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PinePhone Pro Announced

pine64.org

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Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#141

Post by betwixthewires »

howlin wrote: post #130
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…

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.

I'll take it off your hands and you can consider that a donation.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#142

Post by md8z »

idle_zealot wrote: post #96
jjmellon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the progression of development, but every few months I get the itch to play around with my PinePhone and flash the latest version of one of the OSes. The experience is consistently greatly improved over the last time. I’m at the point now where the greatest usability issue I run into is performance, though I’m sure if I were to daily-drive I’d bump into more.

"I’m at the point now where the greatest usability issue I run into is performance"

As someone who has used the latest iOS and Android, I can't agree. The performance of the Pinephone is indeed really terrible, but the usability in general is also awful. There are just way too many little details that are missing, most Linux apps are still not really built for touch. It will be a while before all the important apps are fully ported over to Qt Quick and libhandy/libadwaita, but maybe by then they will have made a few more revisions with a better CPU. And of course I expect desktop users to start complaining when that happens because some apps will start to get more mobile-oriented...

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#143

Post by GeckoEidechse »

md8z wrote: post #129
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.

Same. I may have bought a PinePhone but it's running mobian with phosh, so all the heavy lifting to get a working phone UI was done by Purism including GTK libraries like libhandy (now libadwaita).

I'm ever grateful for their work.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#144

Post by opan »

reginold wrote: post #125
29083011397778 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They ship different things out of the box but can largely use the same exact software. They may update at different rates and thus have different versions of things. They are not entirely different operating system like Mac OS vs Windows.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#145

Post by busymom0 »

nightski wrote: post #126

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 p…

Does the Nokia allow you to load mp3 files and play them? That would solve it for me.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#146

Post by TheUnelisted »

Aeolun wrote: post #66
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?

The problem is that it's not 1-1 with X86, especially in regards to graphics capability (The GPU is really the weak link on the current PinePhone). The GPU for example uses Tile-based rendering, which requires software optimizations to work best... Plus the GPU is just plain slow. It's a first generation ARM Mali graphics core intended for OpenGL ES 2.0 afterall.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#147

Post by opan »

CameronNemo wrote: post #140
smokelegend wrote: post #133

4GB mem.....? Really 4GB? That's it? Would it really have been that bad to at least offer a 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB Memory upgrade. Just feels like a huge let down. I get it the price of electronics(i.e. memory) is more expensive, but this makes it look like a joke in comparison with other "phones". And if it were marketed as a mini computer 4GB of ram isn't saying much. Hexacore processor, 128GB Emmc storage awesome but…

That is the limit for the rk3399 SoC. I'm surprised they did not wait for the rk3588, or just use a Mediatek Dimensity SoC. If you are based in Europe, you may be interested in the Fairphone 4, which has 6 or 8 GB of RAM.

MediaTek is horribly hostile to free software and would be a terrible fit in something like this. MediaTek is the reason the Gemini PDA couldn't do what the PinePhone is doing despite making some similar claims.

As for not waiting for a newer Rockchip part, it sounds like they are making it clear this is not a second generation PinePhone, just a more powerful version of what we already had. There will likely be a proper second generation with more major changes later on.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#148

Post by prox »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #117
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…

I largely agree with the assessment. I am still glad I bought mine, because even though it is gathering dust, I am hoping the purchase contributed somewhat to a better mobile future. I may have mentioned it before, but default OS is just painful to use ( thankfully, there are other options ). And here is the part of the problem. I am motivated to use it. Right now it still feels so janky, most people won't even get p…

I think the message / take away is : developers, developers, developers. Something that quickly evolves by the shared power of a lot of minds. If you are buying it, toss it away and don’t contribute, this will hamper future succes.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#149

Post by nsonha »

The spec is so unimpressive. I don't know about other people but I'm not getting a Linux phone for minimalism, I'm getting one that could host all my personal computing need and even replace a desktop.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#150

Post by TheUnelisted »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #108
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I first saw their Indiegogo advertising that it could boot Linux, I tried looking for any pictures/video/evidence of it, and found nothing.

It does "run", but it's not really running Linux. It's just android with a halium layer running Linux software on top. So when android support ends, which it will seeing how they've not been great at software support, your "Linux" build will also no longer get updates. That's why Mainline Linux is such a big deal, as even if support ends, you'll still be able to get the latest Linux kernel and distributions can continue basically forever supporting the device.
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