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Two Years of Life with PinePhone

linmob.net

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Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#111

Post by trelane »

prox wrote: post #24
brutusborn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly the general audience isn't interested in the benefits of an open phone. I remember a HN comment where a phone manufacturer said making relationships with suppliers was almost impossible without a decent sized market segment.

So catch-22. No market, no manufacturing, and no manufacturing because no market. Ouch.

Is also true of computers generally. If you want a computer that really supports Linux (or whatever OS you want), you have to support the vendors that are doing the work.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#112

Post by giantrobot »

prox wrote: post #21

It’s a pity we are not at a level where open(-like) phones are a thing. I have been looking from time to time for one that pretty much works out of the box, but all the stories are not painting a pretty picture. What’s the showstopper into bringing an open phone to a general audience? (Aka open box, turn on, type in credentials and done.) In the meantime I hope my ancient iPhone keeps working.

> What’s the showstopper into bringing an open phone to a general audience?

The biggest showstopper is Open phones can't seem to do what all of their closed competition can do. If an Open phone can't reliably make calls, send texts, get on WiFi, or run apps people want there's no demand for them.

Even the cheapest Android phone has millions of person-hours sunk into its hardware and software implementations. There's no need to drop down to a command line to get some component to work right. If it truly sucks you can return it and at worst you're out under $100.

Until an Open phone can get to at least the capability of a cheap Android phone you can buy at a drug store no one is going to want them, especially for the price premium of their low volume production.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#113

Post by linmob »

tpoacher wrote: post #96
linmob wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

It's this one [1]. I have used it with the PinePhone for a long time, and it fits and works with the PinePhone Pro in my superficial impromptu testing - I have not yet checked whether it's able to drive the PPP at full load. This could be relevant as I vaguely recall the batteries of PP and PPP are different with regard to their coulomb spec.

[1] https://www.ebay.de/itm/373621998423

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#114

Post by altantiprocrast »

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…

> 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

I won't reveal exactly where this is happening because the software is still in a proof-of-concept stage, but KDE folks are working on a 'unified push service' right now.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#115

Post by linmob »

blendergeek wrote: post #94

I 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 (t…

Regarding 2.: I asked about that for the PinePhone Pro, and I was told that changing the case is super expensive, as it requires new molds. From what I've heard elsewhere, PINE64 reused another companies case design (and molds) for the PinePhone, and that (duh, it was just some regular phone design) did not have kill switches.

Regarding replacement batteries: There are some brands that make okay/fine replacement batteries, I am quite happy with the one I've written about in another comment on here. But yes: They should be available in a perfect world, but given current global supply chain problems, it's understandable that they are not at all times.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#116

Post by danielEM »

There is something inherently wrong with that that you can not install a linux on basically any phone on the market that could work with linux with a bit of good will. I think we need truly open hardware and someone with money willing to stand against "status quo" of industry, like Elon Musk did with cars.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#117

Post by linmob »

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.

Arguably the killer app is that you can plug it into a display (using a convergence dock or directly, if the display supports USB-C) and that you can run your beloved Linux distribution of choice and make it your own thing.

Battery life is also comparable to an older phone since we've got CRUST - not much "screen on" time, but it should last you a day.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#118

Post by linmob »

jeroenhd wrote: post #66
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…

The phone runs Linux, and on Linux you can run Anbox/Waydroid to run Android apps. I don't know how well WhatsApp works on Anbox, but theoretically it should be possible. From what I've read online the SoC is quite slow compared to most modern smart phones so your mileage may vary. Sadly, the mobile phone market is as closed down as ever, making it very challenging to get any kind of open source system to get calls o…

> Personally, I'm waiting for the day you can hack PostmarketOS onto a phone and just use it as a phone, but that's not going to happen any time soon on closed hardware.

For a select few devices, my personal favorite being the Xiaomi Poco F1 [0], [1] (despite afaik needing Windows to unlock its bootloader), this is already true. Sure, that's not "every phone", but at least one relatively available and nice (for the price) phone.

[0] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Xiaomi_Poco_F1_(xiaomi-be...

[1] https://tilvids.com/w/3mn337s4Mx2WPSHRX3KJsz

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#119

Post by kop316 »

linmob wrote: post #115
blendergeek wrote: post #94

I 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 (t…

Regarding 2.: I asked about that for the PinePhone Pro, and I was told that changing the case is super expensive, as it requires new molds. From what I've heard elsewhere, PINE64 reused another companies case design (and molds) for the PinePhone, and that (duh, it was just some regular phone design) did not have kill switches. Regarding replacement batteries: There are some brands that make okay/fine replacement batt…

Unfortunately shipping li-ion batteries is not easy as well. IIRC, this is actually one explicit reason Pine64 is making an EU store, so it is easier to ship things like li-ion batteries to folks.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#120

Post by linmob »

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…

Hi Megi! Thank you for your great work to make the PinePhone so much better than it was when I got it!

(I was going to add a people "I want to thank for their hard work"-section to the post, but lacked the time to do it thoroughly and make sure I would not forget a major contributor, and therefore dropped that.)

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