61–70 of 225 posts
Android is open source. Android is already using linux. I really don't get it. I wish somebody could answer this question with convincing arguments, because writing another mobile OS doesn't seem like a trivial task.
I want something small like Palm Phone, which is beautiful and refined. But Palm Phone totally screws it up by marketing themselves as "companion phone" (your second mobile phone, why would I have 2 phones??) and the battery life is 5h (wtf is this??). Other minimal phones focuses on calling, and guess what? 99% of my calls in the past few years were with spam. Currently, there is absolutely no minimal small smart ph…
I've got Unihertz Jelly 2. It is smaller than "Palm Palm" in width and heigth, but a bit thicker in depth, which is a good thing. Screen is a bit tad too small, but good enough for calls and other basic functions. Typing in portrait mode is tricky, at least.
It ran quite well. Most apps worked fine. It was a little slow, but it almost never had problems. Typing aside, I'm surprised how reasonable it was, I used it as my only phone for a few days and I really had no complaints.
I want the PinePhone to work. The Librem too. In fact I had preorders for both. I canceled them looking at the performance. They’re excellent toys. Great effort to ship such a difficult product. But if your phone is going to struggle with running things besides terminal, it’s not going to be a great daily phone. I’d love them to be on par with the latest Android flagships in terms of power. Cost is not an issue. I ju…
Personally, I'd rather something equivalent to a mid-range android phone. Something that works decently well, but still affordable enough adoption isn't limited only to the wealthy looking for toys. I see most flagship phones that way myself. For me, i need more than what the pinephone offers, but it doesn't need to have all the features of a high end phone. A decent processor and RAM would make the pinephone a lot m…
The 3GB of the bigger model are enough for most users (LibreOffice or Firefox with several tabs open can run on a XFCE PC deskop with 2GB), but the CPU is indeed limited, and battery life is short. Admittedly just by optimizing the software they recently squeezed out a lot more compared to the first iterations of the software, however we're not there yet. I wonder if having a much beefier battery could allow the use of faster processors although not aimed at the mobile world. Personally I can't even keep in my hand a modern phone without it risking to fall, I find their thinness extremely uncomfortable, and would be thankful if producers made a full 1.5 - 2cm thick one with the additional space occupied by a decent battery.
Why not just use android on such phone, and remove google dependencies? Android is open source. Android is already using linux. I really don't get it. I wish somebody could answer this question with convincing arguments, because writing another mobile OS doesn't seem like a trivial task.
One point that should be repeated ad infinitum for those reading about the Pinephone for the 1st time: it's all about the freedom, not performance. One doesn't buy the Pinephone to brag about its technical achievements with friends, but rather to contribute building an ecosystem, even just by spreading the word, of people who put freedom and privacy above everything. I also should be repeated ad infinitum why its har…
To me the PinePhone and other Linux phones are also about performance. Yes the MVP prototypes will always suck and you would only buy these for freedom's sake, but a truly unified software platform encompassing both mobile and mainstream computing all running on openly documented reference hardware, will be far superior technically to what we have today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be totally fine using such a phone for almost everything I do. The only big gap would be using Sweden's identification app BankID and the money transferring app Swish. Unless these were ported to the phone, I would unfortunately lose one of it's most important functionalities for me. Of course I could just have an Apple/Android phone sitting at home for such purposes, but it is definitely less convenient.
This is one of the things I worry about - a duopoly not just backed by two wealthy and shady megacorps but also effectively by law as it mandates a mobile app for some things yet the app only exists for iOS and Android & no public API is available.
I want the PinePhone to work. The Librem too. In fact I had preorders for both. I canceled them looking at the performance. They’re excellent toys. Great effort to ship such a difficult product. But if your phone is going to struggle with running things besides terminal, it’s not going to be a great daily phone. I’d love them to be on par with the latest Android flagships in terms of power. Cost is not an issue. I ju…
Personally, I'd rather something equivalent to a mid-range android phone. Something that works decently well, but still affordable enough adoption isn't limited only to the wealthy looking for toys. I see most flagship phones that way myself. For me, i need more than what the pinephone offers, but it doesn't need to have all the features of a high end phone. A decent processor and RAM would make the pinephone a lot m…
The biggest threat to Linux on phones could be Fuchsia. If/when Google decides to switch to a Fuchsia base for Android, all the chipset vendors will follow suit and that will make it even harder to find chipsets that can be used with a Linux kernel - upstream or not. That will dry up the amount of effort put into making Linux a good mobile platform. Maybe the stable binary api of Fuchsia drivers will be usable on Lin…
Is something wrong with using Fuchsia kernel insted of Linux? It's open source and it has a modern, secure capability architecture. Running Linux binaries , not just source code, is a design goal of Fuchsia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26104667
The biggest threat to Linux on phones could be Fuchsia. If/when Google decides to switch to a Fuchsia base for Android, all the chipset vendors will follow suit and that will make it even harder to find chipsets that can be used with a Linux kernel - upstream or not. That will dry up the amount of effort put into making Linux a good mobile platform. Maybe the stable binary api of Fuchsia drivers will be usable on Lin…
Are they secure, and do they offer fine-grained permissions?