PinePhone review after a month of daily driving(yaky.dev)
yaky.dev
PinePhone review after a month of daily driving
https://yaky.dev/2024-01-25-pinephone-post-daily-driver-review/
26 comments
On one hand, it's disappointing. On the other hand, most of the PinePhone software has been developed, adapted, and patched by enthusiasts. Many applications were never intended to work on mobile devices in the first place. And no top-down direction. Android and iOS have been around for 10+ years, and it would be interesting to compare early Android to PinePhone now.
I believe PinePhones ship with Manjaro and Plasma Mobile, which is notoriously slow and unstable, and is part of the reason why I went with Phosh.
For a more feature-phone experience, there is an ongoing project to put NuttX RTOS on PinePhone [0].
For a very performant and customizable but unusual (button navigation, terminal-based) experience, there is SXMO [1]
0: https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/pinephone2
1:https://sxmo.org/
I believe PinePhones ship with Manjaro and Plasma Mobile, which is notoriously slow and unstable, and is part of the reason why I went with Phosh.
For a more feature-phone experience, there is an ongoing project to put NuttX RTOS on PinePhone [0].
For a very performant and customizable but unusual (button navigation, terminal-based) experience, there is SXMO [1]
0: https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/pinephone2
1:https://sxmo.org/
Phosh is amazing. I'm currently running it on an Alcatel Idol 347 (2015) with 1.9GB using PostmarketOS, and it's just snappy and responsive as any Android UI, using ~ 300MB in RAM with the desktop. Very happy with it.
I'm using Mobian trixie (basically Debian testing) on a Librem 5. The overall experience is very much “not there yet”, but I reckon most of this is down to relatively few high-impact issues, mostly around touch input.
Editing text is very frustrating (but it sounds like the 1st iPhone was on-par). The keyboard doesn't always appear or disappear when you'd expect (but you can manually open or close it in Phosh). The biggest frustration here is that the text editing context menu (Copy, Paste etc) doesn't appear at all consistently.
There's also a bug where the context menu appears when it shouldn't (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5540), which makes several apps more awkward to use.
Phosh as a shell is mostly fine. The spatial model doesn't really make sense, so it's not as nice to use as the mobile version of Gnome, but that's still pre-alpha for now. Phosh hides the window's close button for some reason, and overrides that setting on every restart, so until apps switch to the new dialogs (which landed yesterday), even closing a dialog is awkward.
Overall it feels very cobbled-together for now. Files and Camera don't work properly yet, so Mobian has replaced them with Portfolio and “Camera (Dev Preview)” (which is actually a completely separate project called Millipixels that looks like a tech demo). Firefox has been heavily modified, including the bizarre decision to put the headerbar at the bottom of the window(?!) unlike any other app, and hide a load of menu options.
And then there's the general fit-and-finish I'd expect from Debian (compared with Fedora). There's a useless “Advanced Network Configuration” app that appears in the app grid, but apparently isn't a real app, because when you try to view its details Software says “Sorry! There are no details for that application”, so you can't get rid of it, whatever it is. Also, Evolution Alarm Notify; but at least I know how to prevent that from starting. (There's less of this sort of thing than with Ubuntu, though — there aren't 3 separate apps for installing software, updating software, and everyone's favourite pastime, configuring software repositories.)
It is possible to use it for basic tasks, and for me personally, I'd rather put up with good-faith bugginess than have to deal with something that assumes I want a Google account.
Editing text is very frustrating (but it sounds like the 1st iPhone was on-par). The keyboard doesn't always appear or disappear when you'd expect (but you can manually open or close it in Phosh). The biggest frustration here is that the text editing context menu (Copy, Paste etc) doesn't appear at all consistently.
There's also a bug where the context menu appears when it shouldn't (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5540), which makes several apps more awkward to use.
Phosh as a shell is mostly fine. The spatial model doesn't really make sense, so it's not as nice to use as the mobile version of Gnome, but that's still pre-alpha for now. Phosh hides the window's close button for some reason, and overrides that setting on every restart, so until apps switch to the new dialogs (which landed yesterday), even closing a dialog is awkward.
Overall it feels very cobbled-together for now. Files and Camera don't work properly yet, so Mobian has replaced them with Portfolio and “Camera (Dev Preview)” (which is actually a completely separate project called Millipixels that looks like a tech demo). Firefox has been heavily modified, including the bizarre decision to put the headerbar at the bottom of the window(?!) unlike any other app, and hide a load of menu options.
And then there's the general fit-and-finish I'd expect from Debian (compared with Fedora). There's a useless “Advanced Network Configuration” app that appears in the app grid, but apparently isn't a real app, because when you try to view its details Software says “Sorry! There are no details for that application”, so you can't get rid of it, whatever it is. Also, Evolution Alarm Notify; but at least I know how to prevent that from starting. (There's less of this sort of thing than with Ubuntu, though — there aren't 3 separate apps for installing software, updating software, and everyone's favourite pastime, configuring software repositories.)
It is possible to use it for basic tasks, and for me personally, I'd rather put up with good-faith bugginess than have to deal with something that assumes I want a Google account.
Does wifi tethering work ok on that phone?
Something I learned recently is that tethering works correctly on the Pro - had to use it for my Kobo. I was looking around for wifi, and eventually figured it was worth looking into for the Pinephone Pro. And it... just worked. Entirely via GUI, with no hiccups (using Phosh)
> Android and iOS have been around for 10+ years, and it would be interesting to compare early Android to PinePhone now.
I used a Nexus S running CyanogenMod more than 10 years ago. Lagging and missing inputs were not problems. The Nexus S is notionally still supported by LineageOS today, but trying to actually run LineageOS on it is unbearably slow.
I used a Nexus S running CyanogenMod more than 10 years ago. Lagging and missing inputs were not problems. The Nexus S is notionally still supported by LineageOS today, but trying to actually run LineageOS on it is unbearably slow.
SXMO was basically the only thing that didn't lag on PinePhone for me. Which makes sense, as it's basically sway with dmenu for phone interface. I was very excited about the whole thing and even made the same scripts work for my desktop sway with baresip, but then decided to just use a normal reliable feature phone that looks cool.
> I take it out twice a year to update it and see if the lock screen (a static image with a text field) still lags and misses inputs
Yeah as soon as I got my pinephone and the lag on the lock screen happened I had a sinking feeling it wasn't going to be that great.
Yeah as soon as I got my pinephone and the lag on the lock screen happened I had a sinking feeling it wasn't going to be that great.
That's just a matter of software, not hardware. You can try different UIs, SXMO's quite fun, for example.
Well... you don't know that until you go to the trouble of installing different software which can be a significant time investment if you haven't done it before.
Also, I tinker with many of my devices but it would be perfectly valid if the pinephone I purchased I wanted to just work out of the box, at least to the extent where the first screen doesn't lag on keyboard input.
That's a huge sign of immaturity at least in the QA process (if one even exists).j
Mind you, I really want things like Pinephone to work and be a viable alternative to the general ad/spyware infested crap on the market.
Also, I tinker with many of my devices but it would be perfectly valid if the pinephone I purchased I wanted to just work out of the box, at least to the extent where the first screen doesn't lag on keyboard input.
That's a huge sign of immaturity at least in the QA process (if one even exists).j
Mind you, I really want things like Pinephone to work and be a viable alternative to the general ad/spyware infested crap on the market.
Pinephone is not an end-user product, it's explicitly meant for hacking on it as a hobby.
[deleted]
> I purchased I wanted to just work out of the box, at least to the extent where the first screen doesn't lag on keyboard input.
The Pinephone home and order pages had a warning in figurative blinking neon signs clearly stating it's not for consumers and squarely targeted at developers interested in making the software better.
The Pinephone home and order pages had a warning in figurative blinking neon signs clearly stating it's not for consumers and squarely targeted at developers interested in making the software better.
it is also the hardware.
my budget for a phone is about $150. i have been thinking about getting a pinephone (with a keyboard) but that would have been twice my budget, and after i saw a friend with that having trouble getting the keyboard working, i passed on it. before i had a fairphone 3, which i had received as a gift, but its performance was worse than the $150 phone i had before that. now however i got a very good deal (slightly over my budget) on a refurbished 3 year old oneplus nord that new would have cost $400. and boy, i have never had a phone that was that good. not only is it much faster, the battery lasts longer too.
i can now understand why people like to spend money on a high end phone. i still won't spend that much but thanks to refurbishing services i don't need to.
i really appreciate what fairphone and pinephone are doing. we need these alternative phones. i had my share of them, firefox phone, geeksphone. a sailfish based phone from india, a samsung phone running tizen. i even got a second hand openmoko very cheap because the owner was unsatisfied with it. and i can really see the evolution.
the problem is that these phones are a few years behind the curve and that the apps are written for high end phones. (the fairphone was really struggling to run wechat)
so actually, in theory you should be right. there should be software that is snapping fast even on these phones. i mean even the openmoko had usable apps. but in practice, sadly the hardware is simply a limitation.
perhaps in a few years phones will reach the same state that desktop and laptop computers have now. they can only speed up by adding more cores, and individual applications can't really go any faster, so a 7 year old computer still performs fine, even for my kids as a gaming device.
my budget for a phone is about $150. i have been thinking about getting a pinephone (with a keyboard) but that would have been twice my budget, and after i saw a friend with that having trouble getting the keyboard working, i passed on it. before i had a fairphone 3, which i had received as a gift, but its performance was worse than the $150 phone i had before that. now however i got a very good deal (slightly over my budget) on a refurbished 3 year old oneplus nord that new would have cost $400. and boy, i have never had a phone that was that good. not only is it much faster, the battery lasts longer too.
i can now understand why people like to spend money on a high end phone. i still won't spend that much but thanks to refurbishing services i don't need to.
i really appreciate what fairphone and pinephone are doing. we need these alternative phones. i had my share of them, firefox phone, geeksphone. a sailfish based phone from india, a samsung phone running tizen. i even got a second hand openmoko very cheap because the owner was unsatisfied with it. and i can really see the evolution.
the problem is that these phones are a few years behind the curve and that the apps are written for high end phones. (the fairphone was really struggling to run wechat)
so actually, in theory you should be right. there should be software that is snapping fast even on these phones. i mean even the openmoko had usable apps. but in practice, sadly the hardware is simply a limitation.
perhaps in a few years phones will reach the same state that desktop and laptop computers have now. they can only speed up by adding more cores, and individual applications can't really go any faster, so a 7 year old computer still performs fine, even for my kids as a gaming device.
> the problem is that these phones are a few years behind the curve and that the apps are written for high end phones. (the fairphone was really struggling to run wechat)
I didn't see issues running wechat on a Pixel 3a, which is slightly older than the Fairphone 3. I replaced my 3a with a 6a, but not for any performance-related reasons.
Maybe there's something weird about the Fairphone 3?
I didn't see issues running wechat on a Pixel 3a, which is slightly older than the Fairphone 3. I replaced my 3a with a 6a, but not for any performance-related reasons.
Maybe there's something weird about the Fairphone 3?
With that kind of budget, you can get an iPhone SE 2020: https://www.backmarket.com/en-us/p/iphone-se-2020-64-gb-blac... . If you can spare an extra $50, I'd go for the current model: https://www.backmarket.com/en-us/p/iphone-se-2022-64-gb-star... ($202)
That's basically what I did: https://announce.asheesh.org/2022/09/i-switched-to-iphone-fo...
That's basically what I did: https://announce.asheesh.org/2022/09/i-switched-to-iphone-fo...
interesting, but i only buy devices where i can install alternative operating systems. that makes iphones entirely uninteresting to me
> a sailfish based phone from india
I am reading HN on it right now, still going strong!
Admittedly I have never used it as my first phone. The mechanics and probably the battery (still the first one) would not have lasted.
I am reading HN on it right now, still going strong!
Admittedly I have never used it as my first phone. The mechanics and probably the battery (still the first one) would not have lasted.
Part of the problem is Phosh is basically fucking GNOME and inherits all the GNOME enshittification including a render path that requires considerable CPU/GPU oomph to draw smoothly. Windows has a smoother UX on old/weak hardware than GNOME. I don't know why this is and why they can't (or won't bother to) get their act together, but when it comes to a responsive UI, a bare X WM that uses regular 2D draw calls trounces GNOME. On the PinePhone that pretty much means SXMO.
phosh is a custom compositor (phoc) not based on GMOME-Shell at all. It is a simple one made purely in C.
Wikipedia says Phosh is based on the GTK toolkit and is in fact a fork of GNOME shell. Even their own webpage says so at https://phosh.mobi/about/
You are misreading the Phosh page. It says it uses a custom wlroots compositor on that page. You can see the source yourself: https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phoc
Yes it uses the GTK toolkit but that has nothing to do withe GNOME-Shell or its performance problems.
I corrected the Wikipedia article.
Yes it uses the GTK toolkit but that has nothing to do withe GNOME-Shell or its performance problems.
I corrected the Wikipedia article.
> I don't know why this is and why they can't (or won't bother to) get their act together
It's because you're not their employer, so they can do (or not do) whatever they want.
It's because you're not their employer, so they can do (or not do) whatever they want.
2005 phones weren't running anything close to a desktop OS. A more reasonable parallel would be the barely-released Nokia N9 from 2011 running MaemoOS. It was abandoned upon launch because the company had already agreed to go exclusively with Windows Phone OS.
With that said, I think 3GB RAM feels very low for a device running this kind of software. Even the Nokia N9 had 1GB RAM.
With that said, I think 3GB RAM feels very low for a device running this kind of software. Even the Nokia N9 had 1GB RAM.
Asking feature parity with 20yo feature phones is the bare minimum.
3GB RAM is wildly low when most Android phones have 8-12GB these days. And the Pinephone is running much heavier software.
The only usable OS for the PinePhone had been PostmarketOS with sxmo-de-sway. I had to do lots of tasks using the terminal, but it allowed me to have a stable connection and Wifi hotspot. Phosh and Plasma would disconnect or crash often.
I also got lots of shifty looks using my phone on the train as if I were a hacker terrorist or something.
It's been much smoother using LineageOS on a very old OnePlus One than the Pinephone, but I still keep it around to try out new OS updates.
I also got lots of shifty looks using my phone on the train as if I were a hacker terrorist or something.
It's been much smoother using LineageOS on a very old OnePlus One than the Pinephone, but I still keep it around to try out new OS updates.
When I look the hardware in it, I feels like the pinephone is just a step above what I would have built from a 3d printer, custom PCB, a microcontroller and an IOT modem from sparkfun. Every part is average, but the sum of it allows calling and has a usable idle battery life.
Such a collection of hardware can't realistically compete with mainstream phones which have very tight hardware and software integration to achieve the most performance with the least power draw.
It's a bad phone (and bad portable computer), but mine might work for as long as LTE and my desire to recompile exist. Schematics, opensource and spare parts being available are the crux of it. It's the phone for those wanting to build their phones and it's pretty good at that.
Such a collection of hardware can't realistically compete with mainstream phones which have very tight hardware and software integration to achieve the most performance with the least power draw.
It's a bad phone (and bad portable computer), but mine might work for as long as LTE and my desire to recompile exist. Schematics, opensource and spare parts being available are the crux of it. It's the phone for those wanting to build their phones and it's pretty good at that.
Yeah agree with similar experience, and yeah, made me pine (no pun) for my Key2 with a physical keyboard, which was generally bulletproof. There's a reason BB dropped out of the phone business, I get that, but I'd pay iphone prices for a new BB Key2 that was de-googled. But I would not pay iphone prices for an iphone.
If the market was still free, the future would be a BB committed to trust reciprocation. But it's too late now. So aside from de-googled provided by some specific vendors, just fuck phones.
If the market was still free, the future would be a BB committed to trust reciprocation. But it's too late now. So aside from de-googled provided by some specific vendors, just fuck phones.
>I take it out twice a year to update it and see if the lock screen (a static image with a text field) still lags and misses inputs
There are some people who do not notice things like this. Or they don't give them importance. Fill your team with them and get prepared for the shitfest.
There are some people who do not notice things like this. Or they don't give them importance. Fill your team with them and get prepared for the shitfest.
I doubt it. Pinephone can run this on 1920x1080 screen:
https://xnux.eu/log/videos/libreelec6.mp4
Could 2005 Nokia do that?
https://xnux.eu/log/videos/libreelec6.mp4
Could 2005 Nokia do that?
Do you think a good phone is one that runs Kodi but can't manage calls and messages?
For some people it probably is. If you want a cheap pocket sized Linux computer rather than a phone.
I am quite happy with my Pinetab (I am typing on it now). I see the Pinephone as a smaller version of that. My Pinetab has replaced my phone for quite a lot of things - I use my phone a lot less.
I am quite happy with my Pinetab (I am typing on it now). I see the Pinephone as a smaller version of that. My Pinetab has replaced my phone for quite a lot of things - I use my phone a lot less.
No, I just think it's ridiculous to say 2005 Nokia feature phone had better performance.
> UNLIMITED POWER!
> The "killer feature" of PinePhone is that you can SSH into it as any other Linux machine
OP, you might be interested in Android I think. It runs a Linux kernel, you can enable root access, and then use something like Linux Deploy to install a distro of your choosing that runs as though it's a normal app. I've been using that since my first Android device and have been able to ssh into my phone "just like any Linux machine" this whole time.
Indeed, I find it a killer feature and don't understand not more people want to access their DCIM folder via sshfs (bookmark it in the file manager for easy access, never get your phone out of your pocket anymore to send a photo to PC) or make full-system backups via something like restic. I also use qalc as calculator on the command line whenever I need more than simple multiplication. Fully recommended.
(Do use ssh keys instead of a password to avoid needing to type some super strong password on the phone to connect to localhost, since phones get taken into all sorts of untrustworthy WiFi networks)
> The "killer feature" of PinePhone is that you can SSH into it as any other Linux machine
OP, you might be interested in Android I think. It runs a Linux kernel, you can enable root access, and then use something like Linux Deploy to install a distro of your choosing that runs as though it's a normal app. I've been using that since my first Android device and have been able to ssh into my phone "just like any Linux machine" this whole time.
Indeed, I find it a killer feature and don't understand not more people want to access their DCIM folder via sshfs (bookmark it in the file manager for easy access, never get your phone out of your pocket anymore to send a photo to PC) or make full-system backups via something like restic. I also use qalc as calculator on the command line whenever I need more than simple multiplication. Fully recommended.
(Do use ssh keys instead of a password to avoid needing to type some super strong password on the phone to connect to localhost, since phones get taken into all sorts of untrustworthy WiFi networks)
> don't understand not more people want to access their DCIM folder via sshfs
The thing is that, despite owning rooted Androids, pinephones, and jailbroken iPhone (old days), I have found no real use personally for all the unlocked potential of those devices, beyond the fun and coolness of tinkering.
I need to access some photo from PC maybe once every year. I don't edit photos, or categorize them, and if I were to share them, it's likely that the channel already is on the phone.
Writing programs on the go? I have installed vim and emacs and set up a lot of crazy stuff on phones, but at the end of the day, I'd rather just carry a laptop. It's too hard to type on the phone regardless of what program you install, and if connected to a external keyboard, the screen is too small. I just don't have a scenario where I want to write programs while not able to bring a laptop.
In other words, the hardware and form factor is so limiting, that I don't find unleashing the software to be much of a use, even after spending a lot of time setting them up. I hope I can find some practical reasons, because I really like the tinkering, but I haven't.
(This is, of course, highly personal. A lot of people might find many practical use cases.)
The thing is that, despite owning rooted Androids, pinephones, and jailbroken iPhone (old days), I have found no real use personally for all the unlocked potential of those devices, beyond the fun and coolness of tinkering.
I need to access some photo from PC maybe once every year. I don't edit photos, or categorize them, and if I were to share them, it's likely that the channel already is on the phone.
Writing programs on the go? I have installed vim and emacs and set up a lot of crazy stuff on phones, but at the end of the day, I'd rather just carry a laptop. It's too hard to type on the phone regardless of what program you install, and if connected to a external keyboard, the screen is too small. I just don't have a scenario where I want to write programs while not able to bring a laptop.
In other words, the hardware and form factor is so limiting, that I don't find unleashing the software to be much of a use, even after spending a lot of time setting them up. I hope I can find some practical reasons, because I really like the tinkering, but I haven't.
(This is, of course, highly personal. A lot of people might find many practical use cases.)
I used to set an 80% battery limit and want root for adblock and backing up apps. With a desktop chrome equivalent it becomes very useful even without root today.
The iPhone gets better and better but I jailbreak for a clipboard that isn't a single paste.
The iPhone gets better and better but I jailbreak for a clipboard that isn't a single paste.
Yes. Even without enabling root, you can install Termux[1] and have a full Linux cli environment with ssh.
> don't understand not more people want to access their DCIM folder via sshfs
I agree. I sync my camera folder with Syncthing[1], so as soon as I take a photo it is available on my laptop.
1: https://termux.dev/ 2 https://syncthing.net/
> don't understand not more people want to access their DCIM folder via sshfs
I agree. I sync my camera folder with Syncthing[1], so as soon as I take a photo it is available on my laptop.
1: https://termux.dev/ 2 https://syncthing.net/
I can also recommend the Apple ecosystem. My phone and MacBook keep, messages (and sms), contacts, calendar, clipboard and also photos in sync.
I disliked iOS for specifically being absurd about photos. They are not considered "files" and therefore cannot be synced by Mobius / Syncthing. I don't want to go through the hassle of hosting Nextcloud to get photos from my phone to my laptop when both are located on the same network.
(Not really relevant anymore since I don't own any Apple devices)
(Not really relevant anymore since I don't own any Apple devices)
This app is what you want. It can push the photos to NFS or Samba over the network. https://www.photosync-app.com/ Maybe it will help someone who still uses an iPhone.
Why that one specifically? Doesn't say anything about free or open source. I use this one. https://immich.app/
Not your parent poster, but I appreciated that Photosync was a one time purchase, and developed by a German company. Worth it to have a solid backup tool that can push to a Samba share.
I am already using an iPhone, so those things do not typically enter my calculus for selecting apps. I don't like it, but the alternative is using Android, so it's the tradeoff I am making. I know that isn't a very good answer.
Why not just recommend nextcloud. You can host it yourself and it backs up and syncs your photos, calendar, contacts, and other files automatically
And you get to own your data instead of relying on Apple
And you get to own your data instead of relying on Apple
Yeah I use NextCloud. It syncs contacts, calendars, tasks, notes, news, podcasts, recipes(!), photos, and any arbitrary files. If you don't want to self host, just get a Hetzner storage share for $4/mo or whatever it is.
Considering this is a post by and for Free Software enthusiasts, I don't think they would.
[deleted]
> OP, you might be interested in Android I think. It runs a Linux kernel, you can enable root access,
On average, that's not really true. Android uses badly modified and unmaintained versions of Linux (the kernel), and both root access and the ability to install a replacement operating system are immensely variable depending on the vendor and the exact model. Pine products typically maintain some degree of downstream patches, but they are trying to run mainline Linux and do actually keep up with kernel updates, while also giving the user root access out of the box by default, no caveats.
On average, that's not really true. Android uses badly modified and unmaintained versions of Linux (the kernel), and both root access and the ability to install a replacement operating system are immensely variable depending on the vendor and the exact model. Pine products typically maintain some degree of downstream patches, but they are trying to run mainline Linux and do actually keep up with kernel updates, while also giving the user root access out of the box by default, no caveats.
This has improved a lot with Android 12 and Google is working towards using a nearly unmodified Linux LTS kernel. See https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/android-to-take-an-u...
If you can enable root access depends on the boot loader though, which is a different story. If you want to be safe, get a Pixel.
If you can enable root access depends on the boot loader though, which is a different story. If you want to be safe, get a Pixel.
Samsung is also a safe bet afaik, or Fairphone of course.
For manufacturers where you need to apply for an unlock code, do it within the legal return window of the device (minimum 14 days in the EU (or EEA?) for online purchases), so then that's also a safe bet. Don't need to use the code straight away, though I'd recommend it as it typically (as an extra hurdle¹) wipes the device and you don't want to be doing that once all your data is on there
¹ user safety security blah blah yeah. If it were about my privacy, it could show the same consent prompt as it does for uploading my pictures and live location and rest of my life to a megacorp. If anything, that decision should have an unlock code you need to apply for and supply on a command line to avoid making a mistake in haste
For manufacturers where you need to apply for an unlock code, do it within the legal return window of the device (minimum 14 days in the EU (or EEA?) for online purchases), so then that's also a safe bet. Don't need to use the code straight away, though I'd recommend it as it typically (as an extra hurdle¹) wipes the device and you don't want to be doing that once all your data is on there
¹ user safety security blah blah yeah. If it were about my privacy, it could show the same consent prompt as it does for uploading my pictures and live location and rest of my life to a megacorp. If anything, that decision should have an unlock code you need to apply for and supply on a command line to avoid making a mistake in haste
Not sure I'm deep enough into Linux to understand why it matters to run an unmodified mainline kernel version. Everything I've tried to apt install inside the Linux Deploy Debian userspace either worked or ran into selinux restrictions (more and more in the latter category; RIP wavemon, for example, as a better alternative to rate-limited WiFi scanning apps as of around Android 9)
> Not sure I'm deep enough into Linux to understand why it matters to run an unmodified mainline kernel version.
Updates. The closer you are to mainline, the easier it is to move to newer versions as they come out (and the more quickly, which especially helps with security patches).
Updates. The closer you are to mainline, the easier it is to move to newer versions as they come out (and the more quickly, which especially helps with security patches).
Ah, yeah okay but installing kernel updates not something I'd do myself anyway so that's the manufacturer's problem (and eventually my problem when I get pwned, sure). I thought you meant that it had some impact on the ability to run standard Linux software
On one of my old tablets (Android 4 or 5) years ago I put and configured Syncthing so that it would sync automatically all user data to the home NAS running Nas4Free (now XigmaNAS). Didn't make much use of it, but it worked.
> you can enable root access
One may be able to get root, but the resulting system isn't very useful. Many apps query Google's attestation and integrity APIs to detect this and then refuse to function.
Basically it's a thing of the past.
One may be able to get root, but the resulting system isn't very useful. Many apps query Google's attestation and integrity APIs to detect this and then refuse to function.
Basically it's a thing of the past.
Huh, no? I think I once ran into one app that didn't want to work, then enabled magisk hide for it, and then it ran fine. Don't know which app that was anymore, apparently I didn't use it long enough for that
I remember hearing many more issues with apps trying to detect it and do fearmongering in the past. I'd say your argument is the thing that's slowly getting a part of the past
I remember hearing many more issues with apps trying to detect it and do fearmongering in the past. I'd say your argument is the thing that's slowly getting a part of the past
Most banking apps will refuse to work if they detect that the phone is rooted.
You can also use Kde Connect for file sharing using sshfs if you don't want to configure it manually. The feature is called "Filesystem Expose".
I'm not familiar with that, but I'm curious how it can be simpler than what I described using the regular file manager you've probably already got installed. For me, using the defaults of Debian with Cinnamon, the steps are
0. get ssh working
1. type into the location bar of the file browser: sftp:// and then whatever the ssh command would use, e.g.: sftp://root@samsung-0bd2c41
2. there is no step two, you've already got a mounted filesystem
Of course, there's some details hidden in step zero, but if KDE Connect uses sshfs as well, I'm not sure how it gets simpler than this to "expose" (this means mount, right?) the filesystem. Does KDE Connect do it bidirectionally or so? (I wouldn't actually want that, as my laptop is the trusted device of the pair)
0. get ssh working
1. type into the location bar of the file browser: sftp:// and then whatever the ssh command would use, e.g.: sftp://root@samsung-0bd2c41
2. there is no step two, you've already got a mounted filesystem
Of course, there's some details hidden in step zero, but if KDE Connect uses sshfs as well, I'm not sure how it gets simpler than this to "expose" (this means mount, right?) the filesystem. Does KDE Connect do it bidirectionally or so? (I wouldn't actually want that, as my laptop is the trusted device of the pair)
Pair your phone once with PC (It also supposedly works with Gnome but i never used it) using a single click via. KDE Connect.
The phone icon shows up in your file manager without you having to do any additional configuration. Click and browse like any networked folder.
Advantage is KDE connect also brings a lot of useful features alongside just accessing phone files. Can share clipboard, notifications (can even reply from desktop), execute commands on pc from phone and vice versa and a lot more
The phone icon shows up in your file manager without you having to do any additional configuration. Click and browse like any networked folder.
Advantage is KDE connect also brings a lot of useful features alongside just accessing phone files. Can share clipboard, notifications (can even reply from desktop), execute commands on pc from phone and vice versa and a lot more
What does pairing mean here? Surely not Bluetooth? How'd that work? Or do you mean plugging in the USB connection and perhaps turning on USB debugging? I don't understand what that first word/step means or involves
Ah wait, probably there's a companion app on the phone side that uses root and one side listens for broadcasts on the network. Is that what you mean? That does sound simpler than setting up ssh indeed
Ah wait, probably there's a companion app on the phone side that uses root and one side listens for broadcasts on the network. Is that what you mean? That does sound simpler than setting up ssh indeed
Yep. KDE Connect app exists on Android and does not need root. You connect both of them to the same network. Once they discover each other over network (or you add the ip address manually), click the pair button on one device and accept the pairing request on the other device. They exchange ssh keys etc.. so the connection will work automatically even when you switch networks the next time.
I don’t understand how the author can say KILLER FEATURE if using the killer feature is impeded by a fundamental feature (crappy screen).
I, too, had a stage where I was obsessed about some electronic thing that had significant usability issues in day-to-day life.
In my case, it was a tri-band EU phone that could only do GSM1900 on a North American network with shitty indoor reception, and cost a pretty penny compared to what was on the market at the time. Never again.
Edit: I misread the parent comment, and didn’t realize the SSH part.
I, too, had a stage where I was obsessed about some electronic thing that had significant usability issues in day-to-day life.
In my case, it was a tri-band EU phone that could only do GSM1900 on a North American network with shitty indoor reception, and cost a pretty penny compared to what was on the market at the time. Never again.
Edit: I misread the parent comment, and didn’t realize the SSH part.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you... how does the crappy screen affect your experience when you're ssh'ing into it?
I misread the comment…
> Verdict: PinePhone is a great mobile Linux device. I would use it as my daily driver, and probably iron out some issues I ran into, but for me, it failed at... being a phone. I had repeated, unpredictable problems both placing and receiving calls, and I could not resolve them. See below for details.
Sounds like exactly what I want. It has been well over a decade since I used my cell radio for anything but data.
Sounds like exactly what I want. It has been well over a decade since I used my cell radio for anything but data.
For me, it is almost exclusively used for some sort of an emergency, the last being a couple weeks ago, where I had to call in for roadside service with a rental. You're not getting through to customer service from the web. Most of my received calls are also some sort of emergency.
I suppose if you have some reliable VoIP setup, it might work.
Regardless, it's shoddy, dumb, and shouldn't be celebrated.
I suppose if you have some reliable VoIP setup, it might work.
Regardless, it's shoddy, dumb, and shouldn't be celebrated.
I've put a fair amount of thought into the decision to not carry a phone everywhere I go and this beast always rears its head. Obviously, there was a time when people didn't have phones but society's more or less moved on; people generally expect others to have one and social services reflect that.
Anyway, I think reading this comment kinda gave me my answer: be selective about when I take my phone. Kinda the inverse of the murderer not taking their phone when they go to hide the body (I'm not planning to murder anyone); I just don't take my phone unless I plan on being in a situation where there will not be a good alternative to having my own means of communication, e.g., a road trip or vacation. Traveling within my city of residence will likely be feasible, especially if I try to do so primarily with a vehicle smaller than a car.
But yeah, if one has this idea, keep in mind that people started taking their phones everywhere because they're useful in many situations.
Anyway, I think reading this comment kinda gave me my answer: be selective about when I take my phone. Kinda the inverse of the murderer not taking their phone when they go to hide the body (I'm not planning to murder anyone); I just don't take my phone unless I plan on being in a situation where there will not be a good alternative to having my own means of communication, e.g., a road trip or vacation. Traveling within my city of residence will likely be feasible, especially if I try to do so primarily with a vehicle smaller than a car.
But yeah, if one has this idea, keep in mind that people started taking their phones everywhere because they're useful in many situations.
When people didn't carry a phone with them there were pay phones all over that mostly worked. Not nearly as convenient as a phone in your pocket and in rural areas hard to find, but could count on one at every gas station, fast food restaurant, and other such places: so they were common. Today they are hard to find at all (and probably don't work if you see one). Thus if you don't have a phone with you, you will run into a worse time than in the past. (OTOH, most people didn't use a pay phone ever - they were expensive)
I had a Palm PDA and have kept using smartphones for productivity apps, calendring, musical, photos as of the beter part of a decade. The fact that it van place and receiver calls really doesnt matter to me, but PDAs dont exist anymore, and so, why not installatie a basic sim?
My 'phone' has been really useful to me so I take it basically always with me, unless I specifically know I don't need it (such as going for a swim). I don't take calls if I don't feel like it, but very few people call me.
Do you not use you phone for other things than communication?
My 'phone' has been really useful to me so I take it basically always with me, unless I specifically know I don't need it (such as going for a swim). I don't take calls if I don't feel like it, but very few people call me.
Do you not use you phone for other things than communication?
I do use my phone for other things but I could use a "mobile Linux device" just the same and without the snooping from cell towers, which is my primary concern (for trivial, self-inflicted reasons to be fair). In practical terms, my phone stays in my pocket until I'm home anyway. To disincentivize me from using it outside my home, I turn off mobile data, which has made it obvious to me that I never use it in public and only carry it around for fear of some emergent situation which would otherwise be trivialized by the ability to communicate over a long distance.
Also, something weird happened when I regained the ability to avoid looking at a device in my hands: I started to see that everyone is addicted to their phone. Used to be that any time I had to wait for any length of time, my first instinct was to pull out my phone. Now I just look around and see everyone else do that. The decision to leave my phone at home (with exceptions) is an extension of that change in my habits.
Also, something weird happened when I regained the ability to avoid looking at a device in my hands: I started to see that everyone is addicted to their phone. Used to be that any time I had to wait for any length of time, my first instinct was to pull out my phone. Now I just look around and see everyone else do that. The decision to leave my phone at home (with exceptions) is an extension of that change in my habits.
the primary feature of my phone is to be an audio player, and to research stuff online when i need that on the go (look at maps, search for specific shops, etc), also the shopping list, and taking pictures.
messaging is there too, but my phone is always on silent, so like you i mainly use it for urgent stuff.
messaging is there too, but my phone is always on silent, so like you i mainly use it for urgent stuff.
I would say my Sony Clie was peak technology symbiosis. Offline, so mindless consumption wasn't possible, but it was filled with books that were carefully selected. Physical writing interface, that tickled that physical part of the brain. I wrote and read more, with quality, than any other time in my life.
You can easily configure an Android phone so that it doesn't make calls, but it's insane to have a phone that can't make calls.
Until you have to call 911 or equivalent and it doesn’t work
You can flag down someone to call 911 if it is an emergency. Most people will be happy to help once you get their attention. of course if it really is an emergency seconds count and flagging down someone may cost a minute.
911 is a free call, no sim needed. So if that is your only concern a phone that you don't pay for may be fine.
911 is a free call, no sim needed. So if that is your only concern a phone that you don't pay for may be fine.
Flagging someone down to call for you isn't a workable solution. For one, you could easily be nowhere near a city and need to call from the middle of nowhere. For people in the US (and I'm sure elsewhere), the cities are car centric and you could easily be nowhere near anybody out walking around.
A regular phone without a sim could work though
A regular phone without a sim could work though
The places so remote you cannot flag someone down are also so remote that you don't have cell service. Most roads that look untraveled still get a fair amount of traffic and so someone will be along soon.
That's assuming someone stops. A while ago I was driving down a road like you describe in the rural pnw and stopped for a person attempting to flag down traffic. They'd gotten their vehicle locked behind a DNR gate and their phone was dead. They were ridiculously grateful because they'd been trying to flag someone down for over an hour and had been ignored by dozens of vehicles, and they didn't even look sketchy or anything. Goes back to the societal assumption that everyone has a working phone: "if there's cell service, why don't they just call someone?"
This is absolutely not true for a vast part of the PNW. For example, with Verizon, I've bailed myself out of several situations where the alternative would be - wait (nobody showed up in the time we were waiting for help when we called, so hours more at least) or walk 20+ miles.
I've also been in a situation where if we did not have a sat phone in our group, someone very well may have died from heat stroke/way to many sunburns.
I've also been in a situation where if we did not have a sat phone in our group, someone very well may have died from heat stroke/way to many sunburns.
> The places so remote you cannot flag someone down are also so remote that you don't have cell service.
What an absurd claim.
What an absurd claim.
If you're at the point where you're flagging down a stranger to call 911 in an emergency, why not just fully "cut the cord" (no pun intended) and stop carrying a phone at all?
You haven't talked on your phone in 10 years?
> Compare to Android, which involves unlocking the bootloader, flashing recovery, booting into recovery, flashing an OS image, and possibly patching the image to get root.
During the holiday break I installed Lineage OS on my father's 10-year-old Motorola Moto G. Turns out in order to unlock the bootloader you have to fill an online form and get a code that unlocks it via email.
Additionally initially no custom recovery would install due to an outdated bootloader. I managed to patch it using a script some lone developer wrote for personal use.
During the holiday break I installed Lineage OS on my father's 10-year-old Motorola Moto G. Turns out in order to unlock the bootloader you have to fill an online form and get a code that unlocks it via email.
Additionally initially no custom recovery would install due to an outdated bootloader. I managed to patch it using a script some lone developer wrote for personal use.
>Turns out in order to unlock the bootloader you have to fill an online form and get a code that unlocks it via email.
This is to combat groups of people who flash malicious OS builds to phones and resell them to innocent people who have no clue the phone they got is compromised.
This is to combat groups of people who flash malicious OS builds to phones and resell them to innocent people who have no clue the phone they got is compromised.
Also many frequency bands that modern phones use are regulated, especially heavily with LTE and later due to mixings with the military and public service frequencies. The baseband chips have modifiable software that can be stored in the same flash memory.
The companies are trying to avoid the blame by creating a paper trail, if someone modifies a phone to illegally broadcast protected frequencies.
The companies are trying to avoid the blame by creating a paper trail, if someone modifies a phone to illegally broadcast protected frequencies.
But now the phone is flashed, so how did this change anything?
All phones are compromised, see the recent hardware backdoor found in iPhone.
Having an operating system that uploads all passwords, makes your phone into into a residential proxy, or other bad is no where comparable to the idea that phones can have security bugs. The "backdoor" you are referring to was not a backdoor as the system had to already be compromised to use it.
Not by the powers that be, no. Making a division between public criminals and private ones is amusing to say the least.
The powers that be, being Apple and now every government that actually believed there was no backdoor. As well as anyone who found the others. And the criminals able to exploit them. Anyone else?
I primarily program Android phones, but instead of getting an Android watch I decided to get a PineTime in November. I've been happy with it. I primarily use it to calculate my BPM - while doing cardiovascular exercise, or resting, or whatever. I put GadgetBridge on my Android phone and hooked the watch into it and now get BPM charts of my workouts. I also connected it to my phone notifications so if I get a notification on my phone that I got a Signal message, the message appears on my watch.
Cost $27 plus $12 shipping. I upgraded the firmware via Bluetooth - the newer firmware is said to do BPMs better (I checked before and after, and it does seem to). They sell a dev kit for the same price, although you don't need the dev kit to develop unless you're really getting into it.
It's very developer friendly - you can write your own OS for it, or modify InfiniTime which is the OS it is shipped with. Source code is on Github. Have been happy with it so far.
Cost $27 plus $12 shipping. I upgraded the firmware via Bluetooth - the newer firmware is said to do BPMs better (I checked before and after, and it does seem to). They sell a dev kit for the same price, although you don't need the dev kit to develop unless you're really getting into it.
It's very developer friendly - you can write your own OS for it, or modify InfiniTime which is the OS it is shipped with. Source code is on Github. Have been happy with it so far.
I daily drove it for a year. I now use a feature phone (my first phone!) because the PinePhone took water because of a big rain and took some time to recover. In the meantime I got used to my old feature phone again and the voice quality doesn't suck for the person at the other end of the call with this. Moreover, the PinePhone is unreliable as a phone and I think SMS and call reliability is critical.
I also have a PinePhone Pro from when it was affordable. It totally fixes the lags and is fast, making it difficult to use the regular PinePhone again. However, it heats too much and doesn't last long enough on the battery.
The PinePhone in general should not be expected to replace your main phone unless you know otherwise. It is still a prototype Linux mobile phone for testing and developing Linux stuff.
I still use it daily though. Still useful as a GPS device, to display train tickets and QR codes, to watch videos, listen to things and casually browse e.g. in bed (make sure you don't wrap it in your sheets though).
It's not generally practical yet. An Android phone will beat it. It is one of the most practical mobile devices if you care about FOSS and need some smartphone-like features besides calling. Is also occasionally use it as a 4G access point, I also just use my feature phone as a 3G access point through bluetooth for the pinephone when I both want both the calls to work and the smartphone feature or when I'm lazy and don't want to move the sim card but this can be slow.
It is an essential device that may make it possible to have an actual fully working Linux mobile device in a few years.
I also have a PinePhone Pro from when it was affordable. It totally fixes the lags and is fast, making it difficult to use the regular PinePhone again. However, it heats too much and doesn't last long enough on the battery.
The PinePhone in general should not be expected to replace your main phone unless you know otherwise. It is still a prototype Linux mobile phone for testing and developing Linux stuff.
I still use it daily though. Still useful as a GPS device, to display train tickets and QR codes, to watch videos, listen to things and casually browse e.g. in bed (make sure you don't wrap it in your sheets though).
It's not generally practical yet. An Android phone will beat it. It is one of the most practical mobile devices if you care about FOSS and need some smartphone-like features besides calling. Is also occasionally use it as a 4G access point, I also just use my feature phone as a 3G access point through bluetooth for the pinephone when I both want both the calls to work and the smartphone feature or when I'm lazy and don't want to move the sim card but this can be slow.
It is an essential device that may make it possible to have an actual fully working Linux mobile device in a few years.
All the open/pro-privacy/pro-consumer cell phones I've seen (pinephone, Fairphone, Librem) never go far enough (non-open cellular modems/wireless chipsets) while also being either insanely priced, unobtainable, barely functional, scammy, broken, or some combination of those things.
I really want a product like that to succeed, but I'm just not seeing anything reasonable being produced.
I really want a product like that to succeed, but I'm just not seeing anything reasonable being produced.
Probably because developing and making those things is extremely expensive. The "traditional" smartphone manufacturers have far lower per-unit costs because of economies of scale and because they externalise many of the production costs by using low-paid labour and environmentally destructive practices. (Some "open" phones probably externalise these costs as well, but Fairphone in particular is so expensive because it tries to avoid doing that.) Not to mention that those lower production costs are then further subsidised by the manufacturers' efforts to extract value from the user in other ways.
Every time someone tries to make an open/pro-privacy/pro-consumer phone and doesn't produce a perfect product they get heavily criticised, but I think they are up against some fairly fundamental limitations. The fact that there isn't really a satisfactory option out there despite numerous attempts suggests to me that the problem is not with the specific products or companies but something more fundamental. I don't think it will ever be feasible for ethical phones to compete with non-ethical phones on cost.
Every time someone tries to make an open/pro-privacy/pro-consumer phone and doesn't produce a perfect product they get heavily criticised, but I think they are up against some fairly fundamental limitations. The fact that there isn't really a satisfactory option out there despite numerous attempts suggests to me that the problem is not with the specific products or companies but something more fundamental. I don't think it will ever be feasible for ethical phones to compete with non-ethical phones on cost.
I'll agree that major smartphone manufacturers will probably always be able undercut them on price. I'd be more forgiving on cost if they actually delivered a quality product, especially one with open chipsets.
How many open modem chipsets that work are there?
Honestly even if one exists it’s a luxury until there’s (other) hardware and software that actually works.
1. Get it to work 2. Sell them 3. Profit 4. Reinvest in hardware
That’s what Apple did.
Honestly even if one exists it’s a luxury until there’s (other) hardware and software that actually works.
1. Get it to work 2. Sell them 3. Profit 4. Reinvest in hardware
That’s what Apple did.
That's made almost impossible by the bigger players in the SoC world like Qualcomm and Samsung. They created a multi level oligopoly which can only be challenged with nation state support (like Mediatek and Huawei did).
The problem is the drivers and documentation for those chips are very limited and short-lived. One simply doesn't get it without signing an NDA and buying some high thousands.
Without documentation it gets harder to optimally program them. On top of that add the know-how. Due to both NDAs and pure difficulty of working with low power systems, it is really hard to hire engineers who are both very knowledgeable and not bound by NDAs and willing to work on community projects that doesn't pay the significant wages that the consumer tech giants do.
Desktop Linux can get away with it if the desktop computer consumes slightly more power or laptop battery life is 2 hours shorter. People accept it. For phones any extra operations cause significant power usage. Everything in the stack needs to be optimized for it and regular Linux desktop stuff often isn't. Android has much tighter controls but it is 5-10x harder to program in the lower levels which again limits the supply of the engineers.
This is just getting a simple SoC and running Linux on top. Add similar complexities for every single peripheral.
The problem is the drivers and documentation for those chips are very limited and short-lived. One simply doesn't get it without signing an NDA and buying some high thousands.
Without documentation it gets harder to optimally program them. On top of that add the know-how. Due to both NDAs and pure difficulty of working with low power systems, it is really hard to hire engineers who are both very knowledgeable and not bound by NDAs and willing to work on community projects that doesn't pay the significant wages that the consumer tech giants do.
Desktop Linux can get away with it if the desktop computer consumes slightly more power or laptop battery life is 2 hours shorter. People accept it. For phones any extra operations cause significant power usage. Everything in the stack needs to be optimized for it and regular Linux desktop stuff often isn't. Android has much tighter controls but it is 5-10x harder to program in the lower levels which again limits the supply of the engineers.
This is just getting a simple SoC and running Linux on top. Add similar complexities for every single peripheral.
> That's made almost impossible by the bigger players in the SoC world like Qualcomm and Samsung. They created a multi level oligopoly which can only be challenged with nation state support (like Mediatek and Huawei did).
Which is why we need new chips to replace qualcomm/samsung/mediatek entirely in open devices. It's kind of crazy that nobody is willing to even attempt it. I'd gladly take the inevitable massive hit to performance if it meant fully open, documented, and auditable devices.
Which is why we need new chips to replace qualcomm/samsung/mediatek entirely in open devices. It's kind of crazy that nobody is willing to even attempt it. I'd gladly take the inevitable massive hit to performance if it meant fully open, documented, and auditable devices.
Fully open wireless basebands are unlikely if not (legally) impossible. Modern radio front ends have significant software control/definition from the baseband chipset/firmware. They'll happily run outside of regulated limits (ERP etc). The only reason they can get Part 22/15 licenses is because their firmwares are sold locked down and can't be adjusted outside of regulated limits.
Anyone that gets halfway interested in trying to make an open baseband, necessitating a custom radio front end, gets quickly uninterested once they look at the development costs and then needing to get a license.
Anyone that gets halfway interested in trying to make an open baseband, necessitating a custom radio front end, gets quickly uninterested once they look at the development costs and then needing to get a license.
Probably not economically viable in general but a device could have floss *ware and ship with immutable firmware.
This [0] is the closest we have so far - almost entirely FLOSS, and it consumes ~1/4 (IIRC) the power of the stock firmware.
It's also never going to be the default Pine64 ships with, because no OEM wants to tell the FCC "We asked the users nicely not to send erroneous signals. No, this was not lab-tested, nor verified by the FCC to not interfere with other devices."
Considering the legal limitations, I think this is an absolutely amazing point to have gotten to. OP may have issues, but he mentioned even his Android handset had similar issues. I have a pretty good carrier (for a carrier), amd have pretty well no issues using my Pinephone Pro as my actual smartphone. I just carry a spare battery :)
[0] https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk
It's also never going to be the default Pine64 ships with, because no OEM wants to tell the FCC "We asked the users nicely not to send erroneous signals. No, this was not lab-tested, nor verified by the FCC to not interfere with other devices."
Considering the legal limitations, I think this is an absolutely amazing point to have gotten to. OP may have issues, but he mentioned even his Android handset had similar issues. I have a pretty good carrier (for a carrier), amd have pretty well no issues using my Pinephone Pro as my actual smartphone. I just carry a spare battery :)
[0] https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk
> (non-open cellular modems/wireless chipsets)
> barely functional
> insanely priced
> I'm just not seeing anything reasonable being produced.
It's not reasonable to offer an affordable phone that also runs an open source baseband OS that has been tested to work reliably with the most popular carriers.
> barely functional
> insanely priced
> I'm just not seeing anything reasonable being produced.
It's not reasonable to offer an affordable phone that also runs an open source baseband OS that has been tested to work reliably with the most popular carriers.
> Verdict: PinePhone is a great mobile Linux device. I would use it as my daily driver, and probably iron out some issues I ran into, but for me, it failed at... being a phone. I had repeated, unpredictable problems both placing and receiving calls, and I could not resolve them. See below for details.
Yeah.
Yeah.
> Interestingly enough, while I was writing this, calling using my current (officially supported by T-Mobile) Android phone, I got a very similar scenario: about 30 seconds of attempting to call, phone frantically switching between VoLTE and VoWiFi, then dropping the call. The second attempt went through 2G and connected. Maybe I should not blame PinePhone's modem here...
> PinePhone's GNSS/GPS module works through the modem. Which sort of makes sense, but then, you can't use GPS without a SIM card installed...
Soon a thing of the past. I worked on a ModemManager patch to fix this, and a MM maintainer reworked and merged it last month [1]
> When GPS is enabled, it takes 10-15 minutes to get a precise location.
You can manually inject AGPS data to get an instant precise location. Not ideal but this shows the situation is fixable. See instructions for this also at [1].
As for offline mapping, PureMaps with OSM Scout Server works well enough.
[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-broadband/ModemManager...
Soon a thing of the past. I worked on a ModemManager patch to fix this, and a MM maintainer reworked and merged it last month [1]
> When GPS is enabled, it takes 10-15 minutes to get a precise location.
You can manually inject AGPS data to get an instant precise location. Not ideal but this shows the situation is fixable. See instructions for this also at [1].
As for offline mapping, PureMaps with OSM Scout Server works well enough.
[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-broadband/ModemManager...
Thank you! This will be useful as I have considered PinePhone as a carputer / navigation device.
So what is the bar for being a “great mobile Linux device” if it doesn’t include “reliably making phone calls”?
1. Great community
2. It's mobile
3. It's Linux
It did not reliably make phone calls *for me*. There are plenty of people on forums and Reddit who use it.
2. It's mobile
3. It's Linux
It did not reliably make phone calls *for me*. There are plenty of people on forums and Reddit who use it.
1) Boots
2) Doesn't immediately crash.
My Pinephone seems to still have an issue with crashing randomly all the time.
My Pinephone seems to still have an issue with crashing randomly all the time.
My mobian never crashes. Try it. If it doesn’t help you’ve a hardware problem.
Boot2gecko and gaia were pretty much what I wanted.
But then vendors acted like assholes, and labelled phones as "open" without any possibility to get the source, let alone develop anything for their devices due to lack of working build tools.
But then vendors acted like assholes, and labelled phones as "open" without any possibility to get the source, let alone develop anything for their devices due to lack of working build tools.
I think it's that software is not all bad. ;-)
My opinion is different: I had one and I found it a poor platform, construction quality if sufficient to be generous. Then, I had hardware problems and the assistance was a Kafkaesque nightmare. I got rid of it and I took an old Pixel 3A on which I installed Ubuntu Touch: I'm not totally satisfied but, waiting for better Linux platform, IMHO it's another planet.
I'd be ok with a phone-form-factor device that lacks cellular and just uses apps over wifi for calls and messages. Kinda like the old iPod Touch.
A smartphone minus the cellular modem is just a PDA. Or rather, the modern smartphone could be viewed as the fusion of the PDA form factor and a cellular phone; this can be more clearly be seen in early smartphones like the Treo 650. Before then, it was common to have both as separate devices, and use Bluetooth (or even IRDA!) to connect both so that the PDA could use the cellular phone as a modem.
Unfortunately, like the current "smart TV" situation, it's going to be hard to find a PDA-like device without a built-in modem, since most people do want the built-in modem. There are tablets, but even them seem to be gaining built-in modems nowadays.
Unfortunately, like the current "smart TV" situation, it's going to be hard to find a PDA-like device without a built-in modem, since most people do want the built-in modem. There are tablets, but even them seem to be gaining built-in modems nowadays.
I got the Onyx Boox Palma for this. Phone-size E-ink screen (no SIM slot), Android + app store support under the hood.
How are you finding it?
Pretty good. One thing to note is that if you're using Android apps, make sure they have a "dark/light mode" setting because in dark mode, UI elements may not be easily visible.
I run Phosh on a OnePlus 6. It is honestly pretty good these days. There are certainly bugs and missing functionality, but it works great for many tasks. I especially like having desktop Firefox with uBlock on a phone.
Unfortunately, without popular apps being readily available, there is zero chance this goes mainstream. Desktop Linux has a better chance of surpassing Windows.
Unfortunately, without popular apps being readily available, there is zero chance this goes mainstream. Desktop Linux has a better chance of surpassing Windows.
What is the base os, did you have to break in?
postmarketOS. It installs pretty much the same as any Android ROM. Once your bootloader is unlocked, you just flash it with fastboot.
Sadly I had a similar experience. Actually had the Pro too, which was even more of a pain, IIRC because of having to press a reset button to boot with a pin, it was really bad. The OG Pinephone eventually would freeze every time I ran apk update on Postmarketos, I think the internal mmc went bad after a year.
The eMMC issue sounds like really bad luck - mine is still fine after more than three years (although I have moved on to other mobile Linux devices a year ago, since they are faster).
What are the good Linux mobile devices nowadays? I still believe in mobile linux, but not necessarily Pine..
There's no reset button on Pinephone Pro. So this is a bit curious...
It may have been an early version. I tried to look it up but seems the Pine forums are down..
On early version reset button can't be used to override boot rom boot order. It's just a literal SoC reset button. Newer revisions have RE button, that can override it.
So if it was early revision, I can understand the frustration.
So if it was early revision, I can understand the frustration.
That reminds me of something I've been thinking about: Does anyone make a modern Nokia N900? I miss having a small, open Linux machine with a good keyboard in my pocket. I don't want something running Android, I want a common(-ish) Linux distro.
> To install an OS, you flash an image to an SD card, put it in the PinePhone and turn it on. That's it. You can swap OSes by changing SD cards
That's really cool actually!
Also think of making backups: just plug the sdcard into your laptop and copy the data.
But then also this..
> [...] repeated, unpredictable problems both placing and receiving calls [...]
> Notifications TLDR: Only calls and SMS notifications are truly real-time.
So the only way someone can reliably reach you is via SMS, which basically means sending an explicit money-costing notification to me whenever I'm not already online and hoping I hear the single ping.
That suits a pocket computer, but not for a phone :(
The keyboard descriptions are also interesting: no suggestions makes it basically unusable unless it comes with a physical keyboard or you want to have typos in every sentence. I've got a "hacker keyboard" enabled on my android as well, but only turn it on when doing terminal things. I tried typing normally on that and I don't think it would reasonably work after a lot of practice either
That's really cool actually!
Also think of making backups: just plug the sdcard into your laptop and copy the data.
But then also this..
> [...] repeated, unpredictable problems both placing and receiving calls [...]
> Notifications TLDR: Only calls and SMS notifications are truly real-time.
So the only way someone can reliably reach you is via SMS, which basically means sending an explicit money-costing notification to me whenever I'm not already online and hoping I hear the single ping.
That suits a pocket computer, but not for a phone :(
The keyboard descriptions are also interesting: no suggestions makes it basically unusable unless it comes with a physical keyboard or you want to have typos in every sentence. I've got a "hacker keyboard" enabled on my android as well, but only turn it on when doing terminal things. I tried typing normally on that and I don't think it would reasonably work after a lot of practice either
> That's really cool actually!
Cool on paper but SD cards have abysmal write endurance, as any Raspberry Pi user will attest to.
Unless you trust the entire software stack to keep writes to a minimum I wouldn't trust the SD card to last.
Cool on paper but SD cards have abysmal write endurance, as any Raspberry Pi user will attest to.
Unless you trust the entire software stack to keep writes to a minimum I wouldn't trust the SD card to last.
I had this issue, presumably because I ran a Debian userspace below Android with a file on the sdcard as filesystem. Every ~3 years, the sdcard would just drop dead. (Other people seemed to upgrade faster than every 3y or don't use sdcards at all, so idk if it was just me.)
It hasn't happened anymore recently, and I feel like there's more awareness/support for this type of usage pattern with the higher-end sdcards that are somewhat recent (like, introduced in the last ~8 years, so after the lifespan of an old cheap sdcard, I'm still on my first new-style one and I'm not yet sure it's not randomness that keeps it alive)
It hasn't happened anymore recently, and I feel like there's more awareness/support for this type of usage pattern with the higher-end sdcards that are somewhat recent (like, introduced in the last ~8 years, so after the lifespan of an old cheap sdcard, I'm still on my first new-style one and I'm not yet sure it's not randomness that keeps it alive)
If you must use an SD card then there are industrial-grade ones which use pSLC NAND and are meant to endure a ton of abuse, but they're very expensive compared to an equivalent amount of reliable eMMC/USB/NVMe storage. IME commodity SD cards are still a crapshoot.
So far, one of these sdcards that claim to be optimised for applications accessing random files (such as on a Pi) works fine in my phone
Not so bad, SD cards can be robust. It depends on the file-system and
how much work the controller does to catch errors, mark bad cells,
etc.
I have a few portable handy recorders, a Zoom, a Tascam and a Sound Devices, and all of them handle the same SD cards for years, rarely complaining about format errors or losing files.
I have a few portable handy recorders, a Zoom, a Tascam and a Sound Devices, and all of them handle the same SD cards for years, rarely complaining about format errors or losing files.
Get an endurance SD card and those have decent lifespans.
> That's really cool actually!
It's cool but it's wrong: SD cards are unreliable.
It's cool but it's wrong: SD cards are unreliable.
From my point of view, you're wrong. They work fine for me for this purpose
I don't think you can put a binary label on this (right or wrong): reliability is a number, such as MTBF or write cycles, not a boolean
I don't think you can put a binary label on this (right or wrong): reliability is a number, such as MTBF or write cycles, not a boolean
I've experienced a number of file corruptions in various ones, including those inserted in SBCs and not carried around; they all were from reliable brands and never bought online.
This wasn't systematic, that is, I cannot say all SD cards will fail, but I certainly saw a very noticeable increase in reliability when using as system disk eMMC/SSD instead of plain SD cards.
The cheap ones yeah. Get endurance SD cards.
It's scary. Sounds like anyone can replace the os in your phone in 10s and read your browser cookies.
Solved by storage encryption.
Is there really any carrier that still charges for SMS?
I doubt it's free literally anywhere, you'd pay it through taxes if not more directly, but you probably mean that, where you live, it's included (with a fair use policy) with every subscription you can possibly get? That's not the case in any country I've been to, especially if you want a flat EU rate you pay a crapton of money (probably this is easier if you don't have friends and family 20 minutes driving over a border, but also within NL and DE I know many people that pay per minute because they hardly ever call or SMS anyway; probably a majority in fact)
Show me one, just one. I used to have two different Swiss carriers where SMS were free, and now I have the German WINsim, a cheap carrier, where I pay 10€/month and get 15gb, flat phone calls and flat sms. I haven't paid for sms in at least a decade.
Germany: my partner's current subscription from O2 is pay per minute/SMS. Checking the site now, that doesn't seem to be offered anymore, but the price also doubled so renewing would be stupid
Netherlands (the market I'm actually familiar with):
https://www.youfone.nl (virtual provider, cheapest in recent years) Homepage shows 200 minutes/SMS are now forced with every subscription, that's new since I last renewed about two years ago. You used to pay something like 1.5€/month extra if you chose these 200
https://www.odido.nl/mobiel-abonnement/sim-only (budget network, most popular mobile carrier in NL, about 1/3rd of the market) forces to include 120 minutes/SMS
KPN.nl (the K stands for royal; historically state-owned and had the best coverage, now the premium "I want to pay more for nothing" provider) includes unlimited call/SMS with every available subscription apparently. Prepaid would be pay per use, but those offers are even less attractive (I used to have prepaid as an adult because it used to be cheaper and they'd just automatically book a data bundle off the balance and automatically top up the balance from my bank account; but then KPN bought the virtual provider and it became expensive)
https://www.simyo.nl/sim-only/bestellen forces to include 200. They also offer prepaid but not for an attractive price either (which is weird to me: no credit risk, no minutes or SMSes included, but those internet bundles alone cost more than a monthly cancellable subscription that includes a few hundred minutes/SMSes?)
https://www.ben.nl/sim-only forces to include 200
Besides premium KPN, a provider called Simpel (means in Dutch what it sounds like in English) seems to be the only one that includes flat rate minutes/SMS with every possible subscription. There's a few more niche providers but I think these are the well-known ones (besides one that gave me a CAPTCHA to view the website so I closed the tab) and should be comprehensive
So the market changed since I last renewed: more than a hundred SMSes are always required now. TIL
Netherlands (the market I'm actually familiar with):
https://www.youfone.nl (virtual provider, cheapest in recent years) Homepage shows 200 minutes/SMS are now forced with every subscription, that's new since I last renewed about two years ago. You used to pay something like 1.5€/month extra if you chose these 200
https://www.odido.nl/mobiel-abonnement/sim-only (budget network, most popular mobile carrier in NL, about 1/3rd of the market) forces to include 120 minutes/SMS
KPN.nl (the K stands for royal; historically state-owned and had the best coverage, now the premium "I want to pay more for nothing" provider) includes unlimited call/SMS with every available subscription apparently. Prepaid would be pay per use, but those offers are even less attractive (I used to have prepaid as an adult because it used to be cheaper and they'd just automatically book a data bundle off the balance and automatically top up the balance from my bank account; but then KPN bought the virtual provider and it became expensive)
https://www.simyo.nl/sim-only/bestellen forces to include 200. They also offer prepaid but not for an attractive price either (which is weird to me: no credit risk, no minutes or SMSes included, but those internet bundles alone cost more than a monthly cancellable subscription that includes a few hundred minutes/SMSes?)
https://www.ben.nl/sim-only forces to include 200
Besides premium KPN, a provider called Simpel (means in Dutch what it sounds like in English) seems to be the only one that includes flat rate minutes/SMS with every possible subscription. There's a few more niche providers but I think these are the well-known ones (besides one that gave me a CAPTCHA to view the website so I closed the tab) and should be comprehensive
So the market changed since I last renewed: more than a hundred SMSes are always required now. TIL
I haven't turned on my PinePhone in a long time because none of the OSes was usable for more than a week at a time. Maybe I should try postmarketOS again.
Update: tried postmarketOS again and it seems smoother and more stable. Dock works well though the HDMI screen still turns off and back on every few seconds.
> but for me, it failed at... being a phone.
Unfortunately, true for any "pure Linux" phone out there since forever.
I used to have a Nokia N900 and root for it very very much, but the dialer freezing and that infamous kernel bug when lots I/O could make everything sluggish made it a necessity to also carry a feature phone with my primary SIM around, too, just in case.
Unfortunately, true for any "pure Linux" phone out there since forever.
I used to have a Nokia N900 and root for it very very much, but the dialer freezing and that infamous kernel bug when lots I/O could make everything sluggish made it a necessity to also carry a feature phone with my primary SIM around, too, just in case.
>> but for me, it failed at... being a phone.
> Unfortunately, true for any "pure Linux" phone out there since forever.
Not true for Librem 5, which is my daily driver. See also: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-daily-driven-in-profession...
> Unfortunately, true for any "pure Linux" phone out there since forever.
Not true for Librem 5, which is my daily driver. See also: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-daily-driven-in-profession...
Seconding this, my L5 has been a daily driver for almost a year and while their are hiccups it's more than usable day to day. I spend a lot of time on the phone for work.
However, if you have ever tried to cancel your preorder or return it, good luck getting your money back.
N900 was the first one and the product line was immediately killed by Microsoft. Who knows how good it would be now if it was kept alive
I was really hoping for the Astro Slide. Then the fxtex. Both turned out to essentially be a scam. All other "pure Linux" phones out there have hardware that is so laughably bad that I almost take it as a personal insult.
I can recommend droidian or ubuntu touch (uborts.com) and if need (for me it is) use waydroid to run android apps https://docs.waydro.id/usage/install-on-desktops#ubuntu-debi...
I like mine after installing mobian rather than the disaster it shipped with.
Just needed something as good as my old iPhone 6s… but not quite there yet. :-/
Also assumed there’d be new hardware by now. Skipped the Pro, when does a new one come out? Been four years I think, which is worse than shipping a phone ten years out of date at launch.
Just needed something as good as my old iPhone 6s… but not quite there yet. :-/
Also assumed there’d be new hardware by now. Skipped the Pro, when does a new one come out? Been four years I think, which is worse than shipping a phone ten years out of date at launch.
Great writeup. I have only used mine as a fast burner due to extraordinary circumstance- yet my biggest issue by far was simply getting a prepaid card that worked. Lost $200 and about 4 hours of my life trying to sort that out in a hurry. AT&T worked it out.
I wish there were more options for phones with hardware switches like this.
For everyone interested in the whole "Linux on Phones" thing attending FOSDEM, make sure to check out the dev room schedule [0] and relevant stands [1].
[0]: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/foss-on-mobile-device...
[1]: https://fosdem.org/2024/stands/
[0]: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/foss-on-mobile-device...
[1]: https://fosdem.org/2024/stands/
Honestly there are so many "pinephone is great" reviews out there, and they just cannot be truthful. They are always along the lines of "yeah it is great but actually it was not my daily driver because nothing works".
The pinephone would be great in comparison to a Nokia 3310. Everything that came after, even the i models with Bluetooth, would be better daily drivers than anything running on the pinephone. The bluetooth disconnects alone make me throw this thing into the trashbox, because my 5$ usb mp3 flash stick can handle that better these days.
This includes SXMO, phosh, and all the rust weekend projects that nobody cares about.
We don't need type safety, we don't need GTK or QT, we don't need X on mobile.
These are all outdated ways of thinking about what a mobile computer can do, it's ridiculous that you have to even mention it.
There was a reason Android 2.3 moved away from anything related to X at the time. And the reason was: OpenGLES.
Nothing in the tech stack that GNOME and KDE provides is made for a quick and efficient shader pipeline, let alone a compositor that can be programmed/influenced from userspace.
Just use ANGLE and get over your damned opinions about how you can do it better.
If the pinephone had boot2chromium or sth like boot2electron, it probably would be a million times less sluggish.
Nobody needs an SSH toy terminal that they cannot exit if it cannot render a special character and crashes, because the process management has a single UI thread.
If I cannot make a phone call and cannot use WhatsApp on a phone in 2024, it's utterly useless and can only be described as an expensive brick.
I get that it's not the hardware, but the software folks seem to be busy reinventing their own opinions about how to do things without even looking for the reasons why thousands of devs before them with decades more experience might have a point.
Linux on the phone will fail as long as this cultural problem of "not invented here so I can do it better" isn't fixed.
The pinephone would be great in comparison to a Nokia 3310. Everything that came after, even the i models with Bluetooth, would be better daily drivers than anything running on the pinephone. The bluetooth disconnects alone make me throw this thing into the trashbox, because my 5$ usb mp3 flash stick can handle that better these days.
This includes SXMO, phosh, and all the rust weekend projects that nobody cares about.
We don't need type safety, we don't need GTK or QT, we don't need X on mobile.
These are all outdated ways of thinking about what a mobile computer can do, it's ridiculous that you have to even mention it.
There was a reason Android 2.3 moved away from anything related to X at the time. And the reason was: OpenGLES.
Nothing in the tech stack that GNOME and KDE provides is made for a quick and efficient shader pipeline, let alone a compositor that can be programmed/influenced from userspace.
Just use ANGLE and get over your damned opinions about how you can do it better.
If the pinephone had boot2chromium or sth like boot2electron, it probably would be a million times less sluggish.
Nobody needs an SSH toy terminal that they cannot exit if it cannot render a special character and crashes, because the process management has a single UI thread.
If I cannot make a phone call and cannot use WhatsApp on a phone in 2024, it's utterly useless and can only be described as an expensive brick.
I get that it's not the hardware, but the software folks seem to be busy reinventing their own opinions about how to do things without even looking for the reasons why thousands of devs before them with decades more experience might have a point.
Linux on the phone will fail as long as this cultural problem of "not invented here so I can do it better" isn't fixed.
I don't think any famous Linux mobile these days use X?
Most of them are just wayland compositors. iirc GTKv4 is fully hardware accelerated. Everything/Most of the apps on KDE mobile side uses QtQuick/QML/Kirigami etc.. which is 100% GPU accelerated. Even my Ubuntu touch experience was lot more fluid than anything Android had to offer at the time on the same handset.
> If the pinephone had boot2chromium or sth like boot2electron, it probably would be a million times less sluggish.
The sluggishness of pinephone, i think, is probably due to slower sdcards (most of them tend to dual boot using an sdcard) and dated hardware for the kind of animated UI people expect these days.
There is still boot2gecko/firefox os/whatever they call it these days.
> If the pinephone had boot2chromium or sth like boot2electron, it probably would be a million times less sluggish.
The sluggishness of pinephone, i think, is probably due to slower sdcards (most of them tend to dual boot using an sdcard) and dated hardware for the kind of animated UI people expect these days.
There is still boot2gecko/firefox os/whatever they call it these days.
> If I cannot make a phone call, and cannot use WhatsApp on a phone in 2024, it's utterly useless and can only be described as an expensive brick.
Different people care about different things. I've never used WhatsApp in my life.
> Nobody needs an SSH toy terminal that they cannot exit if it cannot render a special character and crashes, because the process management has a single UI thread.
Er, is that a thing that can happen? I can't see any reason the software would be any less robust just because it's on a phone.
In general, it sounds like you're arguing the view that if everyone just reinvented the wheel your way it'd work, but most of those decisions were made for a reason; generally, either for software compatibility, or because just reimplementing Android seems like a questionable value proposition. (And also the usual thing that it's almost all volunteers, so the choice isn't diversity or uniformity, it's diversity or nothing.)
Different people care about different things. I've never used WhatsApp in my life.
> Nobody needs an SSH toy terminal that they cannot exit if it cannot render a special character and crashes, because the process management has a single UI thread.
Er, is that a thing that can happen? I can't see any reason the software would be any less robust just because it's on a phone.
In general, it sounds like you're arguing the view that if everyone just reinvented the wheel your way it'd work, but most of those decisions were made for a reason; generally, either for software compatibility, or because just reimplementing Android seems like a questionable value proposition. (And also the usual thing that it's almost all volunteers, so the choice isn't diversity or uniformity, it's diversity or nothing.)
> Honestly there are so many "pinephone is great" reviews out there
The only one I recall is "I love my PinePhone" (published last year I think). Most of reviews I've seen is variations on "interesting, but not there yet", usually with high expectations, if not outright complaints.
> The bluetooth disconnects alone make me throw this thing into the trashbox
Haven't used bluetooth on PinePhone much, but for comparison, my previous iPhone 12 Pro (a "flagship" at the time) had tons of bluetooth issues and disconnects and worked terribly with in-car speaker. YMMV.
> If I cannot make a phone call and cannot use WhatsApp on a phone in 2024, it's utterly useless and can only be described as an expensive brick.
While I agree about phone calls, WhatsApps's availability has nothing to do with PinePhone or Linux. I heard it runs through Waydroid fairly well. I bridge WhatsApp to my Matrix server and chat through Fractal.
> Linux on the phone will fail as long as this cultural problem of "not invented here so I can do it better" isn't fixed.
From what you wrote above it, that is also exactly why Android succeeded, going their own way instead of using what existed before.
The only one I recall is "I love my PinePhone" (published last year I think). Most of reviews I've seen is variations on "interesting, but not there yet", usually with high expectations, if not outright complaints.
> The bluetooth disconnects alone make me throw this thing into the trashbox
Haven't used bluetooth on PinePhone much, but for comparison, my previous iPhone 12 Pro (a "flagship" at the time) had tons of bluetooth issues and disconnects and worked terribly with in-car speaker. YMMV.
> If I cannot make a phone call and cannot use WhatsApp on a phone in 2024, it's utterly useless and can only be described as an expensive brick.
While I agree about phone calls, WhatsApps's availability has nothing to do with PinePhone or Linux. I heard it runs through Waydroid fairly well. I bridge WhatsApp to my Matrix server and chat through Fractal.
> Linux on the phone will fail as long as this cultural problem of "not invented here so I can do it better" isn't fixed.
From what you wrote above it, that is also exactly why Android succeeded, going their own way instead of using what existed before.
Sounds like you haven’t used it in a long time, so many details wrong in your post.
Things like the PinePhone and the Librem 5 are cool on paper but if you can’t use it reliably as a phone, it can’t reliably work in standby, the camera sucks, the battery life is anemic, notifications suck, you can’t stream music from it, and the best thing you can say is “I can ssh into it,” which is cool for sure but I can do that (albeit with limitations) using iSH on iOS and is possible to enable on a number of Android distros.
And I fully understand that that isn’t the point. The point is the hard work that has gone into this and the selective-amounts of “freedom” (if we convince ourselves that the modems and firmware in these things being absolutely not free software or open doesn’t to a certain extent obviate the entire thought experiment) you get versus another platform. I get it. I’m glad people are working on this stuff and having fun.
And at $200, the Pine Phone is at least cheap enough to try out as a toy if you’re into that kind of thing (I think I’d rather jailbreak an older iPhone or use a modified Android device running an alt-OS, but that’s me). The Librem 5 is either $1000 or $2000 depending on what option you get, and that is to me, only for people who either enjoy setting their money on fire or who have been brainwashed by the marketing that it can do what it cannot do for 99.99999% of the population.
I dunno. I don’t like being a hater but I don’t see the real point of having a mobile phone that isn’t a usable phone and that is really only usable if plugged into power all the time and used as a stationary mini computer (and thus, no longer mobile), of which a person could build something much more powerful using a Raspberry Pi or other single-board computer or a used NUC.
And I fully understand that that isn’t the point. The point is the hard work that has gone into this and the selective-amounts of “freedom” (if we convince ourselves that the modems and firmware in these things being absolutely not free software or open doesn’t to a certain extent obviate the entire thought experiment) you get versus another platform. I get it. I’m glad people are working on this stuff and having fun.
And at $200, the Pine Phone is at least cheap enough to try out as a toy if you’re into that kind of thing (I think I’d rather jailbreak an older iPhone or use a modified Android device running an alt-OS, but that’s me). The Librem 5 is either $1000 or $2000 depending on what option you get, and that is to me, only for people who either enjoy setting their money on fire or who have been brainwashed by the marketing that it can do what it cannot do for 99.99999% of the population.
I dunno. I don’t like being a hater but I don’t see the real point of having a mobile phone that isn’t a usable phone and that is really only usable if plugged into power all the time and used as a stationary mini computer (and thus, no longer mobile), of which a person could build something much more powerful using a Raspberry Pi or other single-board computer or a used NUC.
> The Librem 5 is […] only for people who either enjoy setting their money on fire or who have been brainwashed by the marketing
Mind that a huge chunk of the $1000 price point is due to cost of mobile-friendly userspace development (e.g. phosh, phoc, libhandy, libadwaita), driver development, and mainlining drivers.
Paying for this is absolutely justified because it’s important work, and it benefits the mobile Linux community as a whole, not just L5 owners.
Mind that a huge chunk of the $1000 price point is due to cost of mobile-friendly userspace development (e.g. phosh, phoc, libhandy, libadwaita), driver development, and mainlining drivers.
Paying for this is absolutely justified because it’s important work, and it benefits the mobile Linux community as a whole, not just L5 owners.
Mine is still sitting in a drawer. I take it out twice a year to update it and see if the lock screen (a static image with a text field) still lags and misses inputs