I'm actually considering buying one as a companion device for my remote work setup. I've got a few ideas.

1.) using the display output to my portable monitor with a bluetooth mouse and keyboard to have a backup machine I can work from in case my primary laptop dies.

2.) using the wifi hotspot feature while the pinephone connected to a hotel/house's wired connection to effectively make a wifi access point. Have my devices and anyone I travel with connect to it and install pihole via Docker on manjaro for DNS. (if anyone has the pinephone and can speak to using it as an access point in this way or has ideas for a full on router: please do feel free to educate me).

3.) Mobile wifi hotspot (I've heard its performance in this use case is better than Android. But that's mostly hearsay from other forums).

4.) a portable guitar rig solution. I play guitar and have a headless bolt-on electric guitar I travel with when doing extended stays. I am considering using a combo jack splitter I have to plug my guitar output into the "microphone" input of the pinephone, then run Carla as a virtual amplifier host to route the signal with guitar effects back out to my headphones for private playing fun. May see about routing to a D.I. box if I can find good enough sounds I like.

5.) Portable local nextcloud instance on Manjaro (found a Snapd instance i could run). I dual boot my work laptop for Windows and Linux, have multiple profiles on my GrapheneOS Pixel, and regularly find an external storage device useful. If I could run a storage solution for each and every one of those that runs wirelessly, that'd just be handy to have. And all the benefit of a Nextcloud server without needing external internet access sounds pretty convenient when doing anything offline.

6.) rsync host to back up savestates on a linux capable gaming console. I have the original Anbernic RG35xx. Looking at picking up the plus when GarlicOS has more features built out. I'm hoping to set up a regular rsync via SSH between the pinephone and the RG35xx so that way my hours of grinding on retro games gets backed up on more than just one SD card.

7.) Hotel TV media center upgrade. I could do Jellyfin on it, but I've also considered just having KDE connect paired with VLC. Either way: having a device other than my laptop plugged up to the hotel tv would just be nice.

8.) bluetooth receiver for speakers.

I've got a few ideas. Happy to hear more if anyone wants to share or has thoughts on more efficiently achieving any of mine.

Physical. Support your local library!

This is the Original Poster:

I have found what I believe works for my needs and wanted to share.

https://moondroplab.com/en/products/jiu

An additional item that aided me in my search was learning the vocabulary. When I searched for "earbuds", i kept finding the wrong items. When I searches for "In Ear Monitors" or "IEMs", suddenly i found appropriate results.

Good luck to everyone out there!

I would think that would be the preferable option, but I haven't had any luck with the 3 that I have tried. I've tried one from Google, and two from Logitech. The Logitech ones both were too quiet, and all 3 seem to have occasional missed-triggers with inline controls when my home screen is locked. For some reason, only Apple's USB-C Earbuds have behaved consistently well. I would be willing to settle for those, but they just keep slipping out of my head.

In fairness: I haven't tried Apple's specific dongle with my other earbuds. But I haven't felt much confidence with dongles in general thus far. If I can't find a USB-C set of earbuds that ticks the original post boxes, I may just have to gamble on that dongle.

Thank you again for this suggestion.

Thank you very much for this post. I realize you gave me the right answer to the wrong question, because of my poor wording. My mistake. I have updated my original post. I should have specified I am looking for "earbuds" rather than "headphones".

regardless: these articles are helpful. Thank you!

I have two phones. One has a headphone jack and isn't compatible with my carrier. The inline controls work fine on that phone. If I plug in the USBC dongle I got from google, the controls will pause, but won't play again if the screen goes to sleep. Same for the USB-C Dongles I've gotten from Logitech.

My primary phone has no headphone jack. the configs I've tried above all yield the same results.

2 phones, multiple earbud sets, and 3 different USB-C dongles. Same behavior across stock android, LineageOS, and GrapheneOS.

When I tried the earbuds from Apple, the controls work great. but they keep slipping out of my ear.

That's why I'm looking for earbuds that terminate into a USB-C jack.

Do you use a USB-C to 3.55mm adapter? If so, what phone and set of earbuds have you had success with?

I know music has already been stated, but learning an instrument during my episodes greatly helped me. It's not super interesting at first, but if your symptoms are like mine and others, sometimes just having the boring distraction of practicing a scale pattern can be that helpful. Learning the patterns of the major scale and doing that repeatedly can just be a nice way to productively occupy your mind and hands long enough for the episodes to pass when they get bad. And once you get to a point where you passively start hearing different ways to play that scale, you begin to improvise and it can actually go from boredom to fun. Another cool trick is that if you're used to typical 12 note scale stuff and associate Major sounds with "happy" sounds, it can give your brain just a little cognitive dissonance and help jolt you out of some moods if you're in a lighter episode.

Again: it's something that has worked for me. I don't think there's anything wrong with you if it doesn't work for you. But maybe it could be worth trying if you have access to an instrument.