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Two Years of Life with PinePhone

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Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#81

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

4ggr0 wrote: post #5

> That said, the accessories seem to be plagued by hardware bugs I received the Pinephone Keyboard a little more than a week ago. Ordered it because I thought it would revive my motivation to use the Pinephone, because it would turn it into a cool mini linux laptop. However, since receiving it, I wasn't able to get it working. According to the community the pins don't always make a connection to the phone and you hav…

I bought a PinePhone along with the keyboard case to muck around on as well.

Initially, I got no response from the keyboard so I started reading up about it. The first think I found is that when you've got the phone attached to the keyboard, you mustn't use the phone socket for charging as it can fry the electronics (something about the charger chip in the keyboard, I believe) - only use the keyboard socket for charging when connected.

Then, after worrying about whether I'd fried a brand new device, I discovered that after a software update, the keyboard suddenly started working. However, the top row of keys weren't working well and required a stern press for them to activate, so I hit the forums again looking for a solution. Some people were making shims for the top row of keys, but then I found a post going into detail as to why the keys had trouble activating. Apparently, the rubber doesn't have enough room to squish down, so an easy solution (if you have a dremel) is to remove the top row keycaps and remove a mm of material from the top edge of each keys (the side nearest the hinge). Took me about ten minutes and now they work perfectly.

Still haven't found a good use case for it though as the screen is short and wide so not great for terminal hacking.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#82

Post by horsawlarway »

TylerE wrote: post #4
thematrixturtle wrote: post #3

> five to seven hours of idle battery life > a lack of notifications, something I as a "my phone is in silent mode, no it does not even vibrate, I mean it when I say silent" > when I dropped my PinePhones I was lucky enough to not break them, I am not affected by a failing WiFi/BT chip (an issue not too uncommon by my anecdata) > I remember attempting to bring the factory image up-to-date around the date devices ship…

Well, to be fair, everything I read about PinePhine convinces me to never get a pinephone.

I'm mostly on the other side.

The more I interact with both Android and iOS - the less I want to live in that world. I'm tired of products changing underneath me because

"our metrics indicate that [insert ui change here] creates a 1.7% increase in user conversion from unpaid to paid seats"

or

"our metrics indicate that [feature] is heavily used by our most active paying customers, but most new subscribers don't use it at all - we need to push [feature] in their face so they become very active paying customers like the current users of [feature]!"

or

"Do you want to hear about all our products? I know you paid for no ads, but we're not showing you an ad - just a promotion that lets you know that there's a new product that we've just released. Also - Did I mention that our partners have also released a new product that we'll be promoting to you in just a moment! Isn't that great! Also - these aren't ads."

And it's EVERYWHERE in those ecosystems, even in the companies that aren't blatantly disregarding your privacy for their own profit by just directly selling your data wholesale to the highest bidder.

So at least for me, I really REALLY want something open source and usable in the phone sized device space.

---

All that said - I have a pinephone, and it isn't there yet for me. But it's tantalizingly close.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#83

Post by rvz »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #3

> five to seven hours of idle battery life > a lack of notifications, something I as a "my phone is in silent mode, no it does not even vibrate, I mean it when I say silent" > when I dropped my PinePhones I was lucky enough to not break them, I am not affected by a failing WiFi/BT chip (an issue not too uncommon by my anecdata) > I remember attempting to bring the factory image up-to-date around the date devices ship…

It is indeed great at putting off tons of end users. I have no idea why anyone would expect anything beyond useable for a Linux Phone if these mountains of issues are being revealed to the end user.

Five to seven hours of idle battery life is basically competing with the Steam Deck on who empties the battery quicker. This is before I have mentioned the ghost town of apps that you can't show to anyone if one asks: 'Does it have Instagram?'

Another reason why this device was dead before it has even arrived.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#84

Post by rebeccaskinner »

megous wrote: post #16
urthor wrote: post #15

Unfortunately the hardware is incredibly subpar. I see no real future for Linux mobile unless the EU makes some law that forces Apple/Samsung to make flashing easier.

HW is kinda fine, if you don't try to overstress it. Here it's running some optimized software via a convergence dock on an external monitor (1920x1080): https://xnux.eu/log/videos/libreelec5.mp4 https://xnux.eu/log/videos/libreelec6.mp4 Here it's driving an even higher resolution screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHOgVmxH_dA And here it's driving Firefox on a 1440p screen (purely rendered via CPU with GPU disa…

The Firefox video there seems pretty misleading from my personal experience. I got a pinephone a couple of years ago with the intention of doing a little bit of development for it, and using it mostly as a handheld web browser and signal client. Even without plugging into an external monitor I found Firefox unusable for most my needs. With essentially any extensions it would grind to a halt. I don’t run a lot of extensions, but Firefox without ublock origin is essentially worthless to me, and with ublock origin enabled it would take Firefox tens of seconds to start, and several seconds to load a new tab. Scrolling on sites with a lot of images- especially infini-scrolling sites like Twitter was nearly impossible.

I really want to like the pine phone, but whether the fault is hardware or software the result is that it’s just not there for performance in my experience.

I’m hopeful that between the pine phone pro and a bit more time to optimize software it could be one day, but it seems a while off.

Incidentally I have basically the same complaint about the pinebook pro. It’s not unusable, but a very small amount of extra power would take it from being a secondary laptop I only pick up for fun to a real viable daily driver when paired with a powerful desktop.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#85

Post by kop316 »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #39

Can you use whatsapp on a pinephone? I know there's web whatsapp but you need to sign into that with a native app. Honestly the browser, google maps (which works in the browser), whatsapp, SMS, phone calls, alarm, stop watch, camera... that's really about all I use on a phone. If I can find a linux device to switch that does that, I'll switch in a heartbeat. Phones are the least pleasant part of my "digital life" bec…

Matrix has a managed bridge to WhatsApp:

https://element.io/blog/ems-launches-fully-managed-matrix-br...

And there are a bunch of Matrix clients for Mobile Linux (I use Nheko, but Fluffychat is quite good as well)

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#87

Post by xnorswap »

hutzlibu wrote: post #80
gabrielblack wrote: post #43

I had one device who died after a couple of weeks: suddenly it refused to switch on. So I found the real source of pain from Pinephone project: the assistance. I sent a detailed report about the hardware failure and they sent me a message about how properly recharge the phone , something like : "you need the power supply, insert the plug in the 220V socket, insert the USB-c cable, etc", demonstrating that they didn't…

Your story sounds bad, but I would bear in mind, that they are not professionals for handling consumer cases. They are mainly linux smartphone hackers. If I would buy a device, I would consider it a donation if something goes wrong and not expect something to be able to work with. But that part should probably be made clearer. I also cannot say they are fully to blame, I found their website clear enough that there is…

> I would bear in mind, that they are not professionals for handling consumer cases

If they take your money for a product, then they are professionals for handling consumer cases, they are obliged to be.

They might not want to be, in which case they should hire people who do want to be.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#88

Post by Workaccount2 »

eric4smith wrote: post #37

Humans are very adaptable just like animals. Put us to live with pigs and in less than a week we would be fine. Give us a PinePhone and we would be ok in a week or two. It would become "the new normal". In the end, you can take photos, run apps, develop shit, make calls, send text messages. It's just like switching between Android and iPhone and back again. Something that many of us have done at least once. Am I down…

I can't tell if this comment is sarcastic or not.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#89

Post by thematrixturtle »

kmbfjr wrote: post #79
Terry_Roll wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should make this clearer to your readers?

Or just allow and trust the readers to make their own conclusions. I swear, HN readers bitch about the content silos on Web 2.0, but throw anyone still writing on their own blog onto a spit and crank up the heat. Who really cares if the intent is never to buy a PinePhone, it is his freaking blog.

Nobody's complaining about the author or blog here? If anything, I'm quite grateful to them for documenting all the warts, and making it really clear that the PinePhone is not an option for us casuals in the process.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#90

Post by gabrielblack »

3np wrote: post #75
gabrielblack wrote: post #43

I had one device who died after a couple of weeks: suddenly it refused to switch on. So I found the real source of pain from Pinephone project: the assistance. I sent a detailed report about the hardware failure and they sent me a message about how properly recharge the phone , something like : "you need the power supply, insert the plug in the 220V socket, insert the USB-c cable, etc", demonstrating that they didn't…

On the initial response, in case it's the Pro that can be explained by a known hardware issue that manifests as an apparently bricked device if the battery gets drained and regardless of charger it takes several hours to bring it back to life[0]. Even so, that does not excuse the rest of the story and hopefully they can improve. A friend of mine also had some frustration with communicating with their customer service…

Hi, I'm am a pro. I have laboratory equipment and I did the needed checks before opening the RMA. As explained to the service the problem was elsewhere. It's exactly the opposite, IMHO, they treat me as an idiot consumer that wasn't able to recharge a phone. I think they don't realize that this kind of device often is purchased by people different from the average consumer, so yes, I had same impression of your friend. Moreover, I tried to access their on-line form to request the RMA: the only browser at time able to access and send properly the request was Opera. I tested, Safari, Firefox, Chromium: only Opera was able to do the job.
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