[HN Gopher] Librem 5 Evergreen vs. PinePhone (Part 2)
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Librem 5 Evergreen vs. PinePhone (Part 2)
Author : ThatGeoGuy
Score : 113 points
Date : 2021-06-23 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thatgeoguy.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thatgeoguy.ca)
| mastrsushi wrote:
| GTK and QT on the smartphone is just reseting history. Please
| don't use software that wad conceived for desktops with 2010 era
| mobile support. Developers aren't using GUI toolkits anymore like
| it's the 90's. Flutter, Electron, React Native, embedded layout
| engines that ease portability abd productivity. That's where
| things are at right now.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Developers aren't using GUI toolkits anymore like it's the
| 90's
|
| On the contrary, Gtk and libhandy have excellent usability on
| phones and make applications that can run seamlessly on phones
| and desktops.
|
| > Flutter, Electron, React Native
|
| I'm not touching any of these with a stick. There no
| justification for demanding to run a web browser when a native
| application would do.
| swebs wrote:
| >Electron
|
| You're really overestimating the Pinephone's hardware. Firefox
| takes about 10 seconds to open.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Yeah I want to use inefficient frameworks on top of a 10 year
| old hardware that barely works with even GTK and QT..
| jacobmischka wrote:
| This post inspired me to finally unbox the PinePhone Beta Edition
| I've had sitting on my desk for a couple months, thanks! Now just
| waiting for a microSD card to arrive, I didn't have any laying
| around sadly.
| linmob wrote:
| Regarding the articles complaint about not being able to use
| Flatpak on Manjaro Plasma Mobile: You totally can, it works with
| Discover, it's just not enabled by default.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| I figured it was something like this, but it was far less
| obvious than the `gnome-software-plugin-flatpak` package that
| kind of set everything up for me.
|
| Is there documentation anywhere I can reference?
| linmob wrote:
| Aside from the generic documentation on Flathub I am not
| aware of any. That said, on recent Manjaro Plasma Mobile
| Betas it was simply enabled by default.
| redthrow wrote:
| Unless what's discussed in the Anbox section of the article (how
| to run apps that people came to depend on, such as
| WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal) is properly addressed, most people
| wouldn't even consider one of those phones.
|
| We should remember that the late Blackberry phones did have
| Android app compatibility and still failed. Librem and PinePhone
| are not even at the starting point yet, which is unfortunate.
| twiclo wrote:
| This is the same "Well linux doesn't run my program" argument
| windows users make about switching to linux. The appeal isn't
| that it's a platform that I can twist into Android it's that
| it's Linux and it does things the right way.
|
| Blackberry didn't have an amazing OS to hold it up. That's why
| it failed
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Signal on the Librem 5/PinePhone is already usable through one
| client (Axolotl), with possibly more clients on the way - the
| Signal devs still don't publicly endorse third-party clients,
| but they have softened their stance and even quietly helped
| some other projects. So, a working Anbox isn't seen as a must-
| have for Signal.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Good to hear. But I still use Venmo, Slack, Zoom,
| iNaturalist, and my bank app. Along with plenty of open
| source android apps that I will pretend can be automagically
| ported or reimplemented.
| vesche wrote:
| > ... this is all somewhat biased since if this was 2009 both of
| these phones would seem as if they're the future. On the other
| hand it isn't 2009 anymore, and these phones are here today.
|
| This is interesting and something I hadn't thought about. I have
| a PinePhone that I've been hacking around on for the past few
| months. If I had this phone a decade ago I would have been over
| the moon. I'd really like to make it my daily driver, but I
| simply can't because of the experience I'm now accustomed to on
| modern smartphones. My future of being a happy hacker with a
| fully open-source Linux smartphone in my pocket still seems a few
| years away, but the future is bright.
| bisby wrote:
| Same here. Ive tried a few different pinephone OSes and it's
| just not quite there.
|
| For my android phone, i use password manager, 2fa, camera,
| reddit, a few random time killer games/apps (specifics dont
| matter as long as I can kill time). My on-call pager doenst
| NEED an app, since they will text/call me. But I have poor
| reception in my house so I need wifi calling (not available on
| pinephone).
|
| All the bitwarden apps Ive found are either hardcoded to use
| the official bitwarden (cant change to my personal server), or
| are terribly slow webapps. And then auto complete isn't an
| option.
|
| I could absolutely make most of these things work, but
| inevitably i need to carry my other phone with me because of
| the camera. Which feels like the real deal breaker for me. The
| pinephone camera is great for documenting things and passing
| information, but its not really great for capturing memories
| and moments. My bitwarden experience is disappointing in the
| moment, but grainy, bad photos are disappointing in perpetuity.
|
| Get me a quality camera and I would begrudgingly use a worse
| reddit app or the mobile site. But until then, I'm stuck.
| TylerE wrote:
| Useable Linux just a few years away... since 1996
| TheFreim wrote:
| What do you mean?
| vesche wrote:
| I'm unsure what you mean by this. Android is based on Linux.
| The web runs on Linux. Hell, the thermostat in your house
| probably runs Linux. I've been using Linux on my laptop I do
| all my professional work on for many years. I'm responding to
| your comment right now on that Linux laptop.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Linux is an implementation detail on Android, nothing that
| makes Linux is part of the stable APIs contract, in a
| couple of years ART will be running on Zirkon and only OEMs
| and people that root their phones will notice.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Linux the kernel. Not GNU/Linux+whatever typical userspace
| distro.
| kazinator wrote:
| And not Linux, the kernel.org kernel, either.
|
| Linux, the bastardized Android kernel, with thousands and
| thousands of dubious non-upstreamed patches.
| pjmlp wrote:
| At least it is more safer by default than any Linux
| distribution, and does have a proper driver ABI.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| To be fair, hardware vendors are forking the kernel, not
| Android (as much). The AOSP is very close to mainline
| Linux, with some config knobs turned differently.
| machello13 wrote:
| Android is based on Linux but isn't what anyone means when
| they talk about Linux. Plenty of stuff runs on Linux but
| the comment you're replying to mentioned usability
| specifically. Do you think Linux's general usability (i.e.,
| not for you specifically, but for the average computer
| user) is on par with other OSes?
| swebs wrote:
| >Do you think Linux's general usability (i.e., not for
| you specifically, but for the average computer user) is
| on par with other OSes?
|
| Yes. It is orders of magnitude more usable than Windows
| 10 at least, which is awful. I haven't used OSX in a few
| years, but there were always some annoyances about
| maximizing windows, having to jump through hoops to
| install programs from the internet, or having to restart
| after updates.
|
| I would very much like to see a user study of new
| computer users trying out Ubuntu, Windows 10, and Mac OS
| for the first time.
| fsflover wrote:
| Replaced Windows 10 with Debian for my relatives, and
| they are quite happy. Problems with GNU/Linux occur when
| (1) you need to use a Windows-only app, or (2) you have
| incompatible hardware (typically designed for Windows).
| wiz21c wrote:
| I second that. My family runs on Debian/KDE and evrybody
| is happy. Now to be honest, 99% of their computing stuff
| (ie tiktok, instagram, youtube) is done with a tablet).
| But for the rest (occasioanl browsing, text editing,...),
| it works perfectly.
|
| Except for one or two bugs (mainly, using kde with
| several user sessions sometimes fails and one grub update
| that failed (but my setup has multiple drives and
| partitions)), they can handle it themselves.
|
| But there are some things Linux has that makes it much
| better imho :
|
| - only security updates (I run Debian stable), so you're
| not constantly reminded of rebooting your computer -
| you're not constantly pushed to install this or that -
| you don't have notifications about useless stuff -
| applications , while admittedly scarcer, don't install
| stuff all other the place (more notifications) and behave
| well - when I update Debian I don't have to update my
| computer - endless support for some hardware (got a
| scanner for 20 years now, doesn't work anymore on Windows
| 'cos the drivers don't exist anymore)
|
| For me it leads to a much quieter work environment and
| that counts a lot.
|
| But sure, it's less polished than Windows or IOS. But,
| well, while "being in control" was a political stance for
| me 20 years ago, now it just feel so much better.
|
| Sometimes I compare my Linux to TV : it's much better
| when you can watch it without the commercials.
| jkepler wrote:
| A year ago with work-from-home, my father who's near
| retirement began using LinuxMint on an old laptop for his
| work, and other than initial unfamiliarity with a few
| programs, no problems. He's not at all a geek, nor very
| adept at computers, so I'm so glad he's using an OS that
| just works for his straightforward web and word-
| processing needs.
| EricE wrote:
| These phones aren't widely available - just look at several
| of the comments in this story comment.
|
| At the risk of putting words in the OPs post, such comments
| usually refer to linux on the desktop or other general
| purpose computing devices (also like the phones being
| discussed here), not server, embedded or other non-general
| purpose computing uses.
| waiseristy wrote:
| Phones in 2009 worked though. You could buy an iPhone or
| Android and be confident that you could send a text, or make a
| phone call, or set an alarm and rely on it to wake you up in
| the morning.
|
| I wouldn't trust my PinePhone to do any of that, I don't even
| trust it to reliably boot. I have a feeling mobile is a moving
| target that FOSS won't ever be able to catch up with. I think
| we enjoy quality FOSS desktop hardware because the platform is
| so stable.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| What I really really want is a Linux phone with a physical
| keyboard like the the Nokia N900. Is this too niche?
| jkepler wrote:
| I'm still a bit bummed the Neo900 never happened.
|
| I think I read somewhere that once a year Google does free PCB
| prints if the board designs are free/libre design. If that's
| true (source, anyone?) does anyone who reads board schematics
| know of neo900 did enough design to print the new boards and 3D
| print the spacer to upgrade old N900s?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| https://gitlab.com/neo900/ee-full
| goda90 wrote:
| This one claims to support Ubuntu Touch. Not sure how good that
| support really is: https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
| kop316 wrote:
| https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=13684
|
| They are making a keyboard for the Pinephone.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
|
| I haven't used this, but it's on my list of things to watch. I
| dearly miss my Droid 4 phone because of the physical keyboard,
| however it was always just too sluggish to put to real use.
| okanat wrote:
| I don't understand why these companies continuously try to return
| an older way of doing consumer computing. Even if they manage to
| get a foothold, the old way we do write applications is very
| insecure for devices that we use for two-factor authentication
| for many things including bank accounts.
|
| As if the AOSP is closed source, they are trying to write these
| "open-source" operating systems. The reality is the Linux desktop
| software stack is really broken and extremely challenging for
| creating a platform out of. The way of "trust software it will
| never do harm" mentality in desktop computing is also archaic and
| insecure. There is no way to make Linux desktop stack secure
| without writing everything above the kernel from scratch as
| Android did. Some modifications even in kernel is needed.
|
| The Linux software ecosystem is also broken. There is no way to
| release software that works in every distribution (don't tell me
| about Flatpak it is a distribution of its own, you don't install
| containerized Android or iOS on your phone, just to run
| applications). So the first step should be unionizing the Linux
| infrastructure.
|
| They also refuse the actual improvements in the Linux ecosystem.
| systemd is probably the best thing that has been released in the
| last decade. It has many benefits for actual consumer use cases
| where the dynamic nature of various services and hardware most
| prominent and where systemd can actually help power saving. One
| of the most prominent projects, PostmarketOS, doesn't even use
| systemd.
|
| They have claims about privacy but they still cling to the old
| non-isolating operating systems. They don't use already existing
| and open source AOSP infrastructure. I really don't think they
| have an actual use case outside extreme Linux enthusiasts, and I
| cannot take them seriously when they talk about privacy. You have
| no privacy if your insurance app has access to your browser
| history.
| caboteria wrote:
| I'm looking forward to someday trying a Librem 5 but it's been 4
| years since I backed the campaign and now I've been told that it
| will be at least October before mine ships. If anyone else is
| interested in the state of the art of Linux phones it looks like
| PinePhone is your only choice right now.
| canada_dry wrote:
| > it's been 4 years since I backed the campaign
|
| For comparison Bunnie's Precursor [i] (FPGA RISC-V mobile) is
| slated for ~2yrs of development, and he's someone who has the
| connections and know-how to trim the delivery schedule as much
| as possible.
|
| [i] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Meta: with JavaScript disabled (or if it fails to load), your
| <code> elements are very badly styled because of the highlighter-
| rouge class on them, which per monokai.css makes them `display:
| block` (and other related styles designed only for blocks of
| code, not inline code). When the JavaScript runs, the rouge
| highlighting is _undone_ by
| https://thatgeoguy.ca/js/prettifyCode.js, which clobbers the
| class attribute, seemingly by accident (the comment says it's
| adding, but it's replacing instead) or incomplete modification...
| thereby apparently inadvertently fixing the problem!
|
| The ideal solution is probably either removing the rouge
| highlighter from inline code elements, or shuffling the only-for-
| blocks .highlighter-rouge styles in monokai.css to a new rule
| div.highlighter-rouge, since they're not suitable for inline code
| elements.
|
| (I'm mentioning this here because the author is actively involved
| in the thread and thus there's a reasonable chance of it being
| fixed.)
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| Thanks for the tip!
|
| I'm not a web developer by trade, so this is good advice and
| something I never looked into. Thanks for the heads up, I'll
| have to block Javascript and see if I can get it working. I
| might be able to remove the prettify stuff entirely.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| The funny thing there is that prettifyCode.js looks to be
| attempting to set the scene for a client-side highlighter,
| but no such highlighter is then used. And you've already got
| server-side highlighting happening.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| Yeah, this is very likely an artefact of switching my blog
| from Django to Jekyll years ago, and then adopting rouge
| years after that. I definitely would like to use less JS on
| my website, and like you said, I already have server-side
| highlighting.
| [deleted]
| patrakov wrote:
| The article says: "As for encryption on the Pinephone, the only
| OS that currently makes it easy to enable is PostmarketOS". And
| this is false, as there is also an easy-to-use installer for Arch
| Linux ARM with full disk encryption:
| https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/archarm-mobile-fde-ins...
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| While I grant this is easier than some of the other options
| (e.g. encrypting data folder in Ubuntu Touch), I don't think
| this fit what I meant by "easy" (which included graphical
| steps, and didn't require anything separate from the phone
| itself during installation).
|
| Nonetheless, I do appreciate the community forming around this.
| For a long time in 2020 it felt like encryption was going to be
| a "when we get to it" task, so it's good to see more things
| popping up.
|
| Disclaimer: FWIW the closest I ever got to Arch proper was
| Manjaro, so I definitely didn't do an exhaustive search of
| every distro.
| kop316 wrote:
| I know at least Mobian uses a version of the pmOS installer
| (and that is what I think the Librem 5 will be using for
| their installer too). But Mobian does have FDE from a
| graphical installer as an option.
| ajklsdhfniuwehf wrote:
| > I don't care much for a keyboard case with the Pinephone, but I
| am very excited to see how the wireless charging case performs.
|
| I quit reading the article then and there! Bah!
| glglwty wrote:
| I find it unsettling that people make purchase recommendations
| solely based on the merit of the phones given purism contributed
| more patches to the Linux phone ecosystem.
| Taek wrote:
| At the end of the day, I need a phone that fulfills its
| function as a phone. 3 hours of screen-off battery life just
| isn't viable for my lifestyle.
|
| I'm here to support the ecosystem but it needs to start from a
| place of actually being a part of my real life.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| The battery life mentioned in the post is surprisingly low
| (see my other comment above), but you're misrepresenting it
| quite drastically. The post talks about the battery being at
| 60% after 3 hours of screen-off idling, not "3 hours of
| screen-off battery life".
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| I don't think that's necessarily correct. You can't even order
| a Librem 5 if you want it right now because of silicon
| shortages. You can purchase a Pinephone. Ignoring that, the
| price differential is insane (and I doubt people who would
| consider the Librem 5 USA are really saying "yes" or "no" based
| solely on the merit of the phone).
|
| I think it's one thing to recognize that Purism is providing
| patches, but that doesn't translate to a device people can and
| want to purchase.
| fsflover wrote:
| > the price differential is insane
|
| You seem to be missing the point of Librem 5:
| https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-
| wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
|
| > You can't even order a Librem 5 if you want it right now
|
| But you can order it to support the company and you will get
| it with a delay.
|
| > but that doesn't translate to a device people can and want
| to purchase
|
| The queue for Librem 5 phones is huge considering Purism does
| not really deliver, so I disagree.
| Vinnl wrote:
| To add to that, it's mostly concerning because if Purism
| wouldn't be funding the development, who would? I'm hoping
| they'll be able to recoup and keep up their investment.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| From the conclusion of this article:
|
| > In fact, while I've been generally impressed with the pace of
| improvements from all over I think that there are still some
| critical areas where the phones fall short. For the Librem 5, the
| battery life and thermals are definitely this device's Achilles
| heel. For the Pinephone, I think the weakness of some of the
| hardware is problematic and isn't something that most people
| would want to put up with.
|
| It seems like hardware is the big gap here. It must be tough to
| innovate on hardware with low-volume niche devices, creating a
| chicken and egg dilemma for adoption. Are there any realistic
| options for these two phones to have more regular/modern
| iterations of their hardware? Perhaps a partnership with some
| existing manufacturer that is struggling for relevance in the
| phone space like LG or Motorola?
| EricE wrote:
| Don't discount software optimization. For example, Apple has
| extensive software optimization that works hand in hand with
| their hardware optimizations to deliver battery life and
| control thermals. I'm sure Google does similar things for
| Android too.
|
| There is more to having a successful mobile device than just
| dropping a formerly optimized for desktop OS on them.
| kaba0 wrote:
| There is no amount of software optimization that will make
| the Pinephone smooth. It is unfortunately really that bad
| hardware-wise.
| fleg wrote:
| I disagree. SailfishOS is really smooth there, what proves
| that it is doable. Ubuntu Touch isn't half bad either.
| fsflover wrote:
| Here is a demo suggesting otherwise:
| https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Yeah with an 80s GUI that can be software rendered..
| m4rtink wrote:
| >Perhaps a partnership with some existing manufacturer that is
| struggling for relevance in the phone space like LG or
| Motorola?
|
| This is kinda what Jolla did with the Sailfish X program - they
| periodically choose one of the mid-range Sony Xperia devices
| that are part of the Sony open device program, then port
| Sailfish OS (a pretty nice mobile Linux distro) on it and sell
| licenses to people.
|
| It's not a partnership per se, rather a symbiosis, but has been
| working like this for years. Also nice that they support the
| devices long after official support for the original Android
| firmware has ended. :)
|
| For more see:
|
| https://shop.jolla.com/
|
| https://sailfishos.org/
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS
| CameronNemo wrote:
| LG has completely given up on phones.
|
| Plus you are focused on the wrong part of the stack. Pine and
| Librem are acceptable device manufacturers. They just need
| better SoCs / better software support for existing SoCs. Think
| Samsung Exynos, Rockchip, Mediatek.
| rjsw wrote:
| Pine64 is using Rockchip SoCs in other products. In the past
| they have done SBCs with a SoC before putting it in more
| challenging designs like the tablet and phone, maybe there
| will be a RK3566 phone at some point.
| blihp wrote:
| It's too small a market for even mid-sized manufacturers to
| care about. Even if they did, the major SoC vendors aren't open
| enough currently ( _the_ major limiting factor) to make this
| viable. So for the time being, we 're limited to small device
| runs that iterate infrequently based on low-end and often older
| SoCs.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Perhaps a partnership with some existing manufacturer that is
| struggling for relevance in the phone space like LG or
| Motorola?
|
| Not sure about the Pinephone, but Purism explained that they
| were searching for hardware allowing 100% FLOSS. i.MX 8M Quad
| SoC worked for that: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/. No
| other mainstream manufacturer is interested in that.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| Author here: a lot of the FOSS stack can run on Android-based
| phones today!
|
| I think the hardware is a limiting factor, but part of what
| makes these devices unique (as other commenters have pointed
| out) is that they can run with minimal proprietary blobs. I
| don't believe either phone is at "no blobs" yet, since even
| Purism had to have blobs for the Baseband and Wifi (I think, or
| maybe it was just Wifi?). Nevertheless, Ubuntu Touch does work
| on Android devices today, and I think even PostmarketOS has
| some adoption on OnePlus 6/6T.
|
| Overall though, I'd say that power isn't really the big thing.
| I think existing software has shown that you really don't need
| a lot of compute to be able to run apps smoothly on these
| phones (Morph browser, many GTK apps on the Librem 5). Battery
| life remains a concern with these devices, but that seems to
| improve bit by bit over time (at least, the Pinephone does. Not
| sure what is up with my Librem).
|
| I think getting a partnership would be doubly tricky though,
| because a lot of the market just doesn't want these phones to
| begin with, and struggling companies are unlikely to attempt to
| explore mobile Linux unless they know it'll turn their ship
| around. Maybe if they get banned from using Android somehow
| (much like Huawei was), but even then I can't say I'm sure that
| Linux is appealing for companies in that scenario.
| fsflover wrote:
| > even Purism had to have blobs for the Baseband and Wifi (I
| think, or maybe it was just Wifi?)
|
| Baseband and Wifi both run blobs, but not on the main CPU and
| not from the userspace. As a result, the phone is the only
| one recommended by the FSF:
| https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v11/.
|
| > Not sure what is up with my Librem
|
| Librem 5 does not have suspend-to-RAM yet:
| https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-
| wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > Librem 5 does not have suspend-to-RAM yet
|
| Stuff like the above-mentioned N900 could reach weeks of
| uptime without any suspend-to-RAM (and at least a couple
| days with wifi on). There is something definitely wrong
| here.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Is blobless a good thing? They still run closed firmware, and
| on top of that these will never even get updated.
| ajklsdhfniuwehf wrote:
| how about not giving in to either? You know, some people
| like not not throw the baby with the water.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| All these blobs can get easily updated/replaced by the user
| without having to hack the hardware in any way. For some
| reason there's a lot of FUD going on around that issue.
| omginternets wrote:
| Tangential question for HN: what is the absolute lowest-level
| access one can reasonably expect to get to an old Android phone?
|
| I ask because I'm not clear on the architecture of smartphones,
| which makes it hard to spot opportunities for creatively hacking
| them. As I understand it, there are at least two OS-like layers:
| a "baseband" that IIUC is responsible for controlling the radio
| hardware, and an OS that sits atop to provide
| applications/display/touchscreen-controls/etc.
|
| I'm aware of projects like PostmarketOS, but these seem to be a
| replacement for the OS. Is there any equivalent for the baseband?
| I have an old OnePlus One and would love to have access to some
| sort of low-level radio API that would let me
| generate/modulate/transmit/receive/etc radio signals.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Is there any equivalent for the baseband?
|
| For Pinephone, there is something:
| https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11815
| ac29 wrote:
| That appears to just be an updated version of the vendor's
| closed binaries for the modem. It doesn't seem to be open or
| possible to modify in any meaningful way.
| omginternets wrote:
| I gather that "firmware" is generally what provides the
| baseband services?
|
| Sorry, the phone world is still very foreign to me. I realize
| these questions may sound silly, but I'm slowly piecing all
| of this together.
| fsflover wrote:
| Pinephone modem runs its own OS inside. So if you have a
| Pinephone, you run two Linux'es at the same time: normal OS
| and the one on the modem. The core of modem responsible for
| the actual connections to the towers is closed though
| AFAIK.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| That "firmware" which is being replaced by open equivalent
| is a GNU/Linux system prepared by Quectel running on the
| modem itself and providing services like AT command or
| audio routing daemons. The actual baseband-y stuff is done
| in Qualcomm's DSPs which stay as closed as ever.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I'm not sure whether everything is right there regarding that
| Librem 5 unit - 40% of the battery eaten in 3 hours with screen
| off is way faster than what I see here on my phones (disclaimer:
| I work for Purism). None of my phones also get as hot as
| described, so that may be related. I'd be interested in seeing
| power consumption data (`tail -n+0
| /sys/class/power_supply/*/uevent`) and thermal data (`gthcli`) in
| various idle states from that unit. I haven't done any exact
| battery tests recently, but from my experience I can easily reach
| screen off time of more than 10-15 hours and screen on time of
| 5-6 hours depending on what stays on, and the phone usually stays
| cool unless I leave it in bed under a blanket at which point it
| can get pretty hot after a few hours (but still not burning to
| touch).
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Also just a simple top command to see if some process is
| spinning.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! I would love to be able to get 10-15 hour
| screen-off time on my Librem 5.
|
| With regards to thermals, my writing may have been a bit
| unclear. The thermal issue was definitely only during my one
| trip, when it was in the car with me and had been charging +
| running for a couple hours of driving. There was sunlight but
| it wasn't in direct sunlight. I suspect charging + running
| (music) + ambient heat was part of the problem, but I've never
| had a phone be that hot even on a long drive like that. I've
| been fairly careful otherwise to not place it in direct
| sunlight, mostly because I'm afraid the heat will damage the
| battery in some way.
|
| As for the battery, I'll have to do some digging there,
| although I can't get to that today. Those are great tips to
| look into though, thanks for posting them. I'll note that I
| haven't tested the latest kernel, so if any patches have gone
| into the Librem 5 regarding power in the last three weeks, I
| probably wasn't able to quantify that!
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I don't think that this alone can explain the difference
| we're seeing, but one thing that comes to my mind is the
| power consumption of the WiFi module. If you're in position
| to be able to use 2.4GHz networks instead of 5GHz ones, that
| should bring power consumption down a bit. One more thing to
| try may also be WiFi power saving - it's not enabled by
| default yet since our testing has shown that it can cause
| troubles and significantly limit the bandwidth with some
| access points, but you may want to try checking if you're
| lucky enough to be able to use it already: `sudo iw dev wlan0
| set power_save on`
| kop316 wrote:
| > I'm not testing voice, SMS, or MMS here. As far as I've heard
| from other sources, calls and SMS seem to be in working order.
| MMSd has (from what I've gathered, at least) been a large focus
| for many projects in the last six months. I try my best not to
| use MMS whenever possible, so I'm certainly a poor source of
| information if that's a blocker for you to adopt one of these two
| devices.
|
| In case anyone is curious about the state of Calls/MMS/SMS on the
| Pinephone/Librem 5 (keep in mind this is very Phosh/SXMO centric,
| so YMMV for KDE/Ubuntu Touch):
|
| - Calls work fine, but (on the Phosh stack) there is no way to
| get a notification about getting a voicemail. There is some work
| on getting Visual Voicemail to work (T-Mobile USA isn't a
| problem, but other's may require some tinkering with to figure
| out).
|
| - SMS works fine on the Phosh stack (and most distros to my
| knowledge)
|
| - MMS is supported from a backend perspective (through mmsd-tng,
| which I assume the author is referring to), but, to my knowledge,
| no chat application (i.e. Chatty on Phosh, KDE, SXMO, etc)
| supports it. There has been work to get the Phosh stack (i.e.
| Chatty) to support MMS, and I am hoping that can be completed
| sooner than later (the remaining work for chatty is UI
| integration). I think there is work to also get front end support
| for MMS into SXMO (at least the person who is working on it has
| bugged me a few times to ask how to integrate with mmsd-tng), and
| to my knowledge, there is no work on it in KDE.
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