Unfortunately I felt like this written TO someone who has owned a PinePhone for 2+ years and studies it's niche jargon. Is the author the author's target reader?
Two Years of Life with PinePhone
91–100 of 139 posts
Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
They mean how long a battery lasts until depletion, not how long it lasts until it's no longer functional.
Then, that's a function of device's power consumption, which is a function of many factors, which includes user behavior, too. It only makes to sense to talk about it with a particular usage in mind and not in general. You can have Pinephone suspended for 7 days if you like, under certain circumstances. Or you can drain it 2.5h if you mean to compile Gentoo on it. And completely different SW optimizations would come…
> "Battery life" usually means how long will battery last, before you need to replace it.
No, it does not. "Battery life" means how long the device lasts on a fully charged battery before it needs recharging.
What you were thinking of is called "battery lifespan" or sometimes "battery longevity", or even "battery cycles".
Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#93I 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'm an hacker and I gave up with that platform after that experience because if you can't guarantee reasonable assistance quality , a basic replacement service if the device is defective and a procedure for RMAs in reasonable times, I feel is better to employ my time elsewhere. Two months asking a replacement and obtaining nothing, two months : we aren't talking about a service from hacker to hackers as it should be.
> I would consider it a donation
I'm also donating my time, for that reason I don't feel their behavior is justifiable.
Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#94I have been using a Pinephone as my daily driver for the better part of two years.
Here is my wishlist for hardware changes to the Pinephone:
1. Fix the emmc so that it runs fast. There is a known issue with the emmc that it runs at half its max speed. It can be trivially fixed in hardware (and Pine64 even recommends a solder based hardware mod) but Pine64 keeps selling phones with slow EMMC. This would solve some (though not all) of the perceived slowness of the Pinephone.
2. Usable hardware kill switches. You will notice that the article doesn't even mention the hardware switches for the camera/microphone/WiFi/BT/cellular. This is because the switches are A) under the back cover and B) too small to flip with a finger (requiring a toothpick or similar). Purism got this right by making the switches usable.
3. Add a "diffusor" to the LED notification light so that it is more visible from all angles and doesn't make an obvious spot on the ceiling in a dark room.
The software bugs are numerous and I would not yet recommend a Pinphone to anybody who doesn't enjoy using the command-line on a phone.
Also, Pine64 for years has listed replacement battery in their store but they have listed it as Out of Stock. As batteries are the part of a phone that must be replaced every couple of years and because it can be dangerous to use batteries of ill repute, Pine64 should actually sell replacement batteries.
Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#95> 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…
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Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#96My wife recently bought me a Pinephone Pro as a present. I liked the idea, but in practice I still haven't managed to use it because I'm stuck with basic problems. E.g., the battery wouldn't charge in the phone. I bought an external charger, and this seems fine, but ideally I'd like a backup battery so that I can charge one while I use the other. But pine64 batteries have been out of stock for ages. Their wiki says "…
If you’re in Europe: I like my replacement PolarCell battery.
Would you mind sharing more details / specification?
Is the fit ok? (and are we talking about Pinephone, or Pinephone Pro?)
Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Moreover, if you are producing a device for open source developers, people working for free , giving their free time to contribute to create a valid product, you can't spit on them when they have problem with the hardware they are contributing to develop, IMHO. At the end, I paid the phone, the shipment, custom duties, VAT, the shipment costs back in USA (why USA ???), a lot of my time, for nothing. So I felt was better to stop, spending my time elsewhere.
Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#98Unfortunately 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.
I find that kind of argument for EU regulation quite depressing. So, just because other vendors aren't capable of producing decent hardware to run Linux on, the EU should force competitors to open up their hardware to those vendors? Unfortunately, this seems to be a common line of thinking, not least within the EU corridors of power themselves: Instead of nurturing competition and their own tech industry or create an…
> Instead of nurturing competition ... regulate it into being.
Regulation is exactly how you nurture competition. That's what a government is supposed to do.
Instead the US not only allowed but actively encouraged the google/apple duopoly to control the whole market.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture for clarification.
Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#99Someone in the comments wrote: the hardware is very slow and very out of date compared to maistream this is my main gripe with the device. It's too slow for me. I don't like slow computers :).
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Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's a hell of a task, regardless if the outcome will be open or closed. The closest thing I can think of is Apple taking BSD and making Darwin. Which company would be happy to risk so much, in such a busy market as mobile OS?
> Because it's a hell of a task, regardless if the outcome will be open or closed. Disclaimer: i'm no hardware engineer I believe this is utterly false. There is a strong distinction between selling open hardware (the real stuff, not just open board design) and selling closed hardware. If all you care about is board schematics, it's not hard to buy various chips and assemble them into functioning hardware. It's then…
> There is a strong distinction between selling open hardware
Correct. The entire supply chain evolved for proprietary stuff. There are NDAs and roadblocks everywhere.
Most chip vendors are very happy to assist close phone manufacturers in implementing drivers, optimize battery usage etc. and do not cooperate with any open source effort.