I'm very impressed that they managed to ship at all.
Commercial enterprises with such small budgets flip very often.
PinePhone Review
131–140 of 268 posts
Re: PinePhone Review
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 peo…
Just buying a rejsekort (travel card - you put some money on it at some machine with your credit card and it pays automatically when you check out at the end of your trip. It also has a significant discount vs buying individual tickets) solve all the problems for buses, trains, metro, etc. You can also put your commuter card on it if you want, or you can receive a commuter card by text message which would even work with a dumb phone.
But it certainly helps a lot to have a smartphone, mainly for the government messages and the nem id app.
Re: PinePhone Review
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Openmoko sold 13000 phones, which is much more than "dozens." Commercial failure does not necessarily mean you can fit all the customers in a room.
Got one. Never really used it. It was not reliable.
Got one. Used it for a few years. It was amazing (though not without its quirks of course).
Re: PinePhone Review
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to temper your excitement a little bit (I am excited too!), but I am not a bit surprised that LTE data works. Calling and SMS/MMS over LTE (for T-Mobile USA) are two things that at least that as of today, you need proprietary libraries to have it function on Android, and likely don't work on the Pinephone. I strongly suspect that other USA carriers will have the same issue (I say that because there are additio…
T-Mobile USA's system is bog-standard IMS with RCS extensions. There are a few open source client stacks that support this, notably Doubango's. The trick is writing a frontend that uses regular Linux GUI libraries. As far as I know, nobody has done that yet...
Any idea if Doubango has IMS/RCS libraries that could be used for implementing a Linux frontend?
Re: PinePhone Review
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. Most of this should be available on the PinePhone at launch (albeit not as nicely as on Android). Bank - should have a website (and if they don't have a website they most likely don't have an app…
> Bank - should have a website (and if they don't have a website they most likely don't have an app anyway)
In my experience mobile banking is more often than not provided via app exclusively.
Re: PinePhone Review
#136"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.
The following sentence "I am not using it as my daily driver, and I won’t for some time." and "the right phone" make me think that the dozens refer to those who might use this as their singular phone device. I'm sure many more people can afford to splurge on such a device and either play with it, or even forget about it for that matter.
This. It may not (yet) be suitable for every-day use, but it is absolutely great for pet-projects or some tinkering. Also I would love to see enthusiasts creating alternative ecosystem around this, like open, federated social networking apps or maybe something with mesh-network support and hackernews reader app (of course). It won't get mainstream in general public, but could be sort-of mainstream among groups of open/free-everything enthusiasts.
Re: PinePhone Review
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like Sweden. About 10 years ago I was very surprised to be able to pay for a bus journey using my (foreign) debit card. Now it's normal in the UK. And I have Swedish friends who have never seen the newly issued currency. Crazy but it's the future. It's just a shame that it's gatekept by unaccountable duopolies such as Google...
Funny you should mention that, my Google account got somehow restricted yesterday due to Google Pay not liking my rooted phone. Now not only can I not pay with the phone, but I have to submit all my private information to a random Google web page, hope someone sees this, hope they agree it's correct, and hope that this was the problem in the first place (since all the app says is "this operation cannot be completed")…
Imagine future cashless society with mobile-only payments. And a smart-car that needs a phone to open/start. And a smart-home with front-door unlocked with a phone. If you loose/break your phone - no problem, you can replace it with a new one, borrow one or use that old phone you keep in a drawer just in case. Not a huge deal. But if your account gets locked you have a problem. I'm afraid we as a society are giving too much control to a few corporations. It's not that of a problem yet of course
Re: PinePhone Review
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Give FOSS phones the same media coverage of the iPhone, possibly including its ad induced reality distortion field, and they will sell like candies. Seriously, once the software is ready, 30 seconds of any popular celebrity showing one would make it sell hundreds thousands in a week. Problem is the small manufacturers couldn't either pay for that level of advertising or satisfy the demand without turning themselves i…
Why didn't it work for Windows Phones then?
Re: PinePhone Review
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
it doesn't have to. All it really needs to do is make calls and have good browser (Firefox would do). Signal would be a nice bonus. This might not be enough for all (i am sure it wont), but for me and several other people I know, it would be enough, to be our main phone.
That's how Openmoko sold a grand total of 13000 phones. Not enough to even cover the cost of production, most likely.
The market you're describing is minuscule.
Re: PinePhone Review
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The target audience isn't people who need to use Skype, Snapchat, or Uber. But I'm sure it will be possible to run some of those android apps through anbox. Spotify has a Linux client, and for YouTube there's the FreeTube client, which actually protects users' integrity.