Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 225 posts

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#111

Post by eric__cartman »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #104
Bancakes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad to see free hardware is so comically behind commercial one.

To be fair, it's also priced dramatically lower. It's not fair to compare a current iPhone, priced at more than $1200 on the open market, with the Pine Phone priced at $150. This is where they chose to bring a phone to market and I think it's a smart move. They'll attract a bigger audience and make it easier for people to sim-swap and experiment. When the distros get good enough, they can price out higher end hardwar…

I'm all for having tuxphones but even a $100 Android phone creams the Pine Phone in every aspect regarding performance. The sad truth is until the soc vendors don't start properly supporting a mainline Linux kernel and offer open source drivers we will be stuck with devices that haven't left the "wow this is cool but I wouldn't use is as my only phone" territory.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#113

Post by michelledepeil »

This review is totally correct and I share the hope/idea that this might be the big linux-on-phones jumping-off point. I've been daily driving the Librem 5 with postmarketOS/phosh for a couple of months now, and though I certainly wouldn't give it to my grandmother right now, I can already start to imagine her using a maybe PureOS/phosh on a librem 5-v3 five years from now.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#114

Post by m463 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #60
squarefoot wrote: post #55

One point that should be repeated ad infinitum for those reading about the Pinephone for the 1st time: it's all about the freedom, not performance. One doesn't buy the Pinephone to brag about its technical achievements with friends, but rather to contribute building an ecosystem, even just by spreading the word, of people who put freedom and privacy above everything. I also should be repeated ad infinitum why its har…

To me the PinePhone and other Linux phones are also about performance. Yes the MVP prototypes will always suck and you would only buy these for freedom's sake, but a truly unified software platform encompassing both mobile and mainstream computing all running on openly documented reference hardware, will be far superior technically to what we have today.

As a purism owner, and a long-time linux user... I think that is a fantasy statement.

Theoretically, there could be an open platform like the PC (with usb + pcie + ATX case/power supply + etc..) with open interfaces. However the reason this came into existence was by microsoft's design to commoditize the hardware to drive software sales of its (closed) operating system.

With cellphones all of those interfaces are being subsumed so the trend is one chip + a display + a battery. The chip is IP of many vendors.

Additionally, the linux distributions have not had the highest performance. For example, frequently there is poor or no graphics acceleration.

I think Linux will always be behind commercial/proprietary platforms. One could arguably say that the iphone is a multi-billion dollar platform, with more careful engineering, development and tuning than any other device on the planet.

That said - I do believe linux based phones are nearing that "good enough" stage where dedicated users can make it work for them and people may at least have a choice.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#115

Post by ocdtrekkie »

spankalee wrote: post #98
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will definitely be more secure, but probably drastically less open, since there won't be any GPL code underneath for people to demand copies of. Fuchsia, once it reaches the level of polish required of proper Google products, will be as closed as iOS. And security will be the justification for it.

The Fuchsia code itself is open, and while a vendor could make changes and not release them, a project like Pine wouldn't do that. That would indeed be a major motivation to use a Pine-like over other vendors.

> The Fuchsia code itself is open

For now. It doesn't yet have all of the proprietary bits added in, nor has it been shipped to OEM devices using mobile device hardware. Most of the proprietary Google bits of Android are proprietary by choice, there's no way Google is going to be any more open with Fuchsia.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#116

Post by 29083011397778 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #85
tetrisgm wrote: post #5

I want the PinePhone to work. The Librem too. In fact I had preorders for both. I canceled them looking at the performance. They’re excellent toys. Great effort to ship such a difficult product. But if your phone is going to struggle with running things besides terminal, it’s not going to be a great daily phone. I’d love them to be on par with the latest Android flagships in terms of power. Cost is not an issue. I ju…

I think if they can nail the low-end or mid-end phone, and get enough volume out there to make an ecosystem possible, ramping up to high-end phones is the easy part. It's not like the factories manufacturing these phones don't know how to make high-end phones. But the problem with $800 phones is people can't afford to buy them unless they're daily driver ready. At $150, you can buy it as a testing phone/a spare phone…

This is why we're really very lucky, IMO: We have two companies doing both, right now. We have an $800 device for the "high" end, and a cheaper device to get the word out. The timing seems better than if it had been one or the other.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#117

Post by db579 »

oarsinsync wrote: post #86
amelius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't they at least support the Web?

Several of the “challenger” / “FinTech” banks in the UK (e.g. Monzo, Starling) require the use of their app. They offer limited read-only views via web, but only offer all features via app. No iOS / Android phone? Go to a different bank.

Starling do offer an API anyone can use to interact with their own account. Doesn't allow full functionality yet though.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#118

Post by slim »

errantspark wrote: post #91

My only phone is a Pinephone. I don't "daily" drive it because I'm not really much of a phone user but it's still loads better than the experience I had with Android/iOS. I feel like the phone respects me. It's a computer and when I decide that I want to do [X thing a computer can do] it lets me do that. It feels much better to struggle against real problems I can solve than it does to struggle against fake problems…

Can you receive calls on it?

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#119

Post by fsflover »

tetrisgm wrote: post #5

I want the PinePhone to work. The Librem too. In fact I had preorders for both. I canceled them looking at the performance. They’re excellent toys. Great effort to ship such a difficult product. But if your phone is going to struggle with running things besides terminal, it’s not going to be a great daily phone. I’d love them to be on par with the latest Android flagships in terms of power. Cost is not an issue. I ju…

It's not just about performance: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#120

Post by fsflover »

slim wrote: post #118
errantspark wrote: post #91

My only phone is a Pinephone. I don't "daily" drive it because I'm not really much of a phone user but it's still loads better than the experience I had with Android/iOS. I feel like the phone respects me. It's a computer and when I decide that I want to do [X thing a computer can do] it lets me do that. It feels much better to struggle against real problems I can solve than it does to struggle against fake problems…

Can you receive calls on it?

Calls have been working on both Pinephone and Librem 5 for a long time already.
Post reply on HN