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PinePhone Pro Announced

pine64.org

271–280 of 375 posts

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#271

One thing I will note is how absolutely essential smart phones have become to our daily existence. A colleague's phone recently broke and her life shutdown because she could not 2fa anywhere, including for reporting her time card, etc. As a result, I cannot take any risks when purchasing a phone. I have to have the most reliable option possible.

Agree, it's a bit frightening we're so locked to our phones today. But why leave that comment on this particular submission? The PinePhone is not meant to be a phone you use day-to-day, it's meant for curious developers to hack around on. They are being very upfront about this as well. Maybe in the future this will change.

> But why leave that comment on this particular submission?

Sorry if I sounded negative. I agree, efforts like these should be lauded.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#272
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver? I see the fragmented approach on the software side as a major hindrance to the goal of achieving a device that can be used by a normal person as a reasonable replacement for other smart phones. I check in on it every l every 6 months or so, update my pinephone and give it a few days. So far, it doesn't meet reliability…

TBH I think having a flutter port for this operating mobile system is probably the most likely way for it to succeed. That way you can do a flutter app and it will work on this too, while still having mainline OS support. Then you would need to fill in some common services like push and such.

Or run an Android or iOS emulator. (Note: like Wine runs Windows software on Linux in a fully legal way).

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#273

You've got to be frigging kidding. Literally just received a PinePhone earlier this week. And now it's obsolete? Not happy at all. :(

Pinephone is supposed to be manufactured for 5 years since the initial release. Hardly obsolete.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#274
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty common is an understatement. Everyone I have met over 50 used reading glasses. It starts somewhere between 40 and 45, but the number of people without presbyopia over 50 must be minuscule.

I used reading glasses, for years. I don't need them anymore. Sometime last year I started drinking kombucha, a pint most days. That is the only thing I can think of to credit the change to. My diastolic blood pressure also went down, from 90 to 70.

That is remarkable because, as I understand it, presbyopia is simply a consequence of the proteins in the eye hardening over time, and hence everyone is expected to get it around the same age. I struggle to see how kombucha would help them soften.

https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-condition...

http://www.carolinaeyemd.com/eye-conditions-hendersonville/p...

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#275
post #163

It is frustrating to me that despite the blunt verbiage about it being a beta device for software and hardware developers, people even here are griping about it being not ready for everyday use. If a free and open-source mobile operating system is missing software support for a feature you want, please contribute to its development.

How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver? I see the fragmented approach on the software side as a major hindrance to the goal of achieving a device that can be used by a normal person as a reasonable replacement for other smart phones. I check in on it every l every 6 months or so, update my pinephone and give it a few days. So far, it doesn't meet reliability…

One problem is even governments support only the duopoly of smartphone makers. For example, try downloading a "Covid App" for a Linux phone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_apps

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#276
post #151

I recall seeing pictures and notes about a PinePhone with a physical keyboard. Is that actually under development as well? Or is that just someone's experiment?

It was delayed several times because of repeated issues with the quality of the keyboard membrane.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#277
As a concept this is fine, mainstream will never happen with the current set of societal priorities. It’s not flashy enough, it requires some tinkering, and my friends won’t think it’s cool enough. Unfortunate, because at least in my opinion this is the direction we should all be going.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An advertising company has a root-level backdoor to the device?

You should be able to run degoogled android on the device.

In theory, sure. However, having done that dance before, the limitations between a degoogled Android (basically open source apps only, since F-Droid doesn't allow proprietary apps, and nearly all proprietary apps depend on Play Services APIs anyways), you end up with something less useful than a PinePhone.

And at the end of the day, Android was written by Google for Google to serve Google. Trying to use a phone as your daily driver running developed by your enemy is hardly a way to get through life. Just get a phone that doesn't hate you. Like a PinePhone. Or an iPhone, which has all sort of issues but at least gives you a reasonably private and secure device at the expense of gobs of money.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#279
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using. It’s a funny thing indeed. sxmo seems to be the only option not focusing on competing with Apple and Google on a “good enough for mainstream” ux. I mean Phosh is nice and all. Having frameworks for…

I looked into sxmo and I think it falls clearly into the "clever hack" category and not in the "actually usable" category. There is only so far you can get on a touchscreen device without actually programming any of the apps to support touch. The lack of hardware acceleration in anything X related is also basically going to ensure that it always has poor performance, everything needs to be moved to use GLES based ren…

> I looked into sxmo and I think it falls clearly into the "clever hack" category and not in the "actually usable" category.

Agree to disagree? Also I think you’re being somewhat disingenuous or uncharitable here.

sxmo has clearly had a unique vision for mobile Linux for power users and executed on just that.

All core phone functionality is available through regular, composable shell-scripts. And all major events can be hooked by simple user-controlled scripts in $HOME/.config/sxmo without any other alterations to the OS at large, no root required. It successfully employs a tiling window-manager by default to allow simple(!) mobile-oriented multi-tasking.

That’s quite something of its own, with no equivalent anywhere else in mobile space, Linux-based or not.

This is clearly a power-user enabling mobile Linux shell, and it’s making no excuses about it.

Sure there might be technical improvements which are possible at several levels in the stack. I’m not debating that.

That does however in no way take away from the vision behind it and how well that has been executed so far.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#280
It was a joy to read their website, particularly where they describe "who is it for" and "who is it not for". Clear and honest. No excuses, presumably no lies.

I wish all product websites were like this.

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