It is frustrating to me that despite the blunt verbiage about it being a beta device for software and hardware developers, people even here are griping about it being not ready for everyday use. If a free and open-source mobile operating system is missing software support for a feature you want, please contribute to its development.
How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver? I see the fragmented approach on the software side as a major hindrance to the goal of achieving a device that can be used by a normal person as a reasonable replacement for other smart phones.
I check in on it every l every 6 months or so, update my pinephone and give it a few days. So far, it doesn't meet reliability or usability for serious use.
It's a high caliber foot gun of a methodology - if they corralled all of the effort and enthusiasm currently scattered amongst a dozen (!) different os's and communities, they could establish a high quality functional baseline.
The hardware is great. The mission is great. The software is fragmented and scattered and missing the force multipliers that focused collaborative development could bring. There's not enough to riff on, toomuch goes wrong in complicated ways, and so the device is an exercise in frustration instead of a passion project.
> How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver?
Zero. What is needed is a few hundred developers writing actually code to make it useful. The enthusiasts are at best nice to haves. You can blur the line if you write good bug reports, but right now the pinephone doesn't need end users.
The above will change over time. Millions of users would be enough to force carriers to support activating it on their network, something that developers cannot do (at least not legally). Likewise large numbers of users would be enough to those banking apps written. However today millions of users wouldn't make any difference to the important parts of making it work (except in so far as users sometimes become developers)
> How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver?
I know your question was rhetorical, but when I think about this, it took close to 20 years of Linux maturing on the desktop before I felt comfortable handing a family member a laptop running Linux. As an enthusiast, I started running it much earlier, but everyday tasks like "printing" or "using Wi-Fi" prevented it from being a daily driver.
Personal computing, though, had a much deeper hacker culture, that encouraged pushing the hardware to its limits, and doing new and novel things with it. Progress stemmed from that (Windows including BSD sockets, for instance). I've never seen anything similar in the phone ecosystem - as soon as you play outside of the walled garden, you drop off into fringe territory. And the PinePhone, as much as I love it, is by definition outside of the walled garden.
I'm not sure, given the culture around phones, we might ever get to the point of it being viable.
For tracing, at least Sailfish OS has an app called Contrac [1]. I looked into porting it over to other PinePhone OS, but with the CRUST and deep sleep, it would not really be useful there anyway (as it would not be active most of the time).
Regarding QR certificates, there’s Vakzination [2].
It's kinda weird anyway, for showing a QR code it being an app adds no benefit. You can just print the QR code and keep it in your pocket. It's valid for 1 year in most places.
On iOS PassBook would be the ideal place for this, not a separate app.
I do have mine on my phone but just in case.. Here we don't need the code unless we go to the disco, and I'm too old for that anyway.
Either way I'm vaccinated so code or not I've done the right thing :)
Even though I'm vaccinated, I have no interest whatsoever of proving it with any kind of "code", "star of David" or whatever the fuck Faucists want me to prove it with.
> I check in on it every l every 6 months or so, update my pinephone and give it a few days.
Why did you buy the phone? They pretty much shout that they are only targeting developers who can bring about your dream. They never promised what you're expecting of them.
> if they corralled all of the effort and enthusiasm currently scattered amongst a dozen (!) different OSes and communities, they could establish a high quality functional baseline.
If Apple and Microsoft combined efforts on Mac OS/Windows, they'd do amazing things too - but that's not going to happen either: once formed, organizations expend significant energy in self-perpertuating. Perhaps you could pick a promising project (or a couple of complementary ones), and support them technically or financially.
TBH I think having a flutter port for this operating mobile system is probably the most likely way for it to succeed. That way you can do a flutter app and it will work on this too, while still having mainline OS support.
Then you would need to fill in some common services like push and such.
Yeah it's really close already and has adoption in the mobile world, which is why I would suggest the community adopt that vs something else like mobile gtk. I dunno how optimized flutter desktop for linux is for the mobile version, maybe all it will take is a view port change and implementing some more mobile orientated apis like location & orientation changes.
I think that is actually counter productive, since the emulated apps will always be shittier than their native counterparts, and you need to constantly deal with telemetry shims for Apple & Google lest the apps wont work properly.
Hundreds of millions. That's how many you need for mainstream apps to be built.
Even Microsoft couldn't get past that hurdle and money is not a problem for them.
Android compatibility might help somewhat but it will undermine the usefulness of the open platform by introducing the very things it fights against. The OS is not the only problem. Apps can still datamine the Android layer then. You won't be much better off than with a privacy focused Android fork.
I don't know if fragmented is the right word. Just like desktop Linux, mobile Linux has pretty much settled on one major standard (Phosh a la Gnome) and slightly less popular alternative (Plasma Mobile a la KDE). Sure, you can go about customizing it to your whims, but fragmentation isn't nearly that bad, especially since the distribution options are so much lesser.
The problem really is getting the commercial software people want on the phone. But if you just want to use it as a phone (e.g. no special apps or mobile games), it does most of that in a pretty streamlined manner (albeit, rougher than the commercial options).
As a owner of many pine64 products I wish there was a clear path to learning how to contribute. My last time coding was C++ class over 16 years ago and I wish I had some sort of idea on how to get started with hobby programming in my spare time as an adult.
Edit// Especially since I've jumped on the ARM bandwagon and replaced my desktop with an M1 mac and my laptop with a Pinebook Pro.
Cool! This is the kind of thing I've wondered about for a while. This looks like some handy info.
Is there an option to use a higher level language like Python and these QT libraries still? I don't have a ton of time to contribute, but this might be a way forward for me someday.
EDIT: Your 2nd link is literally what I was asking about, although it's using Gtk3. I'm not familiar with either in depth, so I'm not picky there. That's really useful. Thanks for this!
Heh. Contributing to open source is....interesting. Pine64 really seems to only do the hardware aspect, everything else is up to others.
I guess I would ask: how do you want to contribute? Is there a specific niche you want to help fix? That's how I got involved, I wanted MMS (and later visual voicemail) for my Pinephone.. Or perhaps there's a specific project you like that needs help, or theres a particular bug that annoys you in a FOSS project. Those may be the best ways to get involved to help.
Just pick something that bothers you or you think is missing and start working on it. I'd recommend something application, as opposed to system, level to get started. That way you can develop using something like Python and not worry about lots of other dependencies on whatever you're working on.
There generally isn't much in the way of formal organization in the open source world... just scratch an itch that you have. There are relatively few people working on things specific to Linux on mobile so even a modest contribution can have a big impact. For example, the developer of the Megapixels camera app, which is a vast improvement over what existed previously but still needs much work, just wanted a better camera app.
It certainly depends on what feature or what app you would like to work on. Mobian and Manjaro are both on GitLab, and the public is able to create an account. Issues there may be marked Help Wanted or similar.
In regard to motivation to continue programming, that can be the most difficult. Overall if you are proud of your work and find it useful yourself, you will probably continue the habit of contributing and supporting your code.
I feel like programmers have become "soft". I bet the old guard is okay with something like this - a lot of C, C++, assembly skills - this is what it meant to mess around with computers!
Now, you can just be modifying CSS and call yourself a programmer. You get one of these devices, and you're sorely disappointed!
As the complexity of our every day devices increase, less and less people are capable of contributing anything meaningful to an OS like Linux, let alone in their free time. It also doesn't help that the abundance of high level languages discourages learning about computer internals in younger generations.
Language is very small part of it. For example me contributing a anx7688 driver for pinephone to make convergence work was C coding, yes, but also reading through type-c spec, battery charging 1.2 spec, usb-pd specs, alt-dp specs, and figuring out how it all works from 0 knowledge, to tie all that together on a quirky HW design, with several hardware bugs that I had to discover first, and non-cooperating PMIC/and type-c controller, on 3 different pinephone HW variants.
C coding is the easiest thing. Hard part is figuring out what needs to be done and getting quite detailed understanding of how everything works on HW level, lots of trying and testing with various USB devices in various scenarios. There's also a lot of reverse engineering, because no HW vendor cooperates with random fucks from the internet and gives them free support. :)
Killer apps for me are physical keyboard, GUI bootloader that can do multi-boot (so that I can switch between one of the mobile distros and a Xorg based i3wm desktop, because there's no way mobile distros will ever have reasonable performance for convergence use), convergence with accelerated video playback and a reasonably smooth web browsing, possibility to run Arch Linux ARM as is with access to the entire package repository of software (that is not ad laden or spyware by default) on my fingertips, and full control over the security of my phone by being sure I can run my OS without the CPU ever touching any code on any modifiable storage inside the phone,... :) That's already there with original Pinephone.
I'm currently TA:ing my uni's Introductory Computer Engineering class (from logic gates to assembly). It's not as much of a weed out class as you'd think and yes, it's the first class they take, along side some introductory python. Most of them do seem to hate the assembly part though personally I found the part where you have to actually make an instruction to be much harder when I had to take this class
The pool of programmers has grown. There are more good programmers than ever, but the barrier to entry is also lower. It isn't necessary to pass through that kind of trial by fire anymore.
I don't think the elitism here is necessary or even the root of the issue of code contributions. The apps currently present in these PinePhone operating systems were developed and are supported by knowledgeable and hardworking PinePhone users, but the fewer developers there are, the more limited the support is.
I don't see anything elitist. Anyone can learn assembly language, C, and even C++ and Rust with a bit more dedication.
Anyway, much of the work getting these phones ready as daily drivers is in getting apps that run on them mature. There are lots of languages adequate for apps.
Though a bit elitist, his comment isn't discouraging anybody, and does hold some truth in that getting closer to the hardware allows you to do things you can't do otherwise.
I feel like it's unfair to disparage him as harshly as that.
What's elitist in learning a craft properly? Working with a higher level language doesn't mean that learning C, C++, algorithms, data structures and a bit of math isn't terrible useful.
Part of the problem is that the meaning of “beta” has gotten extremely diluted, and is often used as a CYA rather than an actual indicator of where the software is in the dev cycle. Gmail was in “public beta” for what, five years? Game companies routinely give out “alpha” access that’s really more of a pre-release test and hype tool.
I bought a "beta edition" regular PinePhone and it seemed anything but "beta." Random crashes after boot every 30 seconds, even with "workarounds" such as patching the memory frequency (really?). This may have been a hardware defect but one of the nice things about calling everything a "beta" as an excuse for the flakiness I'll never know. It was essentially a paperweight, not something that would enable me to become a "contributor."
Unless you are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars though your money isn't really useful. Developers are on the higher end of the income curve and so few people alone can afford to hire them like that. You can donate a few hundred so several projects, it will make a difference, but thousands of other people need to do the same before they can hire even one person (and the first people hired will do more IT or administrative work that needs to be done)
It's done by purchasing the device, many folks purchasing it, which I already did. In fact someone might consider starting a company (haha), or funneling the money to a single engineering source.
I happen to work for a company that employs a team of people to do just that, which allows me and others to work on mobile GNU/Linux ecosystem full-time. It's called Purism, and the product that pays for it is called Librem 5.
I've not used this particular device, but I have used Quectel GNSS modules, and they've been a surprisingly helpful company to work with. I'm a nobody, and working with Sony, Trimble, or ublox has been an exercise in frustration; you have to convince a salesperson that you're a big company and you can sell thousands of devices in order to just read the datasheet. This one does have some of the documents locked behind an access request, but in my experience, they've been very generous with those grants.
which is pretty good. Americans will want 4G bands B2, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 41, 66, and 71; this implements 9/15, it's missing bands 14, 17, 29, 30, 66, and 71. Those missing bands are either subsets or supersets of other bands (which could be interesting from a firmware perspective - will a tower with a band 66 antenna give this modem some of the central band 4 subset, or will it try to negotiate a channel that this can't access?), little-used ATT bands, or the 600 MHz T-mobile band 71, which has a wide rollout but poor device support.
My biggest question is, if I buy this phone today, with AT&T allow it on their network? My gut says no, they've been brandishing an ugly whitelist around for their big LTE push in February...
Nope, even before February they won't let you use the device, unfortunately. They're shutting down "incompatible" (non-whitelisted) devices and shipping out anything from $50 to used flagship replacements (pre-activated, so as soon as you receive the new one, your existing one will be shut off).
Unfortunately T-Mobile isn't a great option for this phone either, because the phone lacks band 71 (T-Mobile's only nationwide low-band). It may work well in some areas, but have no coverage in others. Verizon has a sort of pseudo-whitelist; you probably will have to activate a whitelisted phone and then swap the SIM, but it may work.
> will a tower with a band 66 antenna give this modem some of the central band 4 subset, or will it try to negotiate a channel that this can't access?
Here in the US (and likely in other places), carriers use MFBI[0] to solve this issue - it lets them broadcast both AWS-1 (as B4 and B66) and AWS-3 (as B66 only).
This first came into use when AT&T wanted to use B17 (Lower 700MHz blocks B-C) for their LTE network, rather than B12 (Lower 700MHz A-C). This prevented users from bringing their phones to smaller carriers (T-Mobile and US Cellular), who had significant 700A holdings. The FCC eventually pushed ATT to use both B12 and B17.
> little-used ATT bands
This phone likely wouldn't work on AT&T anyway - despite California's SB822 [1] forbidding it, they whitelist only specific devices on their network, and can go as far as soft blocking your account if you have one that is incompatible. I've linked the compatible phone list[2] below.
SB822's net neutrality provision has already been upheld in court (AT&T subscribers lost "data-free TV" on AT&T owned platforms because of it), but it remains to be seen whether other provisions (bans on tethering restrictions or device whitelisting, for instance) will be upheld as well.
That said, one nitpick I'd have is that these bands aren't necessarily "little-used" - B14 is FirstNet spectrum, and AT&T is currently rolling it out to a point where it reaches 99% of the population indoors. That's a strong commitment, and the band's support for HPUE means it can support coverage further than others at a similar frequency. B30 is WCS, which AT&T uses for capacity in a lot of places - but at 2300MHz it's not particularly useful for coverage. B17 is irrelevant due to MFBI and B29 is supplemental downlink (only useful for capacity).
It's important to think about the carrier aggregation combos that this device supports too - for folks who live in cities, carrier aggregation means a significantly more usable experience when the networks are congested. I don't see a supported list for that modem online, but it would depend on which are enabled in firmware anyway.
> 600 MHz T-mobile band 71, which has a wide rollout but poor device support.
As for T-Mobile; Band 71 is necessary in a lot of places, because they've been spectrum constrained for a long time. Until the 2017 auction for this 600MHz spectrum (which was rebanded from Digital TV service), they had no nationwide low-band holdings (unlike AT&T, who held many 850MHz Cellular licenses from decades ago, and Verizon, who won nationwide licenses to the 700MHz Upper C block in 2008). In 2015, they picked up licenses in the the Lower 700MHz range, mostly exclusive to A block - but they acquired almost none in US Cellular markets (much of the midwest, and parts of the northeast/northwest).
It's difficult to build out a network on midband alone - cell sites must be spaced far closer, and in-building coverage is very poor. This was one of T-Mobile's main limiting factors for a long time, and they didn't truly resolve it until that 2017 auction.
T-Mobile had a reputation for a long time for dropping service as soon as you entered a large building - this is why. Physics mean that lower frequencies are useful to telcos because they travel further, while higher frequencies are useful because they can carry more data.
The post-auction DTV transition wasn't short - it happened over 9 or 10 phases, which extended from 2018 until early 2020 (and were then extended again, due to the pandemic). This is part of why phones seem to have poor support - the 600MHz band is not widely used for cellular outside of the US and Canada even today, so it's common on popular phones made for those markets[3], but not in more niche devices like the PinePhone.
I received a Pinephone in the latest shipment, about three weeks ago. I also got the convergence dock to be able to attach a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I am extremely motivated to get off Android on my phone, and yet my Pinephone has already been discarded (and I never even put a SIM card in it).
There are far too many out-of-the-box bugs and glitches to consider this a usable product. For example, the convergence dock will not display on a monitor. Firefox browser displays too wide for the phone screen, so unusable. A dozen other issues on first day.
Even a development board should work better than this, have documentation of the known problems, and have some support mechanism that works.
I don't think better/more expensive hardware is the problem. It's software, caused by lack of users, lack of investment, and too many "competing" distributions of Linux.
In the article we are discussing, the gist of your concerns is addressed. The pinephone (and mobile Linux in general) is extremely immature and only really for hobbyists and people developing for it. You expected a daily driver, right now it is a toy for nerds.
Lack of users, investment and too many competing distros were all given in the early days of desktop Linux as reasons why it was simply not worthwhile. The thing is, this phase of development, where some devices exist that only nerds play with for a while, is necessary for there to ever be a mature Linux mobile UX. When you buy one of these devices you're not buying a Linux phone, you're choosing to participate in the process by which a Linux phone becomes a reality. And that process is picking up steam, Ubuntu tried it, many people have run Linux on their android devices with unlocked bootloaders, but pine (and librem and others) have actually created a market environment where things are actually advancing, and in my opinion advancing much faster than desktop Linux did.
I largely agree with the assessment. I am still glad I bought mine, because even though it is gathering dust, I am hoping the purchase contributed somewhat to a better mobile future.
I may have mentioned it before, but default OS is just painful to use ( thankfully, there are other options ). And here is the part of the problem. I am motivated to use it. Right now it still feels so janky, most people won't even get past initial boot process.
I think the message / take away is : developers, developers, developers. Something that quickly evolves by the shared power of a lot of minds. If you are buying it, toss it away and don’t contribute, this will hamper future succes.
> When you buy one of these devices you're not buying a Linux phone, you're choosing to participate in the process by which a Linux phone becomes a reality.
That is very true, and I would add that some of this reality is already in front of us. How many Android or Apple devices can run full featured office suites, graphics and audio manipulation software, development systems etc. complete browsers, electronics simulation software, etc, and I mean the real ones, not cut down mobile versions, all for free? Probably none.
The problem with the PinePhone is that it still lacks functionality in those two fields where 99.9% of normal non tech users would want it to excel, that is, calls and messaging. Non tech users want it for calls, SMS, MMS and Whatsapp, period, and they very much prefer a costly Android or Apple phone that addresses those needs although it would be way inferior in everything else, including privacy and security.
I think the PinePhone developers are already addressing some of these requirements, so hopefully it's a matter of time, but for most people, being able to run the WhatsApp client at decent speed would be the killer feature. No matter if run sandboxed with Android libraries, under a VM or reverse engineered; WhatsApp compatibility is the #1 feature that could bring the most users on the PinePhone bandwagon.
Well, it does work as a phone; you can call telephone numbers with it.
But that's not what you mean when you say "phone" is it? The word "phone" is synonymous at this point with "mini computer."
What if it were sold as a phone with a big caveat, loudly announced, that said "this thing is for tinkerers and developers and is not ready for causal daily use"? That's the thing, it is marketed that way. You bought something you didn't want, you want what it is going to be, and we are all very excited about it and a bit impatient, but we cannot blame the product for ourselves being impatient.
It's not the Pine organization's fault that you have a different definition of "toy" and "phone" than they do - and it's definitely your fault that you didn't read the numerous prominent disclaimers spread all across their site that the PinePhone is not a finished product.
I hear you both. I'm new to Linux, and when the Pinephone said it was for "advanced Linux users" I figured "how hard can it be?". I bought one and 24 hours later decided to pass it on. Turns out they really do mean "advanced"!
> This is the Beta Edition of the PinePhone. The pre-installed Manjaro with Plasma Mobile OS, that ships with this edition of the PinePhone, is a beta software build. This effectively means that while core functionality of the PinePhone still an ongoing effort. Thus, the device cannot considered a consumer-ready product.
They have always been honest about what it is for. It is your fault for not knowing that when ordering. A little research reveals plenty of people are using it as their daily phone, but all agree that there are rough edges to fix.
Android handsets aren't really linux boxes. I can't ssh into them, I can't write little python scripts, etc. An actual, general purpose, real foss portable phone factor computer will be amazing as it matures.
There's nothing new here. I remember having those features in the Nokia N900 in 09. I think this product is grossly overpriced for a cheap generic Android phone loaded with a beta Linux distro. In Shenzhen they'll sell you a case of 50 for $400. Save your money or buy a Quest 2.
It took Google tens of thousands of paid top tier developer hours to make Android useable. I'm betting never. In a year or two there's going to be some nasty passive aggressive apology blaming the woes of the world for why it couldn't happen and these guys will go home with their big sack of money. Seriously you want a shit Android ARM phone loaded with a beta Linux distro? Let's order a lot from Shenzhen and everyone can pay the $50 it's worth.
> Does someone who sells you a PC (HW) promise you that the software you load on it later will be bug-free?
No, but if someone was selling PCs with super buggy software that regularly crashes your OS or prevents everyday functionality from working, people would be returning those PCs en masse, even if the hardware maker wasn't responsible for the software at all.[0] Even if you only "sell" the hardware, customers expect the full package to work.
That's not to say I agree with all the complaints here, though; this case is different because Pine64 has numerous disclaimers and warnings on the website, and they are very up front and honest about the viability of the PinePhone as a daily driver.
[0]: Whenever I hear non-techy friends complain about system instability, they pretty consistently blame the computer itself, not Windows or whatever software is likely actually causing their frustration.
> No, but if someone was selling PCs with super buggy software
What you’re clearing missing is that they are not selling you software.
They are selling you open, unlocked hardware to run software on, with no promises/liabilities about the software. Just like Intel, AMD, ARM, MSI, Asus, Kingston and a lot of other hardware suppliers. They even explicitly state this when you buy the phone.
They are explicitly not selling you a combined hardware/software package like Apple does with the iPhone or OEMs are doing with Android.
How can you then complain about this later?
Edit: You might even say that this combined HW/SW appliance-model applied by the rest of the smartphone market is the exact thing they are fighting against.
They are selling HW as HW, leaving users free to run the software they prefer.
I have one from a year or so ago, and it just collects dust right now. If I understood how utterly unusable it was and how unusable it would continue to be, I would have preferred to just donate to Pine's organization rather than have them send me clutter.
Similar experience with a new PinePhone last week but different conclusion.
PinePhone is our only hope. It's still in Beta, months or years from being consumer ready. And that's just where it needs to be from a development standpoint. Don't rush.
That said, reading your comment I also wonder about having too many distros of Linux going after PinePhone. I had an SD card with I believe 14 distros. Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? It seems like combining together strengths would be beneficial.
> Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times?
I don’t think it’s quite that simple. A lot of these competing mobile distros are using and working on the same libraries and porting desktop applications to mobile in similar ways. The biggest differences are usually the desktop distro that they’ve made their base and their desktop environment of choice. It’s common to see enhancements to an application or even core functionality like battery utilization or suspend improvements land in one distro and then be quickly adopted by others. As someone who’s mostly a bystander, the outliers seem to be the people working on the distros that aren’t ports of desktop Linux, like Sailfish, Nemo, and Ubuntu Touch. Of the main desktop-Linux-ports cluster the biggest divide seems to exist between launcher/DE development. Developers are split between the Gnome-based Phosh interface and the Plasma mobile interface. But a similar dichotomy exists on desktop. I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using.
> I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using.
It’s a funny thing indeed.
sxmo seems to be the only option not focusing on competing with Apple and Google on a “good enough for mainstream” ux.
I mean Phosh is nice and all. Having frameworks for contacts and calendars just like in Gnome is nice. Pulseaudio working just as on the desktop is great too. But the total experience still leaves the impression of a very subpar iOS/Android copy.
sxmo though, that has decided to not compete with Apple and Google on what they do best, but rather do their own thing and re-envision what a Linux smartphone should/could be.
And I like it. I like it a lot. It’s by far my favourite Linux smart-phone experience so far.
I just need a better phone to run it on, and the Pinephone Pro could be that phone.
New phone or not, I’d also appreciate if sxmo managed to rebase on/ship for Mobian too. The package selection for pmOS and Alpine is pretty weak in comparison.
I looked into sxmo and I think it falls clearly into the "clever hack" category and not in the "actually usable" category. There is only so far you can get on a touchscreen device without actually programming any of the apps to support touch. The lack of hardware acceleration in anything X related is also basically going to ensure that it always has poor performance, everything needs to be moved to use GLES based rendering.
> I looked into sxmo and I think it falls clearly into the "clever hack" category and not in the "actually usable" category.
Agree to disagree? Also I think you’re being somewhat disingenuous or uncharitable here.
sxmo has clearly had a unique vision for mobile Linux for power users and executed on just that.
All core phone functionality is available through regular, composable shell-scripts. And all major events can be hooked by simple user-controlled scripts in $HOME/.config/sxmo without any other alterations to the OS at large, no root required. It successfully employs a tiling window-manager by default to allow simple(!) mobile-oriented multi-tasking.
That’s quite something of its own, with no equivalent anywhere else in mobile space, Linux-based or not.
This is clearly a power-user enabling mobile Linux shell, and it’s making no excuses about it.
Sure there might be technical improvements which are possible at several levels in the stack. I’m not debating that.
That does however in no way take away from the vision behind it and how well that has been executed so far.
I honestly do not see what is so remarkable about it. It just never seemed to me like a unique vision but instead an effort to adapt some existing X11 tools to a mobile workflow. Which is a fine thing to do if you like those tools, but that's different from having some grand new vision.
To elaborate: The use of a tiling window manager with explicit workspaces doesn't really make sense to me on a phone since every app runs fullscreen anyway. The use of shell scripts doesn't really make sense since editing text on a phone is awful. I don't understand what the definition of "power user" means here either. What does this do that other phones and shells can't do? I can edit shell scripts in Termux on Android too, but it's still awful and unpleasant. Unfortunately I just wasn't able to figure out any reason to use it.
And just to be clear, I would not describe any Linux phone as a grand new vision. They're sadly all playing catch up. Maybe that will improve in the next few years.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the use of volume buttons to control a device with a touchscreen is pretty ridiculous. I mean, come on, you have that big nice touchscreen and you're not going to use it? Or has this improved recently where you don't have to do that anymore? Please let me know, thanks. Maybe I'll try it again if this is any better.
> Yeah but that kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone, doesn't it? :)
No, I would say it opens up infinite possibilities for useful customizations. Even if you aren't a programmer, someone likely writes a relevant script for your use case.
I mean if you have to transfer files from your computer or connect a keyboard just to do something on the phone. That's really inconvenient, I've tried to use my Pinephone that way and it's unpleasant.
The other platforms have figured this out, where the "someone likely writes a relevant script for your use case" becomes "someone likely writes a relevant app for your use case" and you just go to the app store and download it. No need to mess with scripts or plug in a keyboard, and you still get to have plenty of customization. I believe flatpak has started to add categories for mobile apps so that is bringing us closer to where things need to be.
> I mean, come on, you have that big nice touchscreen and you're not going to use it?
The best case with a desktop-like environment like sxmo is to just reuse the touchscreen digitizer as a plain old touchpad, with some tweak for other gestures (e.g. tap for clicking, double tap for dragging). AIUI, this is how mobile clients for VNC and RDP work already, so enabling this on the mobile desktop itself would be quite straightforward.
I don't know, that just seems to me to defeat the purpose of having a touchscreen. I've tried to use those mobile VNC clients and the experience is really bad. It's something I would use if I really had to access some important files on my desktop, but I wouldn't try to log in to my desktop with a mobile VNC client every day just to do work.
>Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times?
Honestly I don't think personally that it hurts things as much as one might expect. There is a lot of work from each distro that benefits all of the others. For example the Mobian dev was one of the first to really tackle the issue of battery life and their work benefited all the other teams.
That being said it might be better to have a few larger dev teams, but as long as their works contribute back to the community there is always benefit to the whole.
I'd second your assumption. Geary, MegaPixels (the camera app), Phosh (one of the few window managers), the modem firmware, and more are mostly shared between all the distros. Doubly so for upstreamed SoC firmware, battery efficiency improvements, and more that I'm sure I'm overlooking.
Frankly, it makes me question anyone who says desktop Linux is divided because we have options - at this point, it's more like there's no large corporate backer with a vested interest in making the desktop experience mainstream.
Asking for clarity since I'm one month into my Linux journey:
Are you saying that most of the distros are really just more surface level changes rather than deep "divisions"? I've been struggling to understand.
They ship different things out of the box but can largely use the same exact software. They may update at different rates and thus have different versions of things. They are not entirely different operating system like Mac OS vs Windows.
Mostly. There are a half dozen different desktops to choose from. Same for ways to package software. Most of what a distribution does is make some choices and configure it. Most distributions learn from each other in some way. Most distributions fix things upstream so that other distributions can take advantage for their useful changes.
Good catch, thank you. While Steam currently prints money AFAIK, they're simultaneously 30 years behind Apple and Microsoft (as far as being the driving force of a desktop) and the reason Steam (and gaming on Linux) has come so far, so fast recently.
I wouldn't want to say you must try again, but if you're interested in playing more with the toy for nerds, the Mobian wiki [0] is full of helpful tips.
You're right, lots of things don't fit the screen. Running
scale-to-fit firefox on [1]
would fix your issues with Firefox not scaling correctly, for the most part. The other person that replied to you is right - it's currently a toy for nerds more than a drop-in replacement. With compromise and some effort (such as running your own Matrix server to replace Signal / Whatsapp / Discord), it can be done. But I'd hope to inspire you to try again, while tempering expectations for just how ready mobile Linux currently is :)
tbh I think Pine has been extremely, excessively clear about this being the expected state of their phones. It's stated over and over on almost every page that the software is incomplete and not suitable for most people, it's primarily a developer target to try to achieve that over the span of years.
What OS did you use? I use mine with Phosh (tested Mobian and Archlinux) and I don't have the same experience at all.
The device is still severely underpowered though so the Pro version with a much better CPU is a welcome change.
Can confirm that the Arch build for my pinephone performed significantly better than the default KDE rom that shipped with my device. Vibration, lights, volume & volume rockers, responsiveness, calls, keyboard etc - all mostly working on the arch release.
But I 100% agree - the device is just too slow for me. Would love the increased RAM and extra CPU power.
Can you open banking websites? The only downside of not using an Android/iOS app (in my case at least) would be "mobile deposits" (depositing a check by taking a picture of it).
In addition to the UX they also lack the functionality and some use the mobile app as a 2FA mechanism for the website site, so to use that I'd have to carry around another android/iphone just to 2FA.
A lot of banks in the UK offer better IX through their apps when compared to websites, some don't offer a fully featured web client at all (Monzo and friends).
I noticed many of the same issues, but the most concerning one for me was that the modem (behind the upper rear of the phone) gets extremely hot. This has to be terrible for battery life and general longevity.
Many people are running an open-source re-implementation of the modem [0]. Neither the proprietary nor the open-source firmware for the modem are perfect, but the latter has the advantage of being clocked down to 100MHz instead of the default 400. This allows much better battery life, as well as giving off far less heat :)
Modem is a heatsink for pretty much all the other heat producing stuff in that phone. It gets hot when whatever else gets hot (PMIC when charging, or SoC when doing soc stuff).
> For example, the convergence dock will not display on a monitor.
I recently watched a presentation [0] that focused on the pinephone state-of-affairs, and it did not leave me with the impression the dock couldn't display on a monitor.
Are you sure you're not just experiencing some pathological incompatibility problem? Or am I going senile and need to re-watch the video?
He's experiencing a known HW issue, most likely. There's a manual workaround for now: https://xnux.eu/log/#045
I'll implement a SW workaround eventually, but I'm still recuperating a bit from the work on the Pinephopne keyboard. Once it's released, donations will hopefully increase a bit again, and I'll be able to do more development other than a kernel maintenance.
Now there's also Pinephone Pro and Quartz64 based router sitting on my table which I'm mostly playing with these days, so I'm a bit torn on where to focus my energy next. :)
"A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably"
Half a year ago, when I looked into it, the answer was a clear: no. And there were not many things that did work reliable, without frequent freezes and crashes.
I doubt that fundamentally changed, so if you are looking for stability and reliability right now, than better look somewhere else. This project is about to get to such a state.
> Half a year ago, when I looked into it, the answer was a clear: no. And there were not many things that did work reliable, without frequent freezes and crashes.
It's gotten much better since then. Now phone calls are reliable. If you install and configure the upcoming MMS support, messages work reliably.
Most of the freezes and crashes have also been ironed out.
Source: daily driving postmarketOS with Phosh
> I doubt that fundamentally changed, so if you are looking for stability and reliability right now, than better look somewhere else.
I agree that full stability is a work in progress. But so much progress has been made in the last year that it feels almost like a different OS.
That's part of why it's so infuriating. I wish they'd not install anything that wasn't working reliably. If only three features currently work, fine. Build from there.
But a crashy mess that can't do 100 things while it overheats? I have no use for that.
Fred Brooks, 1987:
Some years ago Harlan Mills proposed that any software system should be grown by incremental development. That is, the system should first be made to run, even if it does nothing useful except call the proper set of dummy subprograms. Then, bit by bit, it should be fleshed out, with the subprograms in turn being developed--into actions or calls to empty stubs in the level below.
I have seen most dramatic results since I began urging this technique on the project builders in my Software Engineering Laboratory class. Nothing in the past decade has so radically changed my own practice, or its effectiveness. ... The morale effects are startling. Enthusiasm jumps when there is a running system, even a simple one. Efforts redouble when the first picture from a new graphics software system appears on the screen, even if it is only a rectangle. One always has, at every stage in the process, a working system.
Normally happens during suspend and when you wake the phone up again, the modem is gone until you do `sudo systemctl restart eg25-manager` (using the FLOSS firmware on the latest release). When it happened once, it will happen more often, until the phone is rebooted, than you get it working for longer time again.
I saw an article that touched on this for the pinephone (not the pro) and they said that it made and received calls fine but did not originally have dtmf support. If you need to check your voicemail and enter a passcode or use an automated system to pick up your prescription, you could not use it for that. It seems that has been ironed out depending on which OS you put on it.
Why do you want to move off Android? Depending on the reason, your needs would probably be better met with an alternative Android distribution on Android hardware.
Not OP, but I'd assume everyone with the goal of dropping iOS and Android is doing so for philosophical reasons. I still have my BlackBerry KeyOne. Battery life is still measured in days, but GApps bloat has pushed me to Open Street Maps. Literally every single aspect of the KeyOne is better, from battery life to performance to app availability and polish - but opting out of all tracking may be more meaningful to some.
I never liked Android, having owned a few. The hardware is quickly obsolete, interface has this clunky feeling, apps don’t work properly, often because devs don’t see the same rewards as their iOS brethren. And however you spin it, it’s all proprietary sponsored.
A linux phone might have the same problems, but at least its far more closer to the Open Source side of things.
Unfortunately I think AOSP distributions are a long-term dead-end. Unless maybe if there was a hard fork. Or else it's just a scramble to keep up with whatever changes google is making, dealing with unsupported hardware and hoping that whoever maintains the build for you device knows what they're doing, and re-implementing gapps to try to get some mostly broken compatibility.
I am a software developer. I would honestly not have the nerve to release a product with software in the state the Pinephone is in today. But of course, pine64.org takes no responsibility for the software on their phone, it's a "community project".
Until there's somebody who is willing to be embarrassed by the state of this software, and able to do something about it, there is no hope here. It does not get better.
What Pine has done is break the chicken/egg cycle of "there's no hardware -> there's no software"
I disagree with your assessment. There are plenty of competent programmers who are working on pushing forward this software, and even following from the outside I've watched massive improvements over time.
We needed (more) open hardware before the software could get properly started, and that's what Pine provided.
I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the progression of development, but every few months I get the itch to play around with my PinePhone and flash the latest version of one of the OSes. The experience is consistently greatly improved over the last time. I’m at the point now where the greatest usability issue I run into is performance, though I’m sure if I were to daily-drive I’d bump into more.
"I’m at the point now where the greatest usability issue I run into is performance"
As someone who has used the latest iOS and Android, I can't agree. The performance of the Pinephone is indeed really terrible, but the usability in general is also awful. There are just way too many little details that are missing, most Linux apps are still not really built for touch. It will be a while before all the important apps are fully ported over to Qt Quick and libhandy/libadwaita, but maybe by then they will have made a few more revisions with a better CPU. And of course I expect desktop users to start complaining when that happens because some apps will start to get more mobile-oriented...
People are improving the SW constantly. And it does steadily get better ever since the release (and before, because A64 is older than the pinephone, and was also implemented in mainline Linux by someone other than the SoC vendor).
"If you depend on proprietary mainstream mobile messenger applications, banking applications, use loyalty or travel apps, consume DRM media, or play mobile video games on your fruit or Android smartphone, then the PinePhone Pro is likely not for you."
Yikes. I appreciate they are up front about it, but that eliminates literally everyone I know.
I think there's a difference between "depend on" and "use." Most everyone that currently has an iPhone or Android is going to use those features.
But for every Youtube video that I watch on my phone, I watch many more on my computer. I use my phone for browsing HN and Twitter, taking pictures, checking my email, and of course getting texts. I have a banking app installed, but that's not the reason that I have a phone.
I would have to post to Instagram from my computer, but other than that, I could use a PinePhone. Unfortunately, it looks like the only positive of the PinePhone right now is "free software." But my point is that it's possible for PinePhone to convince me by adding brand new features—they don't necessarily have to support every iPhone app to win users over.
It seems that you can still post from the web version of Instagram on mobile (just tested it now on Android Chrome) — I should imagine that it still works in the DevTools mobile emulator (though you do have to refresh the page).
Using the Instagram PWA may be a viable way of using Instagram on mobile Linux. Still can't seem to post stories on the PWA, though.
Theoretically you can run those apps via anbox. I've tested whatsapp via anbox on my desktop ubuntu install at least, and it works fine. Remains to be seen how well it'll work on this upgraded hardware, and I'm sure they're being conservative because of that.
This is the reality today. The device is still developer-only. I just bought one thinking I could ditch my iPhone -- not yet. It's hard knowing that there are no good options besides Android and iOS. I'm aware of de-Googled Android versions but those are less appealing given the Google base. We need an open source solution.
Probably. But I don't think those requirements are unreasonable. It feels like it largely boils down to "I buy a smartphone to accomplish certain tasks easily". If you eliminate many of those tasks, is it a useful device for those people anymore?
I don’t think you’re incorrect in making your point here, yet your framing is a bit unreasonable. Pine phone isn’t supposed to be the equivalent to a modern smartphone. It’s a small project that has an entirely new platform with no major corporate backing. What you’re asking of it isn’t realistic until it has significant enough time and traction to fully mature.
I wonder what the minimum modern requirements would be for a viable "mainstream" phone.
Common messaging apps (SMS, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Slack). Social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok). email (Though an average stock email app is probably sufficient). Google Apps (gmail, google maps, etc..). Navigation (google maps is sufficient for most) Probably some set of games.
I suspect the real viable option is being able to run Android apps natively without any special configuration.
If that's the bar, then mobile Linux is simultaneously very fucking far, and dramatically closer than most people might think.
As far as messaging apps, they're all technically there - the best kind of there for the crowd that this would interest. Spinning up a Matrix server means maybe a days work for this crowd, which allows (and I currently use it for) Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, and more. Even better, due to constant improvements by Matrix, the server is only getting lighter and your options more varied with things like Construct [0].
Email is there - one only really needs to ensure geary is set to scale to the phone screen. As far as gMail, I'd question what the overlap is between "Privacy conscious enough to use a Pinephone" and "Uses gMail instead of anything IMAP".
That only leaves navigation and social media. For the former, I've used the mobile site in-browser on my Android phone that the Google Maps app was too heavy for. And for both on the Pinephone, especially the pro, Waydroid [1] is getting closer to closing the gap.
To be honest, I could see it being mainstream for geeks within two years. Though that's unlikely what you meant by mainstream - which I think we can agree is several more years away, if ever.
For some reason it won't let me reply to your newer message, there just is no reply button at all, very strange, anyway, putting my reply to your second message here.
Thanks so much for the info! I don't ever do calls on whatsapp, so this sounds absolutely amazing for me! I also see that I can bridge in slack as well so now all the sudden I may be able to bridge all my work stuff into one matrix instance and remove those apps I hate from my phone?!?!?!?! At least from an initial thought process this sounds amazing.
I don't run any linux servers at home, so I suppose if I got a hosted instance of a matrix server I could see if I could successfully bridge in these other things and give it a try. Thank you so much!
Element.io also offer paid managed servers where they do the bridging for you if you'd rather not deal with it yourself. Starts at around $10 a month for a home server plus some light WhatsApp bridging and works surprisingly well, with the caveats already mentioned above about calling.
No worries! Feel free to drop me a line if you want / need any help with the bridges @xethos:xethos.net - I'd be happy to help another person (potentially) switch over to Matrix + bridges.
Wait a sec, are you telling me there's a way for me to participate in whatsapp conversations without actually having whatsapp installed on my phone? I am currently forced to use whatsapp by my work for supporting overseas live events, but I absolutely hate having anything related to facebook installed on my phone. Until now I just put up with it because I didn't know there was an alternative. Can you help me understand how this works?
Sorry, I'm not sure I should have gotten your hopes up like that: First and foremost, calling does not work.
Hosting a Matrix server [0], configuring the bridge [1], then running the client [2] anywhere you are will allow you to send and receive Whatsapp messages, status updates, pictures, videos, etc.
It's currently limited to using the WebUI - this means one is limited to the functions available through Whatsapp Web. This may, someday, possibly, change with Whatsapps new multi-device implementation, but I'd advise taking it for what it is instead of hoping it'll happen any time soon.
All that said, I've been using it for some time now. It's gotten much more stable, and I can recommend it for what it is.
Really depends how you define the task doesn't it? If it's "I have the ability to message other people" there's plenty of ways to accomplish that on this device. If you define the task as "I need to message other people specifically on a Google/Apple messenger application", well then it's always going to be out of Pine64s hands to some extent?
I've recently ordered a PinePhone. At 200 bucks I consider it a donation. I encourage other people to also buy one, even if it is not what you expect. This along the Framework laptops is definitely the way to think about consumer products. I wish appliances were also manufactured open source. Imagine fridges, microwaves, toasters, etc. Things that you can open, understand and learn from and maybe eventually build your own thing if you have the will and time to do so.
I don't think Pine64 donates part of the profit anymore from the Beta sales. I think this change was announced in one of the previous community updates.
I guess you mean "donation" to Pine64 to encourage them to do more fun HW development? :)
For me the main pain point of the current PinePhone is not its performance, it's the driver and firmware issues. Mainline Linux does not work well with the current PinePhone and various patches are not upstreamed or not even written yet to fix the remaining bugs. The cameras don't work with most software, the out-of-tree WiFi driver has stability issues to the point where I rather use LTE or USB, the USB-C firmware is flunky, the modem firmware crashes and needs a lot of workarounds.
I hoped they chose components for the PinePhone Pro that work out of the box in terms of firmware and having no downstream Linux patches in the near future, but it seems quite similar to the current PinePhone, only slight improvements. The camera OV5640 is the same (hopefully someone came up with better v4l2 integration since the second camera is different?), the modem EG25-G is the same, no info on the used USB-C chip, but at least there is a better WiFi chip.
I think your expectations may not be aligned with what they're selling. From the website:
> We’re not in the business of selling empty promises – a much faster mainline Linux smartphone won’t make the existing operating systems more refined, nor will it magically spawn software replacements for your iOS or Android applications. There is a long road ahead of us, all of us, and it will require time and effort for the software to reach a degree of maturity that would satisfy mainstream users.
I'm not a hardware guy and think it's a question about the approach: do you build something and throw it to the kernel devs to see if they can make it work, or do you build something and see yourself if it works well with existing software.
Wifi is different, with mainline driver and regularly updated firmware from cypress (same as Rpi4 wifi chip). Type-C stuff is different, more sane. Main camera is different and selected to already have mainline linux support...
I don't think this complaint is fair. Only major thing that's the same is the modem, but that would be quite annoying thing to change, because it would void the hard work of people working on the FOSS Linux stack for EG25-G modem.
Great to hear about the USB-C situation improving and confirmation about better WiFi!
Do both cameras already work with common V4L2 applications like Firefox, Cheese etc?
That's not a problem with camera drivers but with firefox and cheese using old APIs. Cameras are v4l2 subdevices, cheese ignores all that. Firefox is the same I guess.
It will improve once these big apps switch to libcamera, like Chrome is doing.
Weird that they advertise how this is a mainline Linux experience, while at the same time claiming video output through the typec port.
I own a PinebookPro. The only way I get video output through the typec port is through some hacky patchset that will not be accepted upstream, and which occasionally breaks on new kernel releases. Some people report that it does not work whatsoever. I actually have to flip the typec plug to get it to work -- the video output is not reversible for some reason.
They also mention that the Pinephone Pro will support a suspend mode, which is something I have never been able to get working on my PinebookPro. The best that device can do is 1.7W while idle.
I'm glad to see this announcement, because I hope that these new rk3399-ish devices will improve software support for my PBP, but I implore anyone who is concerned about the above two features to wait and see. I certainly won't be buying another rk3399 device anytime soon, even though it is one of the best supported high performance offerings for mainline TF-A, U-Boot, and Linux.
The ov5640 is the same, but it's now the front camera instead of the rear camera. It's replacing the gc2145 front sensor on the pinephone that's not doing great.
The new imx rear camera also already has a driver in mainline that can be built on. The majority of the work will be getting the rk3399 side of the cameras to work
I curious about the opinion of HN on the absence of 1080p (it's still 720p). Specially this part of the blog post:
> The decision to maintain the original PinePhone’s screen resolution of 1440×720 was made early on; higher resolution panels consume more power and increase SoC’s load, resulting in shorter battery life and higher average thermals. A few extra pixels aren’t worth it.[1]
While I understand the point they are making, the PinePhone's screen is almost 6" and pixel density is probably the first thing that I notice on a new smartphone. It just seems very low?
For context I am fully aware of the project, its goals and that it's not trying to take over the global smartphone market, but for some reason 1080p feels like the baseline in 2021.
As a new PinePhone owner this month, screen res is a non-issue. No one is buying this phone as a daily driver right now. There's very few apps available. GPS was 50 miles off when I tried it. For devs interested in a new project, PinePhone needs your help!
MVP = Linux on a smartphone
That said, I haven't read the announcement closely but wonder why they used the "Pro" moniker. Just say it's the new version of the PinePhone? What problem does naming it "Pro" solve?
> That said, I haven't read the announcement closely but wonder why they used the "Pro" moniker. Just say it's the new version of the PinePhone? What problem does naming it "Pro" solve?
I think they wanted to avoid (unsuccessfully, it seems) people thinking it's the "new" Pinephone. Rather, as I understand it both will be sold at the same time, and one is just more powerful than the other.
I think modern phones have gotten absurd with their resolutions and that 1440x720 is plenty for a 6 inch screen. That's 268ppi, which is denser than most non-phone screens.
I want more devices to use sane resolutions so I'm not burning through battery for little benefit. One of the reasons that my laptop is a MacBook Pro 16" is because I think 1080p is too low at that size and 4K is too high. Apple is one of the few companies that uses a screen resolution in between those.
I've got both a pinephone and a 1080p android phone. Compared to a laptop/desktop everything is already scaled to 2x or more, so while I can tell them apart I can't say I'm actually losing anything from the 720p display. The only exception I've found is content consumption, but if I care enough I've got plenty better, larger screens to use.
I own an original PinePhone. Most people are aware of its issues by now, but I always found the screen (and by and large, the general build quality) to be oddly sufficient. It isn’t overkill, but I don’t think it is terribly limiting either. I suppose a higher DPI screen would be a nice luxury, but it can definitely wait for the SoC to catch up.
> While I understand the point they are making, the PinePhone's screen is almost 6" and pixel density is probably the first thing that I notice on a new smartphone. It just seems very low?
The lower end Android market is still dominated by 720p(ish) phones. Especially the sub $150 market. Having used a few of them I don't think its an issue. Especially when you get a phone with a 720 screen, a modern low end efficient octo-core SoC, and a 4000mAh battery. The 3-4 days of battery life feel like you've gone back in time 15 years to cellphones lasting most of the week again.
Yeah, but... the Pro is not in a low-end sub $150 market. The Pro is twice as expensive as the normal Pinephone: 400 USD + taxes. I don't see how its worth the money if it still isn't gonna be usable as daily driver.
Steam Deck only supports 1280 x 800, and that's gonna be OK for handheld gaming. I rather have 120 Hz and OLED but it ain't gonna happen for now.
I really doubt you get 3-4 days on a Pinephone once you start using sync services (for photo's, e-mail, IM, etc). Or use the screen extensively (browsing, video, etc). Of course the device lasts long if you don't use it for much.
While a Pinephone would be good for watching video's, it isn't because no Widevine, and that's what people need. Without Android emulation, it ain't gonna be popular. Microsoft knows this. Its why they're going for rolling out WSLg's successor on Windows 11, targeting Android GUI apps.
I wasn't really trying to compare it to the low end android market, just saying that there are benefits to lower spec parts.
The Pinephone doesn't meet the needs of the smart phone market at this time, and probably not ever. In my opinion that market will never be friendly to Linux phones because of how much of it is based in proprietary control of the ecosystem. It feels wildly more toxic towards FOSS ideology than even the desktop ecosystem in 2021.
As someone who hasn't fully bought into any ecosystem yet it would be easier for me to transition to using a Pinephone. It will be inconvenient all the time, but at least I'm in control.
I think the performance loss for a higher resolution screen would not be worthwhile here. The GPU in the Pinephone Pro is a lot faster than the original but it's a 6 year old design that is not exactly great by modern standards. And a lot of the existing software stack is not even GPU accelerated yet. 1080p would probably give quite noticably worse performance.
It works fine and SoC is fast enough to drive it. Even A64 will drive 1080p external monitor just fine (if you turn off the GPU and use older software made for it, like Xorg, and i3wm).
I believe the power efficiency argument, though. Pinephone pro needs every bit of power savings it can get, because RK3399 is not exactly a phone SoC.
> the PinePhone's screen is almost 6" and pixel density is probably the first thing that I notice on a new smartphone. It just seems very low?
I don't think it is as big an issue. I have an old 1st Gen Nexus 7, it has 720p resolution on a 7" screen, it is perfectly readable and a generally nice screen to use (I would still be using the device frequently if it wasn't painfully slow due to degrading flash). The difference to a super-high resolution modern device is obvious on a side by side comparison, but not on its own. When I'm just using the device I don't even notice the lower resolution.
Pretty common is an understatement. Everyone I have met over 50 used reading glasses. It starts somewhere between 40 and 45, but the number of people without presbyopia over 50 must be minuscule.
I used reading glasses, for years. I don't need them anymore.
Sometime last year I started drinking kombucha, a pint most days. That is the only thing I can think of to credit the change to. My diastolic blood pressure also went down, from 90 to 70.
That is remarkable because, as I understand it, presbyopia is simply a consequence of the proteins in the eye hardening over time, and hence everyone is expected to get it around the same age. I struggle to see how kombucha would help them soften.
Well, me too. Struggling to see is the problem we face.
I had no reason to believe anything could improve it, but I cannot argue with the fact that I do not need the reading glasses anymore. Similarly, I had never heard of anything that would lower diastolic blood pressure, which as I understand it rises as arteries become less elastic. But in both cases, the evidence is objectively unavoidable. (Unavoidable for me, anyway. Others may pretend I made it up.)
It is also easy and tasty to try out yourself. I make my own kombucha for <$.20 / pint. Anybody can do that, too.
If my objectively improved accommodation and blood pressure are the result of some other process, or processes, the kombucha is at worst harmless, and has, anyway, lots of B and C vitamins.
I have one and I'm using it right now. It is more than fine. My eyes aren't perfect so maybe others would care more but the image is super crisp and looks really good.
This isn’t for me and I don’t ever expect Linux phones to actually take off, but I’m heartened that Pine64 exists and that they are doing this stuff.
I have a Pinebook that I got as a toy machine and was very impressed with the execution. And unlike Purism, Pine64 has good customer/developer communication and isn’t making impossible-to-keep promises about deliverability or even capabilities.
So not for me, but I’m glad this sort of project exists.
I don't have any comments on the Purism customer support because I haven't bought their phone, but as a Pinephone owner it's good to have them around. Purism has been investing a lot more in the software side of things. They work well with upstream. Their new projects are good too, phosh and libhandy came from Purism and are both extremely useful on the Pinephone.
I’m not trying to discount Purism’s software work, but hearing so many people wait four plus years to have phones delivered or more than a year for a laptop - unable to get refunds, it leaves a bad taste. My own limited experience is that I wound up on their press list and then they sent me an unsolicited request to “invest” in their company (by way of a convertible note…lol, no thanks) and apparently they’ve done this to customers they still owe products to.
So it’s cool they contribute to upstream. Still strikes me as a very poorly run business.
That's a shame because I do think they are doing a lot of things right as far as being an open source company goes. The software people who work there don't seem to have anything to do with any questionable financial decisions, but they get associated with that just for being there.
Same. I may have bought a PinePhone but it's running mobian with phosh, so all the heavy lifting to get a working phone UI was done by Purism including GTK libraries like libhandy (now libadwaita).
I appreciate the blurbs about who it is and isn't for. I'm currently in the latter group, but I commend the project. Now that there's a good hardware target, hopefully the software will catch up.
I would argue there was already a reasonably hardware target - the biggest thing was (for me) the modem. It was power-hungry, dropped signal, and for some people, didn't work with VoLTE. The Pro uses the same modem, meaning hardware support has been improving for the last two years :)
> Thus, the device cannot considered a consumer-ready product.
Right off the store page. Why are people in the comments expecting to daily drive this? You buy this for the excitement and sense of accomplishment of actually managing to run things.
But the Fairphone 3 is running a hostile OS that has already done most of the work, and the PinePhone is still very much an early development platform.
You can install another OS if you want. LineageOS, for example (with or without OpenGApps). Or /e/. You can even buy a FP3(+) with /e/. They sell it. Or other OSes. Or you wait for FP4 which is out 25 October.
I'm not talking specifically about /e/ (though I would recommend looking into it, if you want privacy and Android backwards compatibility).
I am talking about the plethora of OSes available otherwise, such as postmarketOS, Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, SailfishOS, etc. It al runs a Linux kernel though, so anyone can pull the 'but its still Linux' card and discussion is over.
FP4 isn't even officially released yet (and when it is, there's delivery time), while devs don't get the device before release. They need to buy it just like the rest of us.
However, the previous Fairphones ran all kind of OSes, including the ones I mentioned. In fact, I believe Fairphone was the first smartphone to run on some of these (IIRC pmOS, UT).
Given the device gets support for 5 years (including software updates) that's gonna be a while where devs can support it, and where it gets (supposedly) firmware updates for the embedded chips as well.
They do. That's what Halium and libhybris are for - so you can run GNU/Linux userspace on top of Android's HAL. You can't take a mainline (or even close to mainline) kernel and boot it on these phones - or at least not when you expect them to still be somewhat useful. The mainline kernel has no support for any Fairphone at all so far (some support seems to begin appearing for FP4, but not for earlier ones).
A good litmus test on whether a device doesn't rely on Android is whether Mobian supports it, since Mobian doesn't intend to support Halium platforms: https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices (also, I just noticed that you actually listed Mobian as working on the Fairphone in one of your previous comments - that of course isn't true)
And to add insult to injury, you as the user do not get to have a root account. Yes, there are ways to get one, but even the "alternative distributions" go out of their way to make it extra tedious for you. I would for example expect a built-in menu in Lineageos settings called "enable root" that does what it says without further steps.
Instead I need do install some 3rd party stuff from somewhere, get the bootloader image from somewhere, patch it, use a PC to install that image... for each update!
In theory, sure. However, having done that dance before, the limitations between a degoogled Android (basically open source apps only, since F-Droid doesn't allow proprietary apps, and nearly all proprietary apps depend on Play Services APIs anyways), you end up with something less useful than a PinePhone.
And at the end of the day, Android was written by Google for Google to serve Google. Trying to use a phone as your daily driver running developed by your enemy is hardly a way to get through life. Just get a phone that doesn't hate you. Like a PinePhone. Or an iPhone, which has all sort of issues but at least gives you a reasonably private and secure device at the expense of gobs of money.
MicroG may still ping google services sometimes, but it is not a root level backdoor into my phone. Most proprietary apps I've tried work. Bank app, dating apps, slack, visual voicemail, venmo.
The comments here seem to say that PinePhone and friends are not ready to be daily drivers or even occasional drivers. I think that's fine.
However, I do want to support these people and their work. I also need an ARM machine to do tests on (for portability of software and such), so I'm thinking of buying this Pro version. Yes, I'll spend a lot more than I need to, but I really want to support them.
So question: are the PinePhone and friends good enough to do development on? And not even normal development; just downloading, building, and testing?
Instead of a phone, pine64 makes a lot of other computers designed more for what you want. They are cheaper and have cases that make it a lot easier to use for what you want. (I'm typing this on a pinebook pro laptop from them)
The only reason to buy a phone vs something else from them is the phone donates a bit of money to some other project. But you can directly donate to KDE or whatever and get the same result.
A Raspberry Pi may be more useful for your ARM build server related tasks, as the PinePhone runs on battery, has only one USB C port, etc. If you are developing applications for the PinePhone or other mobile viewports, then absolutely the PinePhone is for you.
I have a PP CE and I'm trying to do Rust GUIs. Now the Rust compiler is known to be slow, and with C (and maybe using an optimized compiler like tcc), YMMV. But Rust development (at least when using any amount of dependencies) is unbearable.
I have hopes for getting cross-compilation working, but no luck so far...
I wouldn't compile things on the PinePhone because of its performance, but I do it just fine on the Librem 5, so I imagine PinePhone Pro should be fine too as long as it doesn't excessively thermal throttle (it may be tricky to achieve that though).
An anecdote: my eye opener was when I connected mine (3gb/32gb) to a usb-c hub (after seeing Martjin Braam's YT video on it) and was able to then connect it to my 27" hp monitor via hdmi and attach my keyboard/mouse as well: any complaints I had about Pinephone's 'rough edges' up to that point (which tbh, were plenty) disappeared.
Generally speaking though, the performance will be pretty sad and the device will get fairly hot during normal use. I am looking forward to getting this new device (Pro) at some point to see the improved performance. The software also keeps improving. When I got it (as a ubports 2gb edition, I later upgraded to the 3gb board), the software was in poor shape so I put it away for a bit. Mobian versions starting last summer really improved on the usability though.
I can’t wait for pinephone to succeed- hopefully this more powerful hardware + faster ram will help to address latency issues in the UI. Right now it feels like your brain is literally slowing down when interacting with a normal pinephone compared to an iPhone. Not a fair comparison at all I know.
Isn’t that silly? I could run linux (with GUI) just fine on my Pentium 3. This phone is like 8 times faster just based on clock speed, not to mention memory. How can it not drive a UI without lag?
It’s certainly interesting that input latency seems to have taken a back seat in almost all modern systems. I have a touchscreen windows NT computer with PS2 ports, both the keyboard and touchscreen have noticeably less latency than any other device I have. However, it’s really slow when actually opening a program!
PS2 has always had much lower latency. Also IIRC the old windows prioritized input handling over pretty much everything else, so it makes sense that even when it is taking a minute to open a website the mouse handling still feels smooth.
The problem is that it's not 1-1 with X86, especially in regards to graphics capability (The GPU is really the weak link on the current PinePhone). The GPU for example uses Tile-based rendering, which requires software optimizations to work best... Plus the GPU is just plain slow. It's a first generation ARM Mali graphics core intended for OpenGL ES 2.0 afterall.
Because your pentium 3 GUI linux had a GUI designed around pentium 3 era hardware. All the linux phone GUIs seem to be designed around the latest in special GUI effects and animations and transparency. For some reason all the people who know how to design UIs for linux are incapable of understanding hardware requirements.
Check out sxmo.org if you're going for a minimalist UI. But the big feature that's missing on these old-style UI's (while it is in, e.g. Phosh) is smooth animations w/ direct 1-to-1 feedback, which is critical for usability w/ modern capacitive touchscreens and quite hard to achieve without GPU acceleration.
I've used a N900 and I don't see what massive difference there is between its resistive touchscreen and a capacitive touchscreen when it comes to user experience. The N900 achieved good feedback using the vibration motor and extremely basic animations. I don't think you realistically need more than what the Hildon UI gave you when it comes to a good user experience. The Hildon UI targeted much older hardware (albeit with proprietary graphics drivers). It should be possible to replicate the performance of the Hildon UI with the lima drivers if an explicit focus was placed on ensuring that above-all the UI was responsive rather than being pretty.
Nokia is re-releasing their 6310 phone this year and honestly I'm more tempted to go down that path at this point. Just a regular, reliable phone. The most painful thing for me at this point will probably be authenticator apps.
That said the pine phone looks really cool and I hope they succeed. Mobile Linux is going to be such a large uphill battle without huge investments. But with Google/Apple having compensation packages amounting in the 300k-500k+ per year you'd think there would be room for a competitor in there somewhere.
Unfortunately Nokia is just a brand now, in the hands of a Chinese company which sells rather quickly and cheaply developed products. The phones which are sold under this brand are often buggy and never updated. Some run Series 30+, some run KaiOS, some run Android derivatives.
The landscape of dumb/features phones is worse now than it was 10 years ago, which is a pity. For example, jut imagine that it is hard these days to get one which does predictive typing right... or that the cameras are worse than 10 years ago.
One thing I will note is how absolutely essential smart phones have become to our daily existence. A colleague's phone recently broke and her life shutdown because she could not 2fa anywhere, including for reporting her time card, etc. As a result, I cannot take any risks when purchasing a phone. I have to have the most reliable option possible.
Agree, it's a bit frightening we're so locked to our phones today.
But why leave that comment on this particular submission? The PinePhone is not meant to be a phone you use day-to-day, it's meant for curious developers to hack around on. They are being very upfront about this as well. Maybe in the future this will change.
No matter how reliable your phone is you can always have an accident, like the phone drops and breaks. A good practice, if possible, is to keep an old(er) phone as a backup device and make sure you have proper/backups migration paths.
P.S. As a pinephone owner I don't consider it to be a good options for a backup device. I can only hope that one day the ecosystem gets there.
>As a result, I cannot take any risks when purchasing a phone.
Or you could make better choices when it comes to how you organise your life so that you do not get in situations where losing your phone completely screws you over.
Seriously I don't get why people wilfully get into situations where important things in their life rest on the reliability of their phone.
It takes a minimal amount of awareness. And there's no excuse for it. My life is not massively negatively impacted by just refusing to be get chained to a phone.
The problem is what do you do about 2fa which more and more organizations are requiring almost always via sms ? I suppose yubikeys could be part of the solution of getting away from the phone for auth.
I don't see an issue with SMS 2FA. You can just move the sim card if your phone breaks and also it works without special smartphones. That being said I don't really see SMS 2FA in use that often (I live and work in the UK).
I've also not seen a massive push for 2FA which requires a special mobile-only application from organizations. Aside from my bank, where I have the option of a mobile app or a small calculator-looking token (I obviously picked the token), most 2FA I see is basic TOTP (which you can back up and treat as you like) or some third party solution which provides non-mobile options (and half the time someone has reverse engineered the software and there's an open source solution or it's actually just generic TOTP which you can run anywhere).
My work relies on a VPN connection and the the token is generated in a special mobile app, they have given me a smarphone for this purpose. I was informed by coworkers that if you reset the token and re-generate the key you can load the key into a slightly modified version of any TOTP program which uses a slightly different interval and it would work. But at the end of the day if my job requires this token and they give me a phone for it and that's the only source of the token and the phone breaks, I'm not going to really fret about it. It's not my problem to solve, all I have to do is contact my employer and get them to sort out getting me a new phone and getting me back up and running. Keeping this backed up is not my responsibility.
Honest question: what is the path to something resembling wider-audience usability (i.e. not a toy project)? Or is that not really a plan?
I'd LOVE an open, Linux-based phone. But I also need a phone that does video calls, has a working browser, messenger etc. One that works with at least a good bunch of most common apps.
Is that likely to ever happen? Or is this a very interesting project, but really aimed at tinkerers, or people who don't use WhatsApp etc.
I recently backed Astro Slide on Indiegogo[0] and they do say it will be able to boot Linux alongside Android 11. The designer behind Astro Slide is Martin Riddiford who was also the designer of Psion Series 5[1].
I made a comment elsewhere in the thread about the Gemini PDA. Do not trust this company to deliver proper GNU/Linux support. Ever. They keep using MediaTek chips and horrible shims to use Android drivers on GNU/Linux and none of it works well at all. It's not even close to the experience you would get with a PinePhone or Librem 5. You are giving up a lot to get those better specs. After getting a Gemini PDA I am never buying anything from Planet Computers again.
It does "run", but it's not really running Linux. It's just android with a halium layer running Linux software on top. So when android support ends, which it will seeing how they've not been great at software support, your "Linux" build will also no longer get updates. That's why Mainline Linux is such a big deal, as even if support ends, you'll still be able to get the latest Linux kernel and distributions can continue basically forever supporting the device.
Never say never, but I'm not optimistic for it. The biggest issue is app compatibility. Even with a huge budget and namesake like Microsoft Windows, you can see how Microsoft's mobile OS projects have essentially disappeared when trying to compete against iOS and Android. Maybe someone will get Android apps running natively on a Linux distro, but then you're still missing the unlicensed framework around Google Play that breaks many existing popular apps.
We also don't even have this with desktops or laptops today. CPUs are still proprietary and running closed-source software. On mobile it's even more locked down, where I can almost guarantee you will never have open software running on baseband controller or SIM card on any public network like Verizon.
> Maybe someone will get Android apps running natively on a Linux distro
Depending on what you mean by 'native', you might find Waydroid[0] interesting. It only does containerization, not emulation.
And also: While yes, Linux on the desktop isn't too successful, it is at a state that you can daily drive with it for all tasks. Maybe you won't get the MS Office suite running, but there are alternatives.
I think the Linux mobile niche will go into the same direction. It won't be successful, if measured by raw numbers, but it will be successful in that it will provide a functional alternative for those willing to do it. It won't ever run WhatsApp, but it will run usable alternatives.
> Depending on what you mean by 'native', you might find Waydroid[0] interesting. It only does containerization, not emulation.
It is likely to happen, yes. It just takes time. Remember, desktop Linux was aimed at tinkerers for gears before it became useable by your average person.
The big difference is that at that time desktop machines had pretty standard hardware, and hardware was largely interoperable, whereas with mobile these guys basically have to develop hardware, set the standard, and software developers have to develop the software specifically for the hardware. It's a lot harder, but if you look at the pace of things since librem and pine started, the development of this is moving at a faster pace than desktop Linux did.
Probably only if people chip in and help. I don't know much about this eco system, but it's my impression that most of the components are already there, including Android emulation, they just need more work.
Is there anyone here who has more than 3 months of using their [[Pinephone|https://philosopher.life/#Pinephone]] as a daily driver (a solid habit) or who knows someone who does? I'd like to speak with you (or them) because I'm in need of patient guidance. I'm willing to live off a commandline if I'm forced to do that.
Disappointed they didn't take this opportunity to make hardware switches more conveniently accessible without removing the rear cover, like the Librem 5.
Maybe that's not such a priority when you're fully aware the thing isn't actually usable as a daily driver one might be regularly toggling cell/wifi/camera on.
It was a joy to read their website, particularly where they describe "who is it for" and "who is it not for". Clear and honest. No excuses, presumably no lies.
Is there any real technical reason that forbid a non Android underdog phone maker like Pine64 to be able to run banking apps as MFA devices? I mean, I don't see any tech issue for this phone to provide a secure enclave chip (I mean, like one in a yubikey) and enroll in a standard WebAuthn workflow. I'm specifically looking at UE banks regulations that forces me to use my Android phone to permit/deny any operation instead of letting me use if I want my yubikey to do the same in the browser
I don't think I'm ordering this at $399. This is over twice the price of the previous PinePhone (admittedly it was borderline useless), and solidly out of "novelty buy" territory. If I wanted a tech toy, I'd order a handheld emulation device with (questionably comfortable) physical buttons and working games/emulators for $50.
Got my Pinephone today. Currently the most usable modus operandi is to install openssh server and remote from desktop) Getting so much fun anyway, worth every buck.
I wonder. Firefox has Android version with mobile-optimized look and feel. I beleive it shares a lot of code with desktop version. How hard will it be to build that version for Linux graphics desktop?
> I beleive it shares a lot of code with desktop version.
Except for the engine, it does not. It's a very Android-specific app. It used to be platform-agnostic (early mobile Firefox ran even on Nokia N900), but that has changed many years ago already.
I hope that someday a billionaire could donate a few hundred million to a product like this so we can finally have a true Linux phone that can compete with android and Linux.
What about finding 1 million nerds like me that would like to donate 100 to a crowdfunding campaign just to the software side of the phone?.
> The result of this cooperation is the RK3399S – a RK3399 variant made specifically for the PinePhone Pro.
Looks like the RK3399 was used in some chromebooks so hopefully that means it has great upstream Linux support. We can hope it doesn't require any device overlays or weird kernel patches.
The RK3399 is also in the pinebook pro and their higher end SBC offering. Linux support is fairly good especially since the community developed Panfrost drivers for the Mali GPU.
I've played around with a chromebook on the same chip and while ChromeOS is of course much more polished the Pinebook Pro is very usable.
I'd like this as a sort of toy phone to play and tinker with, but wouldn't use it as my daily driver. Always nice to have spare phones hanging around when you're bored to do casual surfing and maybe play a game or two.
The spec is so unimpressive. I don't know about other people but I'm not getting a Linux phone for minimalism, I'm getting one that could host all my personal computing need and even replace a desktop.
I will ask this question again: why not use android instead, since android is open source? Building another mobile OS from scratch seems ill advised, or what am I missing?
If android is open source, it's not google-dependent. I think there's something that I don't understand, but I bet that the core of android can still be used by any phone manufacturer, so I don't really see why pinephone is making their own OS.
Does that mean that android, despite being open source, is hardly usable/customizable by developers, or too complex/bloated?
- licensing: some people, myself included, think a FOSS/Libre license such as LGPL/GPL3 is better for people and society. Android is mostly apache, which means it's not resistant at all to a company "stealing" it without giving back to the community.
- dependency on google: like it or not, key components of android are completely maintained by google. That means that the future of an open platform is at the whims of one organization. Sure, you could fork, but android is a massive project and a small team could hardly keep up.
- "the core of android can still be used by any phone manufacturer": android, and the related IPs, is pretty firmly in the control of the US government. A lot of funding for non-android mobile OSes comes from other governments interested in a platform and support that is unencumbered from five eyes states
My personal opinion? Having more platforms is good, as are more compatibility layers. Android is more than just an OS or a platform, it's a set of ABIs for running apps that's used by over a billion people.
I've had the Braveheart and later Mobian releases of the Pinephone. Currently have a Pinebook Pro. I'm super excited for the Pinephone Pro to finally get moved to rockchip hardware even if it is just a downclocked 2016 SoC with a few more tweaks for Pine64.
The progress they are making is great but still far from daily driving for me personally. I'm just glad the community exists. Even with the bugs and flaws the products may have it is better than nothing.
The CPU has a passmark of around 2000 I think. It's clearly quite an upgrade. Also, they have kept backwards hardware compatibility (Pogo Pins, Screen size and Button Placement), that's a huge motivator for a hardware eco system to pop up around it. Can't wait for these tires to warm up!
This looks neat and I appreciate how clear they are about expectation setting. With that said it's disappointing to see only Bluetooth 4.1. A lot of modern devices rely on features from 5.0 either for low power usage, or bi-directional high quality audio.
It seems fine for a general productivity device, but not for things like video conferencing, or media consumption, which I guess aligns with their inability to support DRM.
"The decision to maintain the original PinePhone’s screen resolution of 1440×720 was made early on; higher resolution panels consume more power and increase SoC’s load, resulting in shorter battery life and higher average thermals. A few extra pixels aren’t worth it."
As a concept this is fine, mainstream will never happen with the current set of societal priorities. It’s not flashy enough, it requires some tinkering, and my friends won’t think it’s cool enough. Unfortunate, because at least in my opinion this is the direction we should all be going.
The improved hardware seems great!! Hope to see a PinePhone one day with the best mobile hardware available! Best processor, best GPU, best touch screen, best camera, best sensors... A flagship PinePhone.
I put my Pinephone back in its box about 6 months ago. Have they fixed the massive lag between touching the screen and it responding yet? That was the main reason it wasn’t usable for me.
In 6 months there have been tons of progress yes. Though I didn't have any issue with the touchscreen 6 months ago so your issue might lies elsewhere. You should try reflashing completely yours with Mobian or another well-supported OS.
Would it really have been that bad to at least offer a 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB Memory upgrade.
Just feels like a huge let down. I get it the price of electronics(i.e. memory) is more expensive, but this makes it look like a joke in comparison with other "phones".
And if it were marketed as a mini computer 4GB of ram isn't saying much. Hexacore processor, 128GB Emmc storage awesome but then I read 4GB of ram and it's like a smack in the face. If this is to be a "flagship" for years to come, I'm really disappointed they went with limited memory.
Would I pay $699 instead of $399 for more memory... yeah I would
Pine64 has other CPUs they can work with, but they are not well supported yet. I wouldn't be surprised to see another phone rev with a much better CPU in the future once the Quarts-64 line starts working well. Right now the people who can do that work already have plenty of hardware to work with, while people who can do phone work really want a somewhat faster CPU now.
MediaTek is horribly hostile to free software and would be a terrible fit in something like this. MediaTek is the reason the Gemini PDA couldn't do what the PinePhone is doing despite making some similar claims.
As for not waiting for a newer Rockchip part, it sounds like they are making it clear this is not a second generation PinePhone, just a more powerful version of what we already had. There will likely be a proper second generation with more major changes later on.
I recall seeing pictures and notes about a PinePhone with a physical keyboard. Is that actually under development as well? Or is that just someone's experiment?
That's basically because they outsourced the design to a cheap chinese smartphone manufacturer. It was definitely the right choice as the Pinephone has basically zero hardware issues, unlike the Librem 5 or even the Fairphone.
Well, the "Explorer Edition" units haven't gone on sale yet. Right now only developer units are on sale, and those are strictly for developers who will contribute to the kernel, firmware, drivers, and shell. But I'm sure they will be willing to process a refund for you if your device hasn't shipped out yet, otherwise you'll have to return it minus the cost of shipping.
Take a look at sxmo[0]. It is inspired by the niche of tiling window managers and shortcut-driven workflow. I don't know if it is your style, but it qualifies as radiaclly different.
I got the UB Ports Community Edition of the PinePhone and found Ubuntu Touch to be a very unpleasant experience and not at all what I signed up for. Luckily postmarketOS was exactly what I wanted and I moved to that within a week or so of owning the device.
Ubuntu Touch mounts stuff read-only, pushes you into using webapps, discourages using normal shell stuff like you would on a desktop GNU/Linux system, and has some poorly-working container system for if you wanna use shell stuff. It honestly felt worse than using Termux on an Android phone.
With pmOS you can install nvim, firefox, mpv, minetest... Things just work how you'd expect. It's like a single board computer (raspberry pi, etc.) that comes with a screen and other things already attached. You can ssh into it and update your packages all at once. It's really nice.
I think it's a stretch to say they're starting from scratch, but if you just mean the UI, Manjaro supports Lomiri (the UI from Ubuntu Touch) while also giving you a more normal OS experience. I'm glad to have some diversity in the desktop environment. Phosh is one of the more polished options, but has the issue of being GNOME-flavored and having all the issues you'd see with regular GNOME. Plasma Mobile feels more Android-like and familiar, but is still rough around the edges. Eventually it will hopefully be as good as Phosh and people can choose whatever they like the look and feel of more.
I suspect Pine ships Manjaro ARM because that distro will apply nearly any patch to the kernel if it makes something work, no matter how hacky or unsustainable the patch is. Right now their kernel has 43 patches, and they are not even organized or annotated well.
They ship Manjaro ARM because the people behind PINE64 are manjaro fans and they think that Manjaro has a good business setup. It would have been much nicer to have PostmarketOS shipped stock.
Pine64 itself is a hardware company. The software side is community-driven, and UBports (the old Ubuntu phone OS) is one of the operating systems you can install on your PinePhone.
I think most of the limitation might actually lie in software. I have a CE and Megapixels (the camera app I'm using) can store raw files and the raw files and the processed jpg files have a significant gap in quality.
Eh, I disagree. I'd hate to accidentally enable one of the things shut off by those switches. Software controls are likely adequate for day-to-day "I just don't want tracking here or there" events, but the physical hardware switch should give you an "I don't want this happening ever" comfort, which is best done by something more secured behind a cover.
