiki. The front camera driver only recently landed upstream. WiFi worked. Bluetooth worked. But the polish that makes a phone usable? Never arrived.
The competition changed. Here's what killed the Pro more than anything: you don't need Pine64 hardware to run Linux on a phone anymore. PostmarketOS runs on a Google Pixel 3a, a phone you can buy used for $50. The OnePlus 6, Fairphone 4, and Samsung Galaxy S9 all have better postmarketOS support than the PinePhone Pro ever achieved. Why pay $400 for incomplete software when $50 gets you something more functional?
The audience was always tiny. Mobile Linux appeals to a sliver of a sliver of phone buyers. Privacy enthusiasts who won't touch GrapheneOS. Developers who want to hack on phone software. People who'd rather fight their device than use it. That's maybe a few thousand buyers worldwide. Not enough to sustain manufacturing.
What This Means for Privacy
The PinePhone Pro's death shrinks an already small market. If you want a phone that doesn't report to Google or Apple, your options are:
- GrapheneOS on a Pixel: The most practical privacy phone. Still Android, still Google hardware, but de-Googled and hardened.
- Original PinePhone: Pine64 says they'll keep making these for two more years. $200, slower hardware, but better software support than the Pro ever had.
- Librem 5: Purism's offering. $699 and perpetually backordered. Similar software maturity problems.
- PostmarketOS on mainstream phones: Increasingly viable. Check their device list for what works.
None of these are "buy it and forget it" solutions. They all require compromises. The dream of a truly open, privacy-respecting phone that just works remains exactly that: a dream.
Pine64's Pivot to RISC-V
Pine64 isn't leaving hardware. They're leaving phones. The company's energy is now focused on RISC-V single-board computers:
- Oz64: $12.99 entry-level board with mixed ARM and RISC-V cores
- Star64: $89.99 with four 1.5GHz RISC-V cores and 8GB RAM
- StarPro64: $249.99 premium option with SiFive P550 cores
RISC-V is an open instruction set architecture: no licensing fees, no proprietary blobs required. For a company built on open hardware principles, it makes sense. Phones are a brutal market with razor-thin margins and demanding users. Hobbyist SBCs have loyal customers who expect to tinker.
Pine64 also mentioned "a little bit of AI" in their future plans. Whatever that means.
If You Own a PinePhone Pro
Your phone isn't becoming a brick. Pine64 committed to producing spare parts for up to two years, depending on demand. Batteries, screens, and mainboards should remain available for repairs.
Software development continues. It's community-driven, not dependent on Pine64. Megi's kernel tree remains the most complete option. PostmarketOS, Mobian, and Manjaro ARM will keep pushing updates as long as developers stay interested.
Pine Store will also sell refurbished PinePhone Pro units for a limited time if you want a backup device. Check their store in late August 2025.
The Mobile Duopoly Wins Again
Apple and Google control 99% of the smartphone market. Every attempt to build an alternative (Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, Windows Phone, webOS) has failed. The PinePhone Pro joins that graveyard.
The problem isn't technical. It's economic. Building a phone requires massive capital. Maintaining software requires an army of developers. Competing with ecosystems containing millions of apps requires miracles. Pine64 was never going to beat the duopoly. They were trying to carve out a niche for people who'd accept less functionality for more freedom.
Turns out that niche is too small to sustain even modest production runs.
For now, if you want mobile privacy, your best bet remains a Pixel running GrapheneOS or CalyxOS. It's a compromise: Google hardware funding Google's surveillance empire. But the software works. The apps exist. The phone functions as a phone.
The PinePhone Pro proved that idealism alone doesn't ship products. The market for a truly open phone exists. It's just not big enough to matter.
References
- Pine64 - A Quick Community Update on PinePhone Pro and What's Next (August 2025)
- The Register - PinePhone Pro canned in pursuit of RISC-V business
- Liliputing - PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone has been discontinued
- How-To Geek - You Can't Buy This Linux Phone Anymore
- Pine64 Wiki - PinePhone Pro Documentation
- postmarketOS Wiki - Supported Devices