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PinePhone Review

drewdevault.com

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Re: PinePhone Review

#161

Post by ddevault »

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…

- AT&T

- I don't know what VoLTE is

- SMS seems to work fine in LTE mode, but don't quote me on that. I tested everything once just to understand how it worked, then put it on the backburner to work on other stuff.

Re: PinePhone Review

#162

Post by ddevault »

neiman wrote: post #88

As long as I can run Firefox on it, and it got a micro-SIM, I'm good. There's a web alternative for most apps I use, where besides that I just need a tiny computer in my pocket with constant connection to the internet (hence, micro-SIM). I still wish FirefoxOS would have come to live..

I use Firefox (desktop) on mine and it works quite well, and has good performance. I wonder if it can be configured to be a bit more mobile-friendly OOTB, maybe with some about:config flags?

Re: PinePhone Review

#163

Post by zozbot234 »

Multicomp wrote: post #26
kick wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Not even Mozilla had faith in Firefox OS, and on a phone like this, it's barely powerful enough to. I'm not trying to attack you, I'm just genuinely confused at this viewpoint.

None of my below rants are directed at you personally! FF OS lives on today as KaiOS and is extremely popular in the devloping world where even an Android Go device requires far too much hardware specs for the price a given set of locals want or can afford to pay. If you look at some of the devices that run it like the JioPhone, you can see that it sits quite comfortably in the space formerly occupied by the BREW sys…

512MB is not even enough (on its own) to run a user-friendly Linux desktop these days - you'll need to setup some swap to make it workable. And that's without even launching a web browser, just light native apps. ISTM that the bloat is impacting way more than just mobile.

Re: PinePhone Review

#164

Post by ocdtrekkie »

ddevault wrote: post #161
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…

- AT&T - I don't know what VoLTE is - SMS seems to work fine in LTE mode, but don't quote me on that. I tested everything once just to understand how it worked, then put it on the backburner to work on other stuff.

VoLTE is "voice over LTE". A lot of older 4G phones actually use 3G for voice calls.

Re: PinePhone Review

#165

Post by blackearl »

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…

That's the point. You have a real computer, then you have a rpi to play with, do some hobby work around it, etc. If you're buying it as an analog to some flagship phone, don't.

Re: PinePhone Review

#166

Post by stamps »

ge96 wrote: post #72

My concerns are: resting ram usage, could I decrease if I could run like a tiling manager(with some main buttons). And can it run on virgin mobile/cheap networks like that edit: holy crap this sway thing may be the i3 hmm, next question would be can you attach it to a big monitor + keyboard/mouse through the USB C

The hardware is there. With some work a USB C dock can be plugged in and the phone can be used as a portable work station.

Re: PinePhone Review

#167

Post by rchaud »

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?

I'm in Canada and access Uber via their PWA. m.uber.com I think, I just did the "add to home screen" thing and it launches as a fullscreen web app. No need to have the app installed.

Re: PinePhone Review

#168

Post by ekianjo »

padraic7a wrote: post #145

It's cool that he's writing his own shell but I think that Ubuntu Touch as maintained by Ubports is worth a mention as it's going to be one of the available options for the Pine Phone. The UI is slick and well developed. The app ecosystem isn't amazing but you get a browser, choice of Telegram clients, Signal client etc. You can get an idea of the range of apps here https://open-store.io/?sort=-updated_date&type=app…

Except that the browser on UBT is bare-bones, allows no extension and has virtually no useful option. Ubuntu Touch could be almost be a usable system if it has a good enough browser, a good enough email client and a good enough chat application. It has none of them.

Re: PinePhone Review

#169

Post by ColanR »

padraic7a wrote: post #145

It's cool that he's writing his own shell but I think that Ubuntu Touch as maintained by Ubports is worth a mention as it's going to be one of the available options for the Pine Phone. The UI is slick and well developed. The app ecosystem isn't amazing but you get a browser, choice of Telegram clients, Signal client etc. You can get an idea of the range of apps here https://open-store.io/?sort=-updated_date&type=app…

I keep thinking that we might take this opportunity of rebuilding an OS from the ground up to implement something like Plan 9. The usual adoption issue of drivers and apps seems irrelevant here.

Fundamentally, its distributed nature would allow far greater integration between desktop and mobile hardware. Mobile + laptop + NAS would be so deeply integrated that they would better be considered a single computer with multiple more-or-less accessible terminals - and if a mobile device was part of that integration, it would represent a sea change in the utility of smartphones. I'm personally a big fan of how a mobile device could 'automatically' use the processing power of a Plan 9 desktop whenever they're both on the home network.

(just a plan 9 newbie that is enamoured of the system design)

Edit: BTW, pretty sure this is what Google's project fuschia is based on.

Re: PinePhone Review

#170

Post by lunchables »

aidenn0 wrote: post #82
root_axis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VOIP over LTE has been rock solid in my experience with T-Mobile on the east coast. I regularly get on (hands-free) VOIP Zoom calls during my 20 mile commute and almost never have any latency or packet loss issues.

I'm on Tingb(mvno using the T-Mobile networj) and on the West coast. Both zoom and Skype are completely unusable for me.

LTE latency is more than adequate for VoIP, with RTT latency to the tower being around 25ms. Adding another 40, 60, whatever, internet latency for VoIP is still well within the realm of good call quality.
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