You're not going to like the pinephone, it just isn't ready for you if you're asking for notifications on your PC.
The calls are okay AT BEST. SMS/MMS have come a long way and should be okay. Battery life is MAYBE a day, if you're lucky. Anything beyond that is painful unless you want to spend hours getting it to work with your own code.
Your friend should find a better, more lazy way to transfer files. People have commented about some and there is lots more.
I'd bet they're going after the big group chats of people sharing illegal material, not so much private chats.