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I think kde is a great choice for this. It's customizable, it has a solid library of kde apps that have been ported or created for a mobile environment, it has an existing large community and like you said it has kde connect, which could allow for a more unified desktop/mobile experience.
That’s great. Personally I don’t use KDE, and haven’t even received my Pinephone yet, but it’s great that they’ve picked a default distro - and it sounds like Manjaro / KDE teams have earned it.
I’ll start with Mobian but will try a few distros.
I think it’s important to focus on a single distro / user experience to get it to a standard where it can be used as a daily driver.
IMO, as long as I can install whatever I want, it doesn't matter what the default is.
Yep, not a fan of Manjaro, but I would flash the OS myself anyways.
KDE Plasma is a great choice. I thought that Phosh would be the shell chosen, because there's Purism team developing it. But Plasma is definitely a very good option. KDE Connect works great with Android. I'm sure that they'll make it work even better in Linux phones
Hmm, I feel like Plasma Mobile fits better to the PinePhone:
You're probably buying the PinePhone as a secondary device, and so it not being yet-another-Android/iOS (which is what Phosh feels like to me), is probably a selling point.
It's marketed as a tinkerer's device, so the tinkerer UI is a good fit.
They market it as a community effort, so choosing the community-developed UI over the company-developed UI makes sense. And probably also just gives them a certain form of independence.
Interesting, most people seem to think Plasma Mobile looks more like Android than Phosh does. That's not a bad thing imo, it's what most people are familiar with so they can get used to it quickly.
Yeah, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. For Purism, it's probably a selling point to be relatively similar to existing platforms, because with that price tag, customers are more likely to buy it as a replacement for their existing phone and then it's really good, if it works similar.
But if you're buying a PinePhone as a secondary device, which makes a lot more sense with its price tag, then you'll be a lot more willing to discover a fresh UI. Since if you're struggling with the UI, you can go back to your Android/iOS device easily.
But I also wasn't just talking about looks. I also imagine that Phosh isn't very customizable (prejudice, because GNOME isn't very customizable).
And even if the default experience is similar, you may want a very customizable UI just for playing around and because you expect something to be different/better from your OSs so far.
And if it isn't clear yet, I should also point out that I know practically nothing about the things that I'm saying here. I'm still saying them, because I have that perspective of a potential customer.
I guess not wanting to depend on an actual competitor (as friendly as this competition might be) probably played a role in the decision not to go with Phosh.
I was happy with this decision as well. I'm impressed with how much plasma mobile has improved the last few months and I'm a fan of kde and plasma in general.
I am not exactly a poweruser of Linux (I have an ubuntu server and have played around with distros on various machines) but I am definitely a fan of this decision. My time with Manjaro + KDE on my desktop was defintely the best linux experience I ever had.
Can not wait to dump Android and move on :)