PinePhone Pro Announced • Hacker News Board

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#121

Post by blueblob » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

131012 wrote: post #93

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…

A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably? Smartphones are so bloated with functionalities, it seems nobody ever talks about that. I don't see the answer on the website.

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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#122

Post by filmgirlcw » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#123

Post by reginold » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

idle_zealot wrote: post #84

reginold wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? 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 o…

good to know, appreciate the clarification! Glad to hear the work is cumulative.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#124

Post by pengaru » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#125

Post by reginold » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

29083011397778 wrote: post #83

officeplant wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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…

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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#126

Post by nightski » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

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.

[1] https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-6310

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#127

Post by gorgoiler » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #119

It has a Quectel EG25-G modem. 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…

Is an LTE band the same as a category? (As in the iPhone X was the first cat16 capable device, for example.)

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#128

Post by CameronNemo » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

barbacoa wrote: post #120

Question Why are projects like this starting from scratch and not forking from the abandoned Ubuntu phone OS?

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.

https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/packages/core/linux

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#129

Post by md8z » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #122

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 gl…

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.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#130

Post by howlin » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #37

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…

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…

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.