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PinePhone multi-distro demo image

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Re: PinePhone multi-distro demo image

#21

Post by necovek »

jancsika wrote: post #20
Arnavion wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this topic comes up I have to remind people that the definition of "daily driver" is different for everyone. I've been daily-driving the phone for a year without problems because it does everything I need it to do. That doesn't mean you'd have no problems with it. Instead, please ask what it is you want the phone to do, and then people can give you a clear answer.

I feel like your comment should be locked until the following "beginner's quest" is finished: + phone call audio quality is as good as some cheapo Android phone I can buy at Walmart, across all the distros in this multi-distro image I mean, you have a report above that the Pinephone can't even achieve that. (And worse, the user is considering diving into ALSA configuration to fix this!) If it's true that a phone devi…

This is akin to saying that an Android phone is not a candidate for a daily driver as long as all the Android mods on XDA are not of a sufficient base quality.

An open phone will inevitably have incomplete distributions for it: that's the entire goal of an open phone.

The problem is if there is not a single option that covers the basics well, or if that option is non-obvious (i.e. you don't know which is it).

I've personally used Meizu MX4 with Ubuntu for years as a daily driver, but I was happy to give up on Android apps. That was slightly more powerful hardware but also 5-8 years ago.

Re: PinePhone multi-distro demo image

#22

Post by Arnavion »

jancsika wrote: post #20
Arnavion wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this topic comes up I have to remind people that the definition of "daily driver" is different for everyone. I've been daily-driving the phone for a year without problems because it does everything I need it to do. That doesn't mean you'd have no problems with it. Instead, please ask what it is you want the phone to do, and then people can give you a clear answer.

I feel like your comment should be locked until the following "beginner's quest" is finished: + phone call audio quality is as good as some cheapo Android phone I can buy at Walmart, across all the distros in this multi-distro image I mean, you have a report above that the Pinephone can't even achieve that. (And worse, the user is considering diving into ALSA configuration to fix this!) If it's true that a phone devi…

I have no problem with the phone call quality for the year that I've owned my PinePhone. I can hear people fine and they can hear me fine.

Next question? Although it looks like you're not interested in asking questions, just insulting people who actually know what they're talking about.

BTW not everyone who gets the PinePhone uses it for calls; the number of people who brought the keyboard case in order to use it as a PDA or laptop should be proof of that. So I say again that "daily driver" is not a well-defined term with a single globally-recognized meaning, and people should ask precisely what they want from the phone.

Re: PinePhone multi-distro demo image

#24

Post by goodpoint »

gundamdoubleO wrote: post #2

Can anyone who has extensively tried out most of the available distros for PinePhone comment on how close any of them are to a "daily driver" state? I suspect they're all still far from it but it'd be interesting to know which are worth keeping an eye on.

It depends on what applications you need, but Mobian is very stable and usable.

Re: PinePhone multi-distro demo image

#25

Post by therein »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #10

Question for any US-based PinePhone aficionados: what carrier are you using (where/how did you get a SIM card)? I recently got an ATT pre-paid SIM (that I was planning on putting in an Android phone eventually). I thought I would give it a try in the PinePhone just to see what happens and found that it would not activate... (Note that this was just a normal pre-paid SIM direct from ATT and not from some 3rd-party MNV…

Not sure if there is anything against changing your IMEI to the IMEI of another device you own and purposefully break to avoid any future network collusion.

Either way, since they have a Queltec modem, just write AT+EGMR=1,7,“NEWIMEI” over tty to the modem and your IMEI is permanently changed.

This means your carrier will provision your device on their network.

Re: PinePhone multi-distro demo image

#26

Post by generic-husky »

capableweb wrote: post #8
generic-husky wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly none of them will be daily driver ready, given how broken the Quectel EG25 modem is. I would never want to, have to call emergency services with my Pinephone while the modem is down

What exactly went wrong in your experience when you tried out the PinePhone? Did the modem randomly die without you doing anything? Or under high load it gave out sometimes? Some more details would be wonderful. Maybe you could share if you tried it with the normal PinePhone or the PinePhone Pro as well.

I have only tried the regular PinePhone (since I only own that version) they both share the same modem (iirc), so there shouldn't be much of a difference.

> "Did the modem randomly die without you doing anything" Yep

> "Or under high load it gave out sometimes?" No, it would be just idling/sleeping and it would crash on me. It's not like it would automatically restart itself either. It was just dead until I rebooted the phone (which is slooowwww), restarting the modem manager and the modem it self, didn't fix it reliably for me either, only sometimes that would actually work, that whole process of restarting the modem and reentering your PIN could easily take multiple minutes. Under load (e.g. Firefox) it would just have the same (crashing) behavior.

I have had more missed phone calls because of it, than I'd like to count.

Re: PinePhone multi-distro demo image

#27

Post by generic-husky »

blendergeek wrote: post #9
generic-husky wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly none of them will be daily driver ready, given how broken the Quectel EG25 modem is. I would never want to, have to call emergency services with my Pinephone while the modem is down

Have you tried replacing the modem firmware? The community firmware is supposed to be much more stable.

I no longer use the Pinephone because of the aforementioned issues, however at that time, I'm pretty sure I was at the latest and greatest firmware version available (which one that specifically was opensource or proprietary, I can't remember). The experience was so horrid, I just quit using it all together and never looked back. But maybe if things have improved, I should give it a shot again.

Re: PinePhone multi-distro demo image

#28

Post by linmob »

blendergeek wrote: post #9
generic-husky wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly none of them will be daily driver ready, given how broken the Quectel EG25 modem is. I would never want to, have to call emergency services with my Pinephone while the modem is down

Have you tried replacing the modem firmware? The community firmware is supposed to be much more stable.

It‘s not just the Modem Firmware, it’s also how the distribution manages the modem. I am mostly using DanctNIX (Arch Linux ARM) to test apps for [0], but also have postmarketOS stable installed (on eMMC) as a backup for when I need "phone things" to just work - postmarketOS stable is very good at that.

[0]: https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/

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