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PinePhone Pro Announced

pine64.org

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Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#301

Post by mulflav »

TheUnelisted wrote: post #154
CameronNemo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They ship Manjaro ARM because the people behind PINE64 are manjaro fans and they think that Manjaro has a good business setup. It would have been much nicer to have PostmarketOS shipped stock.

I had wondered why they ended up on Manjaro of all things. Did Pine64 make an explicit statement on the matter?

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#302

Post by mixmastamyk »

hutzlibu wrote: post #195
131012 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably" Half a year ago, when I looked into it, the answer was a clear: no. And there were not many things that did work reliable, without frequent freezes and crashes. I doubt that fundamentally changed, so if you are looking for stability and reliability right now, than better look somewhere else. This project is about to get to such…

That's part of why it's so infuriating. I wish they'd not install anything that wasn't working reliably. If only three features currently work, fine. Build from there.

But a crashy mess that can't do 100 things while it overheats? I have no use for that.

Fred Brooks, 1987:

Some years ago Harlan Mills proposed that any software system should be grown by incremental development. That is, the system should first be made to run, even if it does nothing useful except call the proper set of dummy subprograms. Then, bit by bit, it should be fleshed out, with the subprograms in turn being developed--into actions or calls to empty stubs in the level below.

I have seen most dramatic results since I began urging this technique on the project builders in my Software Engineering Laboratory class. Nothing in the past decade has so radically changed my own practice, or its effectiveness. ... The morale effects are startling. Enthusiasm jumps when there is a running system, even a simple one. Efforts redouble when the first picture from a new graphics software system appears on the screen, even if it is only a rectangle. One always has, at every stage in the process, a working system.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#303

Post by db579 »

RDaneel0livaw wrote: post #134
29083011397778 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cons…

For some reason it won't let me reply to your newer message, there just is no reply button at all, very strange, anyway, putting my reply to your second message here. Thanks so much for the info! I don't ever do calls on whatsapp, so this sounds absolutely amazing for me! I also see that I can bridge in slack as well so now all the sudden I may be able to bridge all my work stuff into one matrix instance and remove t…

Element.io also offer paid managed servers where they do the bridging for you if you'd rather not deal with it yourself. Starts at around $10 a month for a home server plus some light WhatsApp bridging and works surprisingly well, with the caveats already mentioned above about calling.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#304

Post by Fnoord »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #216
CameronNemo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps because it is at a similar price point as a Fairphone 3, which you can daily drive.

But the Fairphone 3 is running a hostile OS that has already done most of the work, and the PinePhone is still very much an early development platform.

You can install another OS if you want. LineageOS, for example (with or without OpenGApps). Or /e/. You can even buy a FP3(+) with /e/. They sell it. Or other OSes. Or you wait for FP4 which is out 25 October.

Fairphone 3(+)/4 don't have killswitches though.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#305

Post by CameronNemo »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #278
CameronNemo wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

MicroG may still ping google services sometimes, but it is not a root level backdoor into my phone. Most proprietary apps I've tried work. Bank app, dating apps, slack, visual voicemail, venmo.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#306

Post by db579 »

luis8 wrote: post #112

I hope that someday a billionaire could donate a few hundred million to a product like this so we can finally have a true Linux phone that can compete with android and Linux. What about finding 1 million nerds like me that would like to donate 100 to a crowdfunding campaign just to the software side of the phone?.

This exists and is probably the closest thing to trying to do that. Stalled out well short of millions though...

https://puri.sm/fund-your-app/

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#307

Post by m0zg »

amelius wrote: post #275
robbedpeter wrote: post #218

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…

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

I'd be quite happy to _not_ be able to download "Covid App", whatever that is, on my phone. So, what's a bug for some is a valuable feature to others.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#308

Post by OJFord »

turtlebits wrote: post #282
djent wrote: 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.

The product page doesn’t include the word “beta” anywhere. I wouldn’t even call it a phone if it can’t act as a phone out of the box, let alone use the “pro” moniker. Why is it not labeled as a development board with a touchscreen and cell modem?

It says it's available for developers.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#309

Post by Ekaros »

oynqr wrote: post #293
nottaylorswift wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing new here. I remember having those features in the Nokia N900 in 09. I think this product is grossly overpriced for a cheap generic Android phone loaded with a beta Linux distro. In Shenzhen they'll sell you a case of 50 for $400. Save your money or buy a Quest 2.

Except this one is going to run a close to mainline kernel pretty soon and those android phones will be stuck in the last decade, forever.

How soon is other software on it is usable? Kernel really doesn't matter too much if rest is unusable...

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#310

Post by GekkePrutser »

robbedpeter wrote: post #218
djent wrote: 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…

> How many hundreds or thousands

Hundreds of millions. That's how many you need for mainstream apps to be built.

Even Microsoft couldn't get past that hurdle and money is not a problem for them.

Android compatibility might help somewhat but it will undermine the usefulness of the open platform by introducing the very things it fights against. The OS is not the only problem. Apps can still datamine the Android layer then. You won't be much better off than with a privacy focused Android fork.

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