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PinePhone Review

drewdevault.com

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Re: PinePhone Review

#181

Post by dqpb »

jcelerier wrote: post #148
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.

> And I'm far from something special or unusual. from my experience, the "average" person (if not the majority) has trouble handling a TV remote

To be fair, TV remotes are terrible interfaces.

Re: PinePhone Review

#182

Post by kop316 »

lupire wrote: post #179
kop316 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killer feature I use MMS for is group texts. In an ideal world I could host my own matrix channel on my server to use, but I know that I would have exactly one user on it. I refuse to use WhatsApp/Facebook messenger/Viber/your favorite chat program, and MMS is the least common denominator.

Why is MMS better then your favorite chat program?

- It's the least common dominator to chat with anyone with a Phone (if you have a smartphone, you can go MMS group chat).

- I am not giving another company personal data (Facebook, Google, etc.)

Ideally, I would prefer to run my own server for a chat program (i.e. Matrix, Nextcloud Chat), then I know where the traffic is coming to and from, and I have a lot of confidence that personal data isn't being leaked.

My second option would probably be Signal, as they seem to do to great lengths to avoid collecting data on you. However, trying to convince family/friends to use either is an uphill battle (a great deal of my family goes "why don't you just get an iPhone?"). So the pragmatist in me just uses MMS for group chat.

Re: PinePhone Review

#183

Post by bluGill »

dmitriid wrote: post #138
squarefoot wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It was working, but Microsoft didn't have the patience to wait, and wasn't willing to be number 3 for a long time. If Microsoft had continued the project they could have continued to be a distant third place making enough money to keep the lights on in that division - but it would never be insanely profitable and they were not willing to settle for that.

I don't know if they were right or not.

Re: PinePhone Review

#184

Post by squarefoot »

spurgu wrote: post #117
tomger wrote: post #57

Now if they’d create an iPhone SE sized one... I’d have enough passion to figure out how to run Linux on it ;)

This! I am so sad to see that practically all mobile devices on the market right now are 5+ inches. I could even go with 5, which is considered "small" nowadays, but PinePhone and Librem5 are 5.95" and 5.7" respectively. Why did phablets become the norm, at least give us a choice... :(

Large screens are more usable, small screens are more portable. There's no way to have both unless we completely rethink the mobile platform itself moving away from the dream of having one big clunky jack of all trades, but rather as a group of devices, all interconnected (mesh PAN + shared storage) and equipped with the hardware they need for the task, so that one small screen device is used as a phone, a bigger one to navigate, read bigger documents, watch movies etc, one even smaller one to shoot photos and videos, one to listen to music, record it etc.

Re: PinePhone Review

#185

Post by kop316 »

pabs3 wrote: post #134
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This seems to be their GitHub:

https://github.com/DoubangoTelecom/doubango

It looks like it could be. They have client-side proof of concepts.

Re: PinePhone Review

#186

Post by wjoe »

_-o-_ wrote: post #135
thekyle wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not really, among "normal" banks. This does seem to be the case with the new "challenger" banks like Monzo and Starling, which are all "mobile first" and are basically impossible to use if you don't have an Android/iPhone. But every regular bank in the UK has a website with online banking, often with more functionality than the apps, but maybe this is different in other countries - online banking in the UK has been commonplace since before mobile apps were really a thing.

Re: PinePhone Review

#187

Post by newscracker »

blihp wrote: post #109
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-prod…

From personal experience, if the original Pine64 board is anything to go by, I wouldn't expect much on software and software updates from Pine itself (it would be up to the user to figure things out).

Re: PinePhone Review

#188

Post by wjoe »

Hamuko wrote: post #130
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.

I mostly see Raspberry Pis being used for embedded devices, for automation, lightweight servers, etc. What would the PinePhone be used for?

I could see it being used for specific usage handheld devices. For example where I work, we sell train tickets and ship cheap Android phones with an app installed for tain conductors to scan the ticket barcodes. Something like this could be done with some "generic cheap Linux device with a touchscreen and mobile connection" locked down to a custom built app.

Not sure if that ends up being cost effective considering how cheap you can get low-end Android phones these days, and how easy it is to find Android developers, but I'm sure there are some applications along those lines that would be well suited for the equivalent of "a Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen and smaller form factor".

Re: PinePhone Review

#189

Post by pjc50 »

lonelappde wrote: post #173
pjc50 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bank app has significantly better usability than the website because it can mostly cache credentials and support a short login procedure. Or use the fingerprint scanner.

Your web browser can fully cache credentials.

.. but the bank sets them to expire after five minutes of inactivity, because it (correctly) doesn't consider it to be all that secure.

Re: PinePhone Review

#190

Post by asveikau »

rasvj wrote: post #125
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 overestimate how many people care about whether something is open or closed source. I had a Windows Phone. It was bad. Even Microsoft apps were subpar. Skype app was simply unusable. They weren't dogfooding. Also Google torpedoed it.

The third party app platform was pretty slow and missing a lot of APIs relative to the others. The first party UI, which got praise from reviewers for being smooth, was written in a different language and framework.

In the first version, the default blank app from Visual Studio's "new project" wizard was slow to load. I think I measured it on the order of 500ms at the time. Not much room for third parties to add more stuff without being slow.

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