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The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

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Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#101

Post by draklor40 »

Unpopular Opinion: I don't want a Linux Desktop (XFCE, KDE, etc) on my phone. I don't care about being able to run terminals or `chown -R user xyz` or `htop` on my phone.

I want a phone with a decently polished OS, smooth (given hardware constraints) that can run apps that I control (deny ads, location info. etc) and provides an alternative to the Android/IOS duopoly.

I just hope that the Pine Community will realize this and focus energy and work towards having a canonical OS on the PinePhone that just works.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#102

Post by api »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #94
Bancakes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad to see free hardware is so comically behind commercial one.

FOSS and OSH will always sit a few years behind companies which are investing billions of dollars in R&D. But we can try to lift what we can and catch up sooner or later.

FOSS UI/UX is at least two decades behind and the gap is growing.

A major problem is that people almost always underestimate the difficulty of a good UI. Good UIs can be a lot harder than the rest of a system and a modern UI toolkit has a feature set and difficulty level approaching that of a good 3D game engine like Unity.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#103

Post by JackMorgan »

ergocoder wrote: post #51

I want something small like Palm Phone, which is beautiful and refined. But Palm Phone totally screws it up by marketing themselves as "companion phone" (your second mobile phone, why would I have 2 phones??) and the battery life is 5h (wtf is this??). Other minimal phones focuses on calling, and guess what? 99% of my calls in the past few years were with spam. Currently, there is absolutely no minimal small smart ph…

What about the Palm phone? It's waterproof, 2oz, and has a feature that cuts power to the cell and wifi chips when the screen is turned off, so no calls or texts until you turn it back on. I love it as my daily driver for a year now.

https://palm.com/

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#104

Post by xhkkffbf »

Bancakes wrote: post #58
squarefoot wrote: post #55

One point that should be repeated ad infinitum for those reading about the Pinephone for the 1st time: it's all about the freedom, not performance. One doesn't buy the Pinephone to brag about its technical achievements with friends, but rather to contribute building an ecosystem, even just by spreading the word, of people who put freedom and privacy above everything. I also should be repeated ad infinitum why its har…

It's sad to see free hardware is so comically behind commercial one.

To be fair, it's also priced dramatically lower. It's not fair to compare a current iPhone, priced at more than $1200 on the open market, with the Pine Phone priced at $150. This is where they chose to bring a phone to market and I think it's a smart move. They'll attract a bigger audience and make it easier for people to sim-swap and experiment.

When the distros get good enough, they can price out higher end hardware.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#105

Post by testific8 »

spankalee wrote: post #98
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will definitely be more secure, but probably drastically less open, since there won't be any GPL code underneath for people to demand copies of. Fuchsia, once it reaches the level of polish required of proper Google products, will be as closed as iOS. And security will be the justification for it.

The Fuchsia code itself is open, and while a vendor could make changes and not release them, a project like Pine wouldn't do that. That would indeed be a major motivation to use a Pine-like over other vendors.

pine64 and purism are lot smaller than qualcomm and the like. They don't have that type of leverage.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#106

Post by testific8 »

api wrote: post #102
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FOSS and OSH will always sit a few years behind companies which are investing billions of dollars in R&D. But we can try to lift what we can and catch up sooner or later.

FOSS UI/UX is at least two decades behind and the gap is growing. A major problem is that people almost always underestimate the difficulty of a good UI. Good UIs can be a lot harder than the rest of a system and a modern UI toolkit has a feature set and difficulty level approaching that of a good 3D game engine like Unity.

I think the new GNOME is pretty comparable to the Windows and MacOSX interfaces. Is there something I'm overlooking?

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#107

Post by wolverine876 »

ashneo76 wrote: post #37

Using a low power phone for everyday use, for a year now. I would say the "convergence" of the android and iOS devices is creating a device that is tuned to suck you into the marketing and advertising of google, apple, etc. Android and iOS devices are tools and platforms to gather data and use the consumer as a product more than anything else. Break the slab like form factor and my addictive habits dropped, drastical…

So what are you using? A feature phone in a 'flip' form factor? I'm wondering what the options are.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#108

Post by kazen44 »

api wrote: post #102
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FOSS and OSH will always sit a few years behind companies which are investing billions of dollars in R&D. But we can try to lift what we can and catch up sooner or later.

FOSS UI/UX is at least two decades behind and the gap is growing. A major problem is that people almost always underestimate the difficulty of a good UI. Good UIs can be a lot harder than the rest of a system and a modern UI toolkit has a feature set and difficulty level approaching that of a good 3D game engine like Unity.

i disagree, KDE has one, if not the best ui out there. it is consistent, customizable and not a resource hog. windows's UI has been a mess since the XP days, and osx is atleast consistent, but hides a lot of functionality in name of clean design.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#109

Post by CameronNemo »

spankalee wrote: post #98
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will definitely be more secure, but probably drastically less open, since there won't be any GPL code underneath for people to demand copies of. Fuchsia, once it reaches the level of polish required of proper Google products, will be as closed as iOS. And security will be the justification for it.

The Fuchsia code itself is open, and while a vendor could make changes and not release them, a project like Pine wouldn't do that. That would indeed be a major motivation to use a Pine-like over other vendors.

Pine does not contribute device drivers, the SoC vendors and groups like Linaro&Collabora write them primarily.

Hopefully SoC vendors and IP vendors release the source for their device drivers.

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