Can python be used to make an "app"?
Sailfosh OS is being ported to PinePhone & some of the most used third party native Sailfish OS applications are written in Python 3 + QML. :)
PinePhone Review
21–30 of 268 posts
Re: PinePhone Review
#22Will this work with US carriers? I am not clear on whether there are limitations imposed by carriers to only allow "certified" phones.
This was a discussion with the Librem 5. I know that T-mobile USA does not whitelist phones (My Librem 5 makes calls, sends/recieves SMS, and gets LTE data on T-mobile). Calls/SMS don't work on LTE though (I think due to proprietary software, that is true at least on Android). The Pinephone Braveheart Edition is compatible with most of the LTE/3G/2G bands for T-Mobile.
However, I think Verizon at the least used to do this, and may still do it. Sprint also has some extra proprietary things on Android and I don't know their functionality.
Re: PinePhone Review
#23"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 countless commercial failures of such projects since OpenMoko proves otherwise.
It's becoming easier and easier to develop new products in this space. Hell, there are a few "open source" phone projects out there that are just white label products imported from China.
The first Neo phone was released a year before the first Android smartphone even hit the market. It's a bit unfair to compare these new projects with something like OpenMoko.
Re: PinePhone Review
#24Would be super cool to build a web based distribution like Firefox OS for this.
FWIW, WebOS works on it. Supposedly. I dont have mine yet.
Re: PinePhone Review
#25Re: PinePhone Review
#26Would be super cool to build a web based distribution like Firefox OS for this.
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 systems of the world, but has little touches like email sending, Google Assistant, etc.
Edit: just to give some scale to the Android Go bloat (let alone plain old Android), the HTC Desire Z (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Desire_Z) has 512 MB of RAM and a paltry processor, not powerful even for its day.
That device ran the current set of Android OSes at the time, and if modded today, can even be made to run Android KitKat, where official support stopped at Android Gingerbread. Today, that device is barely considered Android Go compatible, mostly due to its CPU and storage limitations.
In 2010, we took pictures, checked emails, played games, browsed the mobile web, performed calls, texts, IMs, watched videos, streamed music, and drove/bussed/walked with navigation.
Today...we do much the same things, but in a 'once more, with ~~feeling~~ AI` manner. There are very few totally new things compared to 2010, we just let mobile apps bloat up to web development-level bloat.
In my cynical moments, I look at the processing power eaten on my OS, wasted on wakelocks and ads and think to myself that somewhere, Ralphie is in the ~~Magic School Bus~~ cell phone factory and spinning dials saying 'more RAM, more CPU, more network speed, I don't know what to do, the software is all slow!' because every time he ups a spec, the bloat absorbs it without reducing user latency one bit.
Re: PinePhone Review
#27Re: PinePhone Review
#28Drew (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…
VoLTE requires carrier support unless some very clever hacks I'm unaware. I am pretty sure that's the case with PinePhone as well, meaning it will drop to 3G.
Re: PinePhone Review
#29"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.
Re: PinePhone Review
#30Earlier 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…
Calling and SMS works without proprietary software already. The ubPorts people already did it: https://twitter.com/thepine64/status/1202162774186582017
While the baseband runs Linux (IIRC PinePhone uses a Quectel modem), it probably runs proprietary software for the full LTE/3G/2G stack.