I love the concept and would buy it in a heartbeat, even at Apple level premiums, but that spec sheet.... 2/3 GB RAM is not enough in the Android world of 2020/2021. And eMMC storage instead of UFS? Oooof.
Shame, I really want to support the own your phone initiative(user replaceable battery, no more walled gardens, no more telemetry out the wazoo) and willing to pay the premium but I also want my device not to be a huge downgrade on my daily driver and go back to 2012 Andorid hardware.
The kind of ecosystem that Pine are trying to foster tends to produce much, much leaner software though. Of course, at the moment there are simply some apps (like Telegram IIRC) that are thin wrappers around a web app. But taking f-droid as a reference, compared to the play store, I have great hopes to end up with a less bloated stack.
Cynics would call the apps on f-droid feature poor. But for me, the FOSS apps that I use day to day tend to just do the thing you need them for, no more.
There's no telemetry overhead, they tend to use fewer dependencies, are less likely to be built on heavy frameworks like electron. Of course there's heavy sampling bias involved in this since I specifically select apps that feel snappy and light.
But this has always been true for linux desktop apps, too.
My favourite comparison is the size of pdf viewers. I have never lacked a feature from the Adobe pdf reader. The 400KB binary of evince totally sufficed, and it used much fewer resources at runtime, too.
I really hope that this ecosystem can push the boundaries of what's possible with lower-spec hardware, even if just to hold the mirror to the big platforms.
> Cynics would call the apps on f-droid feature poor.
Maybe for some apps. NewPipe absolutely destroys the official YouTube app in terms of features. Plus, I'd consider "don't spy on you or shove ads down your throat" to be a couple of very compelling features.
Yes, and from how I understand it, it is also a native app in android/ios.
But I just checked on my Mobian install on the pinephone and that app looks a lot like the telegram web app. Which, by the way, is one of the best executions of webapps I've seen to date.
Edit:
I should clarify, I mean the telegram app that came preinstalled on mobian. There may be others that I'm not aware of. On ubports there were at least two IIRC
Edit 2:
And going by this GH issue [1] there is in principle no reason to not run the native QT app on the pinephone. Of course, I'm not sure how it would handle the sreen size etc. And it is only for the snaps apparently.
Edit 3: disregard edit 2, I'm stupid. Thanks to @linmob for the correction. :)
It has to start somewhere, with hardware where it IS possible to run open-source software without too much reverse-engineering and fighting NDAs and so on.
Supporting them NOW means that later, what you want, will be possible. It's an investment into a better future..
The Pinephone thus far is mostly for tinkerers. The super low price point is what will enable the community to form. It's not really a mainstream daily phone yet.
Maybe the Fairphone is something for you? It's 3x the price but still far from premium pricing gives you a decent 4G/64G Android phone without fuss. I had their first phone which was good enough for an everyday phone and support in Lineage was great. Removable battery, 3.5mm jack, and they try to keep spare parts around for at least a new years.
Yeah, from my experience the speed of RAM makes the biggest difference in regular usage. It's especially visible in GTK apps which perform noticeably better on the Librem 5. Compilation times on L5 are also much shorter. GPU is another factor, but obviously that matters only in GPU-heavy workflows, like games (or at least should, there are still some optimizations in phoc to be done ;)).
From obvious things that matter a lot in regular usage I'd also mention that L5 supports 5GHz WiFi that PP doesn't (and I've already seen some places with 5GHz-only WiFi), and its screen is much prettier (colors and blacks - I don't have many objective measures, but the difference is obvious in person).
Anyway, that table seems a bit inaccurate in a few places. Video out on USB-C is not limited to 1080p, cameras are not using MIPI CSI but parallel interface, not sure how to interpret meaning of 4 channels in the codec (it's a stereo codec, so mostof the paths have 2 channels, L/R and number of inputs/outputs is way larger - in the range of 20 or so), also it's not limited to 48kHz, but to to 192kHz.
I see that I was mixing up inputs/outputs and channels. The A64 supports 4 inputs and 4 outputs, but only two channels in the DAC and ADC. I see that the DAC supports 8 - 192 kHz, but the ADC only supports 8 - 48 kHZ. OK, I'll clarify that in the table.
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2.8.Audio Subsystem
Audio Codec
•Two audio digital-to-analog(DAC) channels
•Stereo capless headphone drivers:
-100dB SNR@A-weight
-Support DAC Sample Rates from 8KHz to 192KHz
•Support analog/ digital volume control
•Differential earpiece driver
•Analog low-power loop from line-in/microphone to headphone/earpiece outputs
•Support Dynamic Range Controller(DRC) adjusting the DAC playback output
•Accessory button press detection
•Four audio inputs:
-Twodifferential microphone inputs
-One differential Phone input
-Stereo Line-in L/R input
•Four audio outputs:
-Earpiece amplifier differential output
-Phone amplifier differential output
-Headphone amplifier L/R channel output
-Line-out L/R output
•Two audio analog-to-digital(ADC) channels
-96dB SNR@A-weight
-Supports ADC Sample Rates from 8KHz to 48KHz
•Support Automatic Gain Control(AGC) and Dynamic Range Control(DRC) adjusting the ADC recording output
•Two PCM interface connected with BB and BT
•One 128x24-bits FIFO for data transmit, one 64x24-bits FIFO for data receive
Terminology around camera sensor interface module is confusing. MIPI CSI is supposed to be a camera serial interface. Cameras on Pinephone are connected via a 8-bit parallel interface.
I'm also not sure how they came up with 5Mpix in the datasheet, CSI can do up to 4800x4800 which is 23Mpix.
OTOH, 1080p@30fps is not attainable on the parallel interface, at least not with the cameras that are in the phone. It would require ~120MHz clock, and communication starts to break down at around 60-70MHz.
Looking at the pin description on page 24 of the A64 Datasheet, it looks like the 8 data pins (CSI_D0 … CSI_D7) are for a MIPI Camera Parallel Interface (CPI), but Allwinner is calling it "CSI" (MIPI Camera Serial Interface).
This is really confusing, but I am simply repeating what the A64 docs say.
Out of curiosity, what is the highest-resolution still photo anyone has taken so far on the PinePhone? Maybe I should list that in the table.
Is 1080p@15fps the best video anyone has managed so far with the PinePhone?
Shame, I really want to support the own your phone initiative(user replaceable battery, no more walled gardens, no more telemetry out the wazoo) and willing to pay the premium but I also want my device not to be a huge downgrade on my daily driver and go back to 2012 Andorid hardware.