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PinePhone Pro Announced

pine64.org

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Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#61

Post by necrotic_comp »

Aeolun wrote: post #56
betwixthewires wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> right now it is a toy for nerds I have some standards for my toys though. If it’s sold as a phone, it should actually work as a phone (even a shitty one). If they were selling it as a mini linux computer with integrated screen I wouldn’t mind so much.

That's how I'm seeing this - as a mini linux computer with the ability to make calls and send text messages at some point in the future.

Just a linux computer with a cellular modem sounds amazing to me, tbh.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#62

Post by bluGill »

Aeolun wrote: post #56
betwixthewires wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> right now it is a toy for nerds I have some standards for my toys though. If it’s sold as a phone, it should actually work as a phone (even a shitty one). If they were selling it as a mini linux computer with integrated screen I wouldn’t mind so much.

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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#63

Post by jjmellon »

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 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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#65

Post by officeplant »

reginold wrote: post #50
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…

>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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#66

Post by Aeolun »

buildbot wrote: post #3

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?

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#67

Post by 29083011397778 »

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #32
wbsss4412 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's probably a very fair point. 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…

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.

[0] https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct

[1] https://github.com/waydroid/waydroid

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#68

Post by _v7gu »

> 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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#69

Post by dbeley »

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…

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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#70

Post by betwixthewires »

Aeolun wrote: post #56
betwixthewires wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> right now it is a toy for nerds I have some standards for my toys though. If it’s sold as a phone, it should actually work as a phone (even a shitty one). If they were selling it as a mini linux computer with integrated screen I wouldn’t mind so much.

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.

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