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PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

pine64.org

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Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#91

The pinephone is great, in fact I'm typing this comment from mine. That said, fair warning to anyone thinking about getting one: it's slow, buggy, and flat out unreliable if you need to be able to receive / answer calls and texts for anything important (e.g. work). Once they get the software worked out over the next few years though, it'll be the best thing out there. No ads, no bullshit, just a phone with a mainline…

You have a strange definition of "great." If any other phone exhibited those characteristics, I would write it off as garbage, not excuse its faults with a promise that they'll be fixed Real Soon Now™

He was just being polite. Standard unwritten rule : start with a single supportive positive line on a thing and then follow it by a whole page of criticism.

Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience that's likely because of software --- there's tons of ultra-cheap cameras with Omnivision sensors in them, and they just use the default settings and reference code which suffice to give not much more than a recognisable image. But they can be run in RAW mode to produce far better quality.

If you have the bandwidth to contribute I'm sure the people working on the camera app ( https://git.sr.ht/~martijnbraam/megapixels ) would love any assistance you could give them on postprocessing the RAWs. From my limited experience with it, there's a huge amount of focus lag on the sensor itself, massive shutter lag, and then several seconds of postprocessing lag. I'm sure the last two can be improved in software,…

The latest version of megapixels has pretty much realtime preview now. The postprocessing still takes 30 seconds though which is why it's done in the background (just like android phones)

The focus speed just won't be great, it's old-school contrast detection autofocus.

Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#93
post #51

I carry around a Pinephone with my personal SIM and use it for most personal activities. I also carry about a work phone, which I use for work, and personal activites that I can't yet do on the Pinephone (maps, chromecast, etc.) It's liberating to have plain old Linux on my phone. My phone is now introspectable, behaves like my other computers, and only runs software that does not track me. I hack on these and am exc…

You are still being tracked if you carry that other phone though.

Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#94
post #54

The store page mentions dead pixels; It's the first time I'm seeing a disclaimer like this on a smartphone. Is this normal? Why aren't other manufacturers mentioning this? Source: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-conve... > A small numbers of stuck or dead pixels (1-3) can be a characteristic of LCD screens. While rare, this should not be considered a defect. If you think that a minor dissatisfa…

In the early days of LCD screens different vendors and even resellers had different warranty and return policies for dead pixels, even going as far as cluster vs spread out. E.G. in circa 2007 Dell had a 5 dead pixels policy but if 3 were in a cluster you could replace the monitor too. The reason why Apple or Samsung can have a 0 dead pixel policy is because they have money to buy higher quality screens in the first…

I got 1 dead pixel on fairly recent XPS 13. Appeared shortly after warranty lapsed.

Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once they get the software worked out over the next few years though, it'll be the best thing out there. No ads, no bullshit, just a phone with a mainline linux distribution. I'm coming to the realisation that open source projects will always provide a lower quality than comerical ones. How can we honestly expect a small team of developers to compete with the larger teams a commerical project can afford? The realit…

> I'm coming to the realisation that open source projects will always provide a lower quality than comerical ones. That is not true. As far as I am concerned Linux is clearly superior OS for my laptop over commercial alternatives. > How can we honestly expect a small team of developers to compete with the larger teams a commerical project can afford? In many cases they win by default. If "no leaking of personal data"…

But was Linux superior prior to it becoming a commercial project. The majority of changes in the Linux kernel have for many years been done by people hired by large companies like Intel, Huawei and Red Hat/IBM. Linux is no longer created by a small team, but is now a large commercial project.

Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#97
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the comments, and weighing your comment, you say we need to have Android to be successful. Before that you say “we need apps”, that’s the heart of your comment. It can be successfully argued that we don’t need more of what we already have (aka closed walled, ad ridden, privacy off by default - solutions) We (as in developers) should start believing in these projects and adopt them. Blender for a long time cou…

Blender also had a massive investment that PinePhone does not have.

This is where you start, if PinePhone positions itself well, things -can- change.

Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#98

The pinephone is great, in fact I'm typing this comment from mine. That said, fair warning to anyone thinking about getting one: it's slow, buggy, and flat out unreliable if you need to be able to receive / answer calls and texts for anything important (e.g. work). Once they get the software worked out over the next few years though, it'll be the best thing out there. No ads, no bullshit, just a phone with a mainline…

You have a strange definition of "great." If any other phone exhibited those characteristics, I would write it off as garbage, not excuse its faults with a promise that they'll be fixed Real Soon Now™

Windows has all of those characteristics and people still think it's great.

Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm coming to the realisation that open source projects will always provide a lower quality than commercial ones That's demonstrably wrong. Examples are so abundant and obvious that I'm not sure I need to mention any, but for the sake of argument. In software: Linux, Gimp, Firefox, VLC, Blender, OpenOffice, ... In hardware: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagleboard, UltiMaker, Adafruit products, Sparkfun Electronics produ…

> Examples are so abundant and obvious that I'm not sure I need to mention any, but for the sake of argument. In software: Linux, Gimp, Firefox, VLC, Blender, OpenOffice If you picked an average computer user at random (read: not people on HN) and had them try out Linux, Gimp, and OpenOffice, I don't think they'd agree with you that they're as high-quality as their commercial alternatives.

Average users use Linux all the time, it’s in everything. You’d need to ask the developers writing all these router OSes, smart televisions, Android phones, … whether they chose Linux because of its high quality or, I guess, randomly?..

Try giving an average user Photoshop. See how they weep. These thought experiments are really hard to apply to software on complex domains.

OpenOffice is indeed a terrible example.

Re: PinePhone – Open Source Smart Phone Supported by Major Linux Phone Projects

#100

The pinephone is great, in fact I'm typing this comment from mine. That said, fair warning to anyone thinking about getting one: it's slow, buggy, and flat out unreliable if you need to be able to receive / answer calls and texts for anything important (e.g. work). Once they get the software worked out over the next few years though, it'll be the best thing out there. No ads, no bullshit, just a phone with a mainline…

> Once they get the software worked out over the next few years though, it'll be the best thing out there. No ads, no bullshit, just a phone with a mainline linux distribution. I'm coming to the realisation that open source projects will always provide a lower quality than comerical ones. How can we honestly expect a small team of developers to compete with the larger teams a commerical project can afford? The realit…

Android is extremely unpolished, user-hostile and low-quality in general.

People don't run it because of software quality.

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