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PinePhone Pro Announced

pine64.org

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Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#41

Post by opencl »

belval wrote: post #7

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…

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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#42

Post by officeplant »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #33

> 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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#43

Post by MatthiasPortzel »

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #4

"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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#44

Post by [deleted] »

jjmellon wrote: post #17

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…

[deleted]

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#45

Post by officeplant »

thepete2 wrote: post #15
CubsFan1060 wrote: post #4

"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 mean, couldn't you dual-boot android on this thing? Or is the SoC not supported?

Android is supported on some Rockchip SBC's out there. I imagine the problem would be getting modem support working.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#46

Post by WhatIsDukkha »

amarsahinovic wrote: post #38
rich_sasha wrote: post #30

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 tinker…

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]. [0] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5

Be aware that planetcomputers/astro slide has done a really really bad job of supporting their devices with os updates on the Android side.

Even with some linux support (which I haven't checked lately) it was a hard pass to support the slide.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#47

Post by 29083011397778 »

tediousdemise wrote: post #31
jjmellon wrote: post #17

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…

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 :)

[0] https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#48

Post by betwixthewires »

smallerfish wrote: post #8
CubsFan1060 wrote: post #4

"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.

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.

There's also this somewhat new project called waydroid that runs android applications closer to the metal than an emulator would. https://waydro.id/

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#49

Post by olau »

rich_sasha wrote: post #30

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 tinker…

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.

Probably rewarding work, too.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#50

Post by reginold »

jjmellon wrote: post #17

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…

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.

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