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PinePhone Review

drewdevault.com

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Re: PinePhone Review

#51

Post by catdog »

pjmlp wrote: post #18
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.

The countless commercial failures of such projects since OpenMoko proves otherwise.

I think the PinePhone can be different because

1. The thing is reasonably cheap with "good enough" specs which makes it far easier to just buy it and accept that it may be just a toy in the worst case.

2. It's likely that the specs will be "good enough" for some time so the Hardware will not be terribly outdated the time the Software reaches a usable state.

3. Smartphone hardware and manufacturing matured a lot in general so it's likely easier to get sth. working with a limited budget. In comparison the Openmoko devices were reasonably advanced for their time but were also ridden by hardware bugs.

Re: PinePhone Review

#52

Post by dorfsmay »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #38
pjmlp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The countless commercial failures of such projects since OpenMoko proves otherwise.

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.

Mine was unusable until I installed Android, at which point I bought an Android phone a quarter of the thickness and mass, and better screen resolution (and likely better radios as well).

I too bought it because I thought I'd hack around and "maybe contribute" which quickly turn in "why am I wasting so much time on something that will probably never work".

Re: PinePhone Review

#53

Post by war1025 »

swiley wrote: post #34
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…

Honestly I'd be happy with just 2g and no mms at this point.

Verizon is turning off the 2g towers on Jan 1st, so the little old brick phone I've had since 2011 is going to stop functioning in two weeks.

Finally broke down and ordered a Moto g7 on Black Friday.

Haven't had the heart to actually go in and get a sim card for it yet though...

Re: PinePhone Review

#54

Post by grizzles »

dahfizz wrote: post #46
grizzles wrote: post #44

Hey Drew: I have a suggestion for sway/mobile. How about a simple windowmanager that shows a webview on screen and that exports a simple js api for window operations like { min,max,restore,setxy } so that frontend guys could make their own window managers. I think we'd see so much innovation on both desktop & mobile.

I've never seen something more web-dev than asking someone else to do this much work for you so that you don't have to learn a new language. I don't want the "innovation" of having awful web ui on my desktop.

It's an idea to provoke discussion. If you read the blog post he's got a whole list of app-y type stuff planned. This might be a way for him to save time on all that.

Re: PinePhone Review

#55

Post by sangnoir »

dahfizz wrote: post #46
grizzles wrote: post #44

Hey Drew: I have a suggestion for sway/mobile. How about a simple windowmanager that shows a webview on screen and that exports a simple js api for window operations like { min,max,restore,setxy } so that frontend guys could make their own window managers. I think we'd see so much innovation on both desktop & mobile.

I've never seen something more web-dev than asking someone else to do this much work for you so that you don't have to learn a new language. I don't want the "innovation" of having awful web ui on my desktop.

> I don't want the "innovation" of having awful web ui on my desktop.

Then don't clone/download web ui projects? I don't understand the bile.

Re: PinePhone Review

#56

Post by miohtama »

Maybe it could be called a 3G modem platform instead of a phone.

To write UI software for a modern phone takes 150+ full time engineers in my experience. Only few organisations have this capability and this is why these things will never be phones people use.

Re: PinePhone Review

#58

Post by Mathnerd314 »

pjmlp wrote: post #18
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.

The countless commercial failures of such projects since OpenMoko proves otherwise.

OpenMoko isn't really dead, or at least the kernel isn't: http://git.goldelico.com/?p=letux-kernel.git;a=summary

Netscape was a commercial failure but Mozilla is still around. Similarly Blender only went open-source after a crowdfunding campaign.

CyanogenMod is another interesting example, mostly open source and mostly successful until it started trying to commercialize the code.

I think the community ends up being a big part of it. It's not like every PinePhone shipped is going to result in another developer for the OS, but there is some critical mass point where the software goes from broken to usable and it seems PinePhone might be getting there.

Re: PinePhone Review

#59

Post by catdog »

miohtama wrote: post #56

Maybe it could be called a 3G modem platform instead of a phone. To write UI software for a modern phone takes 150+ full time engineers in my experience. Only few organisations have this capability and this is why these things will never be phones people use.

Wouldn't be too pessimistic on the UI side. Building decent desktop UIs isn't easier and still people managed to do it without a (single) organization in the background.

Re: PinePhone Review

#60

Post by StudentStuff »

swiley wrote: post #35
kop316 wrote: post #8

Earlier 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…

Well screw T-Mobile then honestly. This in addition to their (from what I understand) abuse of the FCC TV white space database kind of undoes any goodwill they had in my mind.

Could I get more details on T-Mobile's abuse of the FCC's TV Whitespace database? I know they currently do spectrum hijacking with License Assisted Access in the 5Ghz band, I'm curious what their other abuses are tho.
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