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Two Years of Life with PinePhone

linmob.net

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Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#101

Post by throwaway0129u »

jokoon wrote: post #44
Joeri wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it mobile OS’s have to wake up as little as possible and then race to sleep, because with everything lit up the battery drains quickly. They batch work from different processes together to avoid waking up hardware. For example, background network operations from different processes are grouped together to avoid turning on the modem too often. iOS is better at this than android (at the expense of devel…

Oh ok, that's more clear. So it happens at a higher level, in application management etc... And then, why aren't those pinephone OS doing it better?

Because nobody invested half a billion dollars in development.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#102

Post by usrn »

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…

I get notifications on mine just fine, even with suspend.

Dino generates notifications when I get messages, mutt rings the terminal bell when I get email (if I cared I could pretty easily have it generate a toast notification too.) If you treat the thing like a desktop rather than a phone then most of the software will "just work" occasionally needing a small amount of glue to deal with things like the suspend/wake cycle to save battery life while still allowing for notifications etc.

The Pinephone is very much the "just install gentoo" of phones. Most people who actually use it are going to have radically different configurations and experiences.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#103

Post by toss1 »

xnorswap wrote: post #87
hutzlibu wrote: post #80

Earlier 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.

SO TRUE!

It is not about what you do, it is how you do it, and in particular what expectations you set.

If you sell it like a regular product, without saying clearly up front that it is not supported, then people will legitimately not like you.

IF you are just selling a kit without support, SAY SO. Then the people you want will come buy it, and if you did well on the parts that you claim to do well, you'd have happy customers (modulo the few Kens & Karens who expect everything for nothing).

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#104

Post by l72 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #67
southerntofu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a subtle problem of tradeoffs. How do you keep the system aware of incoming messages when you'd like to save as much battery life as possible?

This is a problem Android, which is also Linux-based, has already solved. You can wake up a process (on a power efficient core, if available) without waking up the screen. One problematic issue I can see the Pinephone have in regards to this is that there's no unified push service that works for all apps. Google has forced everyone on Android to use their push service and it's terribly restrictive for application dev…

I wonder if running Mozilla's autopush[1] and making web push a standard across apps would help solve this?

This would let you run your own push server (or use someone else's), configure it system wide on your device, and all apps would be able to use it automatically with their services.

[1] https://autopush.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#105

Post by asddubs »

tpoacher wrote: post #49

My 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 "…

the pinephone pro is definitely still thoroughly in the bringing up phase. for people just wanting to play around with it/actively use it, and not intending to develop it, the regular PP is the better option. They do make this pretty clear on their store page for it, to their credit.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#107

Post by asddubs »

BjoernKW wrote: post #27
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.

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…

IMO it's more of a question about e-waste and sustainability. the moment a vendor stops providing updates, they should have to open the hardware to be flashed with other operating systems

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#108

Post by Terry_Roll »

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.

> Or just allow and trust the readers to make their own conclusions.

Cant do that religions exists where people believe in God without any evidence, and people exist who believe in Govt & democracy, so that says it all really.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#109

Post by CivBase »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #106

Based on many reviews, I've determined the PinePhone is -Missing a "killer app" -Not reliable in an emergency. -Near the UI experience of a much older Android or iPhone device, but without the battery life.

> Not reliable in an emergency.

I find it interesting how much people's feeling of safety has become dependent on their access to a personal smartphone. I didn't even get a regular cell phone until high school, but I never felt like I was in danger. Now, even though everyone around me has a smartphone on their person, even I feel slightly uneasy when I don't have my own phone in my pocket.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#110

Post by linmob »

rvz wrote: post #83
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: 'Do…

Author here. I'm sorry for being blunt, but good grief, comments like yours make me want to stop blogging!

You did not read the full paragraph nor the paragraph after the one you quoted, right? (If you took the time and read them, I really should stop.)

Also, yes, there's no Instagram client I know of (and thus none is listed on https://linuxphoneapps.org), but Facebook properties and a privacy-adjacent, nerdy developer crowd somehow don't go well together.

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