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Two Years of Life with PinePhone

linmob.net

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Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#121

Post by ttarr »

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…

Try Poco F1, almost everything works, at least as a phone.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#122

Post by fsflover »

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.

> -Missing a "killer app"

See "Reasons to buy" in the table:

https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p...

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#123

Post by linmob »

roywashere wrote: post #63
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…

For many people, having to switch from iMessage is keeping them on iOS and would not even consider Android. Having no WhatsApp, no Spotify, no banking app, no Apple Pay or NFC payments, no Widevine so no Netflix and so on is making using Linux on the phone very difficult for both Android and iOS users unless they REALLY want to

True.

Well, mostly: You can use Spotify Premium, thanks to Spot: https://github.com/xou816/spot

(I could go into bridging WhatsApp over Matrix, or using WhatsApp Web, but I realize that that's most likely too painful for most. Also, Waydroid makes lots of things work, but the side-effects on battery life made it seem impractical to me, to be honest.)

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#124

Post by flanking_pajama »

danielEM wrote: post #116

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.

"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."

I- huh? Open hardware? Elon Musk?

I can only find a vague legalese pledge that doesn't seem to be very attractive for real world use according to many, and I know that Tesla is starting to really enjoy being an Apple-like company with such hits like proprietary chargers.

I'm also seeing no Teslas are listed on the supported page for projects like openpilot.

What we need is general opinion to be against such closed ecosystems run by industrialists with world records for wealth concentration. Not dreams of Captain Save A Pleb.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#125

Post by megous »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #84
megous wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exte…

Firefox performance is better with GPU disabled (on Xorg with noaccel), to reduce RAM bandwidth requirements. Which leaves out most of the fancy wayland compositors.

Yes, opening a badly optimized website, like youtube or twitter is slow. Thankfully there are alternatives like twitter -> nitter, etc.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#126

Post by megous »

linmob wrote: post #120
megous wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

;-)

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#127

Post by megous »

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?

Some are doing it better, some are doing it worse. There are Pinephone supporting distributions that use suspend to RAM aggressively, using autosleep and wakelocks, and all this Linux stuff Android uses too. You're just assuming somthing that's not true in your question.

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#128

Post by megous »

gabrielblack wrote: post #90
3np wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 frien…

Out of curiosity, what was the HW issue?

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#129

Post by linmob »

Daniel_92 wrote: post #86

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?

Somewhat yes, it's written with people somewhat familiar with the matter in mind. I have time now, so feel free to AMA :)

Re: Two Years of Life with PinePhone

#130

Post by megous »

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 "…

I just grind off the bottom plastic tabs from the samsung batteries. Otherwise they really don't fit.
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