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PinePhone Review

drewdevault.com

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Re: PinePhone Review

#101

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

miohtama wrote: post #56

Maybe it could be called a 3G modem platform instead of a phone. To write UI software for a modern phone takes 150+ full time engineers in my experience. Only few organisations have this capability and this is why these things will never be phones people use.

It takes that much the first time you do it. A lot of time and energy goes not simply into writing the code, but into figuring out (through writing wrong code many times and then rebuilding it) how the UI really should work, feel, look, etc. But now they have the advantage of already seing all those results and knowing exactly what they need to build. This save a lot of time.

Re: PinePhone Review

#102

Post by blihp »

ncmncm wrote: post #81

Why do these things (pine, librem) have so much trouble producing audio? It seems like that would have been one of the first things to have got working.

In the case of the PinePhone, they aren't doing any OS/application development. So it will be up to distro spinners and upstream developers to solve the software problem.

Part of what Pine64 is trying to do is kickstart an ecosystem that gets people working on these sorts of things. It's a chicken and egg problem: there aren't currently any widely available Linux smartphones so no one is working on drivers/applications, there is minimal driver support so there are no widely available Linux smartphones. By just shipping a reasonably priced, reasonably open (as much as it can be given the cellular modem situation) phone they are solving one of the biggest problems. 2020 should be a fun and interesting year for Open Source on mobile...

Re: PinePhone Review

#103

Post by afandian »

moksly wrote: post #86
realusername wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the PinePhone as a Raspberry Pi equivalent in the Smartphone world, there's definitely a big niche for that.

You don’t need your Raspberry PI to run your bank app, handle your payments or your bus-tickets. I’m not sure how I’d even purchase a non digital ticket for quite a few things in Denmark. Don’t get me wrong, I really hope something like PinePhone sees enough adoption to get the apps I need a smartphone to run so I can break away from the two monopolies. I just don’t believe it will happen when Microsoft couldn’t do i…

So how do people without phones participate in society? I don't use a google account on my phone, so that means no App Store. I'm trying to one day get rid of my google account too. It doesn't cause me many issues in the UK though I can't use things like Uber, and that's no loss to me.

How would I get on in Denmark?

Re: PinePhone Review

#104

Post by Fnoord »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #58
pjmlp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The countless commercial failures of such projects since OpenMoko proves otherwise.

OpenMoko isn't really dead, or at least the kernel isn't: http://git.goldelico.com/?p=letux-kernel.git;a=summary Netscape was a commercial failure but Mozilla is still around. Similarly Blender only went open-source after a crowdfunding campaign. CyanogenMod is another interesting example, mostly open source and mostly successful until it started trying to commercialize the code. I think the community ends up being a…

CyanogenMod lives on, in the form of LineageOS.

Re: PinePhone Review

#105

Post by Fnoord »

kop316 wrote: post #6

Drew (Or sircmpwn? Sorry I don't know how you prefer to be called) since I know you're on here, if I may ask: - What provider are you using? - Is it VoLTE that is working, or does it drop down to 3g for calls? - Does SMS work in LTE mode or do you have to drop it down to 3g? I have a Librem 5 birch, and from my experience in rolling my own Android AOSP version, that to get T-mobile to work with VoLTE, SMS/MMS with LT…

MMS is just a SMS with a hash or link which combined with a HTTP proxy is then automatically loaded. It is a way to remotely load a picture, on a remote device. Not sure I actually want that feature. I always disable it on my SIM card.

Not trying to downplay, other people might prefer it. VoLTE provides a security and usability benefit over 2G, as does not using 2G/3G as backward compatibility.

Has anyone in Europe used PinePhone?

Re: PinePhone Review

#106

Post by dmitriid »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #92
moksly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need your Raspberry PI to run your bank app, handle your payments or your bus-tickets. I’m not sure how I’d even purchase a non digital ticket for quite a few things in Denmark. Don’t get me wrong, I really hope something like PinePhone sees enough adoption to get the apps I need a smartphone to run so I can break away from the two monopolies. I just don’t believe it will happen when Microsoft couldn’t do i…

Microsoft couldn't do it because everyone new (of the users) that even if they put in their effort to switch and wait for the ecosystem to grow, they will end up with just the same crap: another closed-source monopoly with it's own quirks. We won't have just two overlords, but instead 3 of the same. Wow such a difference... Now an truly open system might make a difference. Not saying it will, it has it's own problems…

You greatly overestimate the number of users who care about how closed or how open an ecosystem is.

If the user can't interact with their bank, whatchu YouTube, talk to their friends and parents over Snapchat or Skype, call Uber, play Spotify, etc etc etc, it doesn't matter in the least if your phone is 100% open source.

Microsoft had sunk billions into trying to get the ecosystem off the ground. What makes you think that "a truly open system" will get that ecosystem?

Re: PinePhone Review

#107

Post by dmitriid »

bildung wrote: post #95
TylerE wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13k is a rounding error. Apple sells that many iphones every 30 minutes. (I'm not kidding... they sell 217M iPhones a year = 594k a day = 24.9k/hr)

This is about open source phones, of which Apple has sold exactly zero.

This makes open source phone cheaper to produce? Cheaper to ship?

13k phones won't cover even the costs of production, much less R&D

Re: PinePhone Review

#108

Post by jmiskovic »

saagarjha wrote: post #33
monoideism wrote: post #15

"right now, there are very few people, perhaps only dozens, for whom this phone is the right phone, given the current level of software support." I think he greatly underestimates the number of people with the interest and ability to do this kind of work. If it's easily available, I'll probably get one and hack on it, and maybe contribute to some projects. And I'm far from something special or unusual.

Would you use it as your daily driver?

An open internet-connected battery-powered computing device that looks great and can easily fit in pocket? I would gladly carry it along regardless of its phone functionalities. It looks perfect as smart remote for automating stuff around me, maybe one day even as voice-enabled personal assistant device.

Re: PinePhone Review

#109

Post by blihp »

monoideism wrote: post #15

"right now, there are very few people, perhaps only dozens, for whom this phone is the right phone, given the current level of software support." I think he greatly underestimates the number of people with the interest and ability to do this kind of work. If it's easily available, I'll probably get one and hack on it, and maybe contribute to some projects. And I'm far from something special or unusual.

You're right that the actual number is too low. But I think he, and Pine64, are just being responsible in managing expectations. The issue isn't just that the software isn't done, but also that the hardware may not be 100% there yet. This happens all the time with devices when something along the lines of 'oh crap, this power rail isn't stable in situation X and causes the device to reset' is discovered with pre-production hardware. The fix is usually trivial but often requires a PCB/component change.

I would absolutely have ordered one already if it sounded like the hardware were final... right now it merely sounds very, very close. The message I get from these warnings is the non-zero chance that there will be some annoying hardware issue that comes to light before going into volume production. This would not be unexpected since this is the first time a wider community is getting to work with it.

Re: PinePhone Review

#110

Post by Mashimo »

afandian wrote: post #103
moksly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need your Raspberry PI to run your bank app, handle your payments or your bus-tickets. I’m not sure how I’d even purchase a non digital ticket for quite a few things in Denmark. Don’t get me wrong, I really hope something like PinePhone sees enough adoption to get the apps I need a smartphone to run so I can break away from the two monopolies. I just don’t believe it will happen when Microsoft couldn’t do i…

So how do people without phones participate in society? I don't use a google account on my phone, so that means no App Store. I'm trying to one day get rid of my google account too. It doesn't cause me many issues in the UK though I can't use things like Uber, and that's no loss to me. How would I get on in Denmark?

> So how do people without phones participate in society?

It's not super hard. Until ~3'ish years ago I did not have a smartphone here in DK. Life is just so much easier with it.

I think they got rid of the 10x Bus ticket you would buy at a kiosk, so now you have to buy a single tickets with coins inside the bus. (depends on the city) Which means you need cash. DK society is very much cashless, I mostly see older people still using it.

Is the bus late or did you just miss it? Check the app to see the bus location.

Train Ticket? Now you have to print that out or buy it at the station. It's so easy to search, buy and show the ticket via the app.

Letter from most public authorities / government? There is an app for that. Or website.

Want to give your mate some money? -> MobilePay app. Now you have to get cash somewhere and convince him to take cash. Or go to a computer and transfer it. Which requires more information then just this number and takes longer.

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