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PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking

drewdevault.com

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Re: PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking

#31

Post by Rich_Morin »

My own preference would be for the pmOS project to pick a target subset of the devices on the Community and (perhaps) Testing lists. These would be chosen for a combination of criteria. For example (ducking):

- How close are their ports to being complete?

- Are they based on the aarch64 architecture?

- How many of them are economically available?

- How easy will it be to install pmOS on them?

With this subset defined, the project could focus on making these devices available to relatively naive users. There could be FAQs and HowTos for installation and setup, specific forum and wiki pages, etc. The knowledge gained in this sprint could help the project to develop an approach for the greater, long-haul effort.

Re: PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking

#32

Post by ttarr »

nynx wrote: post #2

I love the ideas behind pinephone, but I think it's just not powerful enough. I'm not sure if there's enough access to more powerful mobile phone processors though.

The first iPhone had a slower SoC, yet it felt way faster. I think there is room for improvement on the software side to make things faster.

Re: PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking

#33

Post by filmgirlcw »

fsflover wrote: post #23
ognarb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at the latest post on r/Purism on how people have a really hard time to get some refunds. * https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/r1n6a9/this_is_a_pu... * https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/qyhc04/i_will_avoid... * https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/quz8t4/a_year_and_a...

They've been having a hard time with the funds, so they probably have to delay refunds in order not to go bankrupt. Recently they got some inestments, so it should get better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27949435 . This is not exactly " constantly lying about their products ".

They’ve been seeking investments from anyone on their mailing list for years. And if they can’t refund people for six months or more (contradicting the terms of their already insane return policies), how can anyone expect them to be in business long enough to ship out phones or laptops or anything else?

If you order something from Purism today, it'll probably be 6-12 months at the earliest before you get your product. Lead times on phones are over a year and there are plenty of reports from people who ordered more expensive Librem 5 USA models who still don’t have them after six months or more. Librem 14 laptops seem to be on a six month delay.

And yes, they do constantly lie about their products. They lied about FCC clearance. They lied about when the camera would work. They’ve lied/refused to address the reality that the cellular modem doesn't support VoLTE and likely never will (which is a problem because of how many US 3G towers are getting shut off and what that does to phones that can’t do VoLTE). They’ve lied about how many units they can ship. They’ve lied about the state of their software.

At least Pine64 knows how to ship a product to people and be honest about their device capabilities.

Re: PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking

#34

Post by fsflover »

MartijnBraam wrote: post #28
fsflover wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But AFAIK in this case, you're limited by the proprietary firmware tied to old Linux kernels.

No, 845 runs on mainline, my OnePlus 6 is on an 5.16 release candidate at the moment.

How does it work without free drivers? Will it run on all future kernels?

Re: PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking

#35

Post by fsflover »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #33
fsflover wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been having a hard time with the funds, so they probably have to delay refunds in order not to go bankrupt. Recently they got some inestments, so it should get better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27949435 . This is not exactly " constantly lying about their products ".

They’ve been seeking investments from anyone on their mailing list for years. And if they can’t refund people for six months or more (contradicting the terms of their already insane return policies), how can anyone expect them to be in business long enough to ship out phones or laptops or anything else? If you order something from Purism today, it'll probably be 6-12 months at the earliest before you get your product…

> it'll probably be 6-12 months at the earliest before you get your product.

Yes, they have a history of delays. By the way, did you heard about global supply chain problems?

> lied about FCC clearance.

I was following them for years. There was a delay in obtaining the clearance. But where did they lie about it?

> They lied about when the camera would work.

First, this is called “a delay”. Second, if you would follow what exactly happened, they had to reverse engineer the camera due to extremely poor documentation. And all efforts were in the open. Unprecedented transparency.

> They’ve lied/refused to address the reality that the cellular modem doesn't support VoLTE and likely never wil

They never lied about it. Any proofs? They have been working on it for a long time indeed for the same reason as above (documentation). The hardware is capable of 4G, so I’m sure it will work. Why do you think otherwise?

> They’ve lied about how many units they can ship.

They never disclosed how many units they shipped.

> They’ve lied about the state of their software.

This is the only smartphone company I know who develops all software in public. You are lying here.

Re: PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking

#36

Post by neilv »

tata71 wrote: post #30
neilv wrote: post #11

I was always horrified by XDA solutions, and wondered how apparently so many people didn't find that scene incredibly sketchy and suspicious. And when more credible community open source models were already widely known. I'd be very happy if PostmarketOS got more progress towards solid mainline kernel support for some devices -- including for the nascent 4G hard requirement of my carrier. (I tried to help a short whi…

> I probably won't spend more time on it until I can be doing userland app and UI/UX development atop a solid foundation.) I wonder what you could do with GrapheneOS, maybe make it convergent, USB C dock?

I'm running GrapheneOS right now as an interim solution for my main phone. But the massive size of the Android source base, and the incomplete alignment with goals of who drives Android, means I'd really rather a solid mainline kernel (and X/Wayland and hardware platform take off. Then I suspect one motivated person can evolve a much cleaner and open userland environment foundation on top of that, while using some Linux desktop apps in the meantime.
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