Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PinePhone Review

drewdevault.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 268 posts

Re: PinePhone Review

#61

Post by cortesoft »

kop316 wrote: post #8
livueta wrote: post #5

That's extremely exciting news! Working LTE? No blobs? "Holy shit!" is an understatement. Tangentially, what's an appropriate entry point for a reasonably capable C/C++/Unix systems programmer without prior mobile guts experience interested in working on software for this platform? I'm kind of assuming that'd be "grab a compatible device, clone postmarket, rtfm" but confirmation/pointers would be appreciated.

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…

Could you just bypass that and use VOIP?

Re: PinePhone Review

#62

Post by StudentStuff »

kick wrote: post #12
catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #9

Would 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.

Yet KaiOS ships on tens of millions of phones every quarter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

Mozilla did not want to maintain XUL or Fennec (which was hard to develop for, jumping between layers in C++ & javascript), but Qualcomm, Facebook, Google & the bevy of manufacturers and carriers that Mozilla had rallied behind FirefoxOS forked it and continued carrying on...

Re: PinePhone Review

#63

Post by nerdponx »

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.

At least on the design side, this is a good opportunity for up and coming UX designers to build portfolio pieces while also being useful (instead of redesigning Spotify for the 1000th time).

Re: PinePhone Review

#64

Post by mttyng »

God, I want to mess around with one of these so, so, sooo badly. But with a 14 month-old toddling around the house it would probably end up just sitting, untouched, for a indeterminate amount of time. But still...

Re: PinePhone Review

#65

Post by scintill76 »

pabs3 wrote: post #30
kick wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/

Is that really where the goalpost is though? I thought everyone accepted that the modem itself would always be proprietary, and that was OK as long as it had a killswitch and no ability to directly interfere with the main processor or RAM. (The mostly-userland stack to drive the modem to send SMS etc. would be open.)

It seems right to me that the FCC et al shouldn't allow uncertified amateur radio firmwares.

Re: PinePhone Review

#66

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

IMO, Librem5 and PinePhone are the most exciting news of this decade w.r.t mobile ecosystem for hackers, tinkerers, enthusiasts.

Librem5 stuck to its security, privacy first agenda and managed to build a phone with PC grade hardware. PinePhone stuck to its affordability first agenda, bringing a Linux capable smartphone hardware to the masses.

My only wish is that these project become commercially sustainable and attractive enough for the major smartphone brands to join open-source party to make a dent in the Appstore/Playstore duopoly.

Edit: Monoploy->Duopoly.

Re: PinePhone Review

#67

Post by unnouinceput »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #66

IMO, Librem5 and PinePhone are the most exciting news of this decade w.r.t mobile ecosystem for hackers, tinkerers, enthusiasts. Librem5 stuck to its security, privacy first agenda and managed to build a phone with PC grade hardware. PinePhone stuck to its affordability first agenda, bringing a Linux capable smartphone hardware to the masses. My only wish is that these project become commercially sustainable and attr…

*duopoly

Re: PinePhone Review

#68

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

unnouinceput wrote: post #67
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #66

IMO, Librem5 and PinePhone are the most exciting news of this decade w.r.t mobile ecosystem for hackers, tinkerers, enthusiasts. Librem5 stuck to its security, privacy first agenda and managed to build a phone with PC grade hardware. PinePhone stuck to its affordability first agenda, bringing a Linux capable smartphone hardware to the masses. My only wish is that these project become commercially sustainable and attr…

*duopoly

Thanks, edited.

Re: PinePhone Review

#69

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #66

IMO, Librem5 and PinePhone are the most exciting news of this decade w.r.t mobile ecosystem for hackers, tinkerers, enthusiasts. Librem5 stuck to its security, privacy first agenda and managed to build a phone with PC grade hardware. PinePhone stuck to its affordability first agenda, bringing a Linux capable smartphone hardware to the masses. My only wish is that these project become commercially sustainable and attr…

I think Windows Mobile gave up just prior to the best chance of breaking the duopoly: PWAs. Most app developers will never want to support a half a dozen phone OSes. The solution will inevitably, eventually, be the web.

Re: PinePhone Review

#70

Post by pabs3 »

scintill76 wrote: post #65
pabs3 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the baseband runs Linux (IIRC PinePhone uses a Quectel modem), it probably runs proprietary software for the full LTE/3G/2G stack. https://osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/

Is that really where the goalpost is though? I thought everyone accepted that the modem itself would always be proprietary, and that was OK as long as it had a killswitch and no ability to directly interfere with the main processor or RAM. (The mostly-userland stack to drive the modem to send SMS etc. would be open.) It seems right to me that the FCC et al shouldn't allow uncertified amateur radio firmwares.

Depends on the human defining where the goalpost is, what their threat model is and their philosophy etc. There are certainly folks who want open basebands enough to work on them, for example there are folks working on porting the Osmocom baseband codebase to Mediatek based phones.

https://osmocom.org/projects/baseband https://media.ccc.de/v/osmodevcon2019-109-osmocombb-layer1-o...

Post reply on HN