[HN Gopher] PinePhone review after a month of daily driving
___________________________________________________________________
PinePhone review after a month of daily driving
Author : yaky
Score : 91 points
Date : 2024-01-26 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (yaky.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (yaky.dev)
| Aachen wrote:
| > 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
| jsheard wrote:
| > 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.
| Aachen wrote:
| 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)
| jsheard wrote:
| 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.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| 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.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > That's really cool actually!
|
| It's cool but it's wrong: SD cards are unreliable.
| zilti wrote:
| Is there really any carrier that still charges for SMS?
| d--b wrote:
| > 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.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >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.
| okanat wrote:
| 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.
| bhpm wrote:
| So what is the bar for being a "great mobile Linux device" if it
| doesn't include "reliably making phone calls"?
| tekla wrote:
| 1) Boots 2) Doesn't immediately crash.
|
| My Pinephone seems to still have an issue with crashing
| randomly all the time.
| linmob wrote:
| I think it's that software is not all bad. ;-)
| yaky wrote:
| 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.
| cevn wrote:
| 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.
| linmob wrote:
| 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).
| Almondsetat wrote:
| I don't know what to make of the fact that 2005 Nokia or
| Blackberry feature phones had orders of magnitude better software
| and performance than the PinePhone.
|
| 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
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > 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.
| halcek wrote:
| That's just a matter of software, not hardware. You can try
| different UIs, SXMO's quite fun, for example.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| 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.
| em-bee wrote:
| 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.
| vdaea wrote:
| >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.
| yaky wrote:
| 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/
| tetris11 wrote:
| 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.
| Muromec wrote:
| 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.
| rchaud wrote:
| 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.
| Aachen wrote:
| > 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)
| squarefoot wrote:
| 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.
| cristoperb wrote:
| 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/
| hmottestad wrote:
| I can also recommend the Apple ecosystem. My phone and
| MacBook keep, messages (and sms), contacts, calendar,
| clipboard and also photos in sync.
| alan-hn wrote:
| 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
| COGlory wrote:
| 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.
| yaky wrote:
| 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)
| hackmiester wrote:
| 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.
| darkwater wrote:
| Considering this is a post by and for Free Software
| enthusiasts, I don't think they would.
| asimovfan wrote:
| I would definitely not recommend that ecosystem as you
| can't even plug it into a computer and take things out of
| it / put things in.
| sodality2 wrote:
| I can access my photos by plugging my iPhone into my
| Linux or Windows PC.
| xattt wrote:
| 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.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding you... how does the crappy screen
| affect your experience when you're ssh'ing into it?
| xattt wrote:
| I misread the comment...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > 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.
| powersnail wrote:
| > 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.)
| graphe wrote:
| 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.
| kaanyalova wrote:
| 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".
| bonton89 wrote:
| I wish there were more options for phones with hardware switches
| like this.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > 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.
| fsflover wrote:
| >> 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...
| zilti wrote:
| 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.
| spieglt wrote:
| 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.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| > 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.
| nomel wrote:
| 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.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| 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.
| brnt wrote:
| 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?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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)
| awestroke wrote:
| Until you have to call 911 or equivalent and it doesn't work
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| 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?
| earthling8118 wrote:
| 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
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| smt88 wrote:
| 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.
| asah wrote:
| 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.
| cesarb wrote:
| 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.
| rchaud wrote:
| I got the Onyx Boox Palma for this. Phone-size E-ink screen (no
| SIM slot), Android + app store support under the hood.
| xu_ituairo wrote:
| How are you finding it?
| delijati wrote:
| 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...
| system2 wrote:
| For a promising phone, they have one of the most garbage websites
| out there.
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| 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.
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| jancsika wrote:
| > (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.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > 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.
| qa_acc wrote:
| 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.
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