# I now use the PinePhone as my daily driver

The headline says it all. Well, there is kind of a backstory:

## Breaking Phone Screens

> And if it breaks, you have to buy a new one.
-Strong Bad, describing technology

Is this really how we should treat our devices? From the beginning of my experience with smartphones, I defied the establishment by replacing my screen not once, but twice. A replacement LCD made sense, not just "environmentally", but economically.

Eventually I upgraded phones, and got the OnePlus 3T with a beautiful OLED screen. I had broken my Nexus 5's screen for the third time, and this time I was determined to be more careful. A tempered glass screen protector is a must for these modern devices.
My first break was over a year ago. I thought it would be a good idea to take my phone apart to clean some dust that was in it. I hadn't yet learned the lesson that OLEDs are as fragile as a potato chip, and I also made the mistake of doing this blind (i.e. not reading the ifixit guide first). One oopsie-woopsie later, I'm left with a completely non-functional screen. Youch.
I balked at the price of a replacement screen assembly: Over $100? The phone was, at ~$400, already the most expensive I had bought.
Instead of coughing out the dough, I spent a week without a smartphone. Really. Eventually, it was too difficult to manage, so I ordered the replacement screen¹.

The repair went... not that great. Due to bumps in the frame acquired over time, it didn't want to go back together right. I vowed to never replace that screen ever again.

## The PinePhone and SXMO

Meanwhile, I got a PinePhone, thinking it might be good to have my own fallback device on hand. Eventually I got into SXMO (Simple X Mobile), which had recently added support for the current generation's display protocol. For several months I had been carrying both phones, and often patching SXMO to work better for some purposes.

=> /capsule/ (I've written on my work with SXMO on status updates on my capsule)

Last week, my OnePlus 3T hit the pavement for the last time, and I put my sim card in the PinePhone. At least, I tried to. The 'micro to nano' sim adapter is tricky to insert: if you insert it in without the micro sim, then it will get stuck, and removing it might bend some of the pins².
Being already an adept SXMO 'contribuser' (fixing things on master rather than running edge or stable), I developed a new attitude toward computer problems. Everything that goes wrong is a learning opportunity. "Now's my chance to learn about configuring software to work with pipewire-pulse!"

Configuring MMS was tricky. I had accidentally used the wrong Access Point Name when I configured my mobile network, which didn't prevent 4g from working, but it caused MMS messaging to fail. I had to manually launch `mmsdtng` with the `--debug` flag to even see what the error was. It's like all these disparate pieces were not made to work well together.

I won't get into the pain that is audio calls, because this isn't supposed to be a gripe post. This is fun! This is not all sunshine and roses. This is my journey.

### Footnotes

=> https://social.librem.one/@zachdecook/106026793545575754 1: In the mean time, I borrowed a family member's old iPhone. See also "I used an iPhone for three days".
2: This was all already clearly noted by the pine64 wiki, which I dutifully didn't read before trying.
=> https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy Life-pro-tip for any of you with broken android devices: If you've enabled USB debugging, you can use scrcpy to actually use an old broken-screened-device