PinePhone Pro Announced

https://www.pine64.org/pinephonepro/

by abawany • 5 years ago

496 364 5 years ago

mcdonje• 5 years ago

I appreciate the blurbs about who it is and isn't for. I'm currently in the latter group, but I commend the project. Now that there's a good hardware target, hopefully the software will catch up.

290830113977789• 5 years ago

I would argue there was already a reasonably hardware target - the biggest thing was (for me) the modem. It was power-hungry, dropped signal, and for some people, didn't work with VoLTE. The Pro uses the same modem, meaning hardware support has been improving for the last two years :)

buildbot2• 5 years ago

I can’t wait for pinephone to succeed- hopefully this more powerful hardware + faster ram will help to address latency issues in the UI. Right now it feels like your brain is literally slowing down when interacting with a normal pinephone compared to an iPhone. Not a fair comparison at all I know.

thepete22• 5 years ago

Yes. It seems a more powerful cpu was the most requested improvement to the original Pinephone. I'm glad they listened.

Aeolun5• 5 years ago

Isn’t that silly? I could run linux (with GUI) just fine on my Pentium 3. This phone is like 8 times faster just based on clock speed, not to mention memory. How can it not drive a UI without lag?

TheUnelisted5• 5 years ago

The problem is that it's not 1-1 with X86, especially in regards to graphics capability (The GPU is really the weak link on the current PinePhone). The GPU for example uses Tile-based rendering, which requires software optimizations to work best... Plus the GPU is just plain slow. It's a first generation ARM Mali graphics core intended for OpenGL ES 2.0 afterall.

buildbot2• 5 years ago

It’s certainly interesting that input latency seems to have taken a back seat in almost all modern systems. I have a touchscreen windows NT computer with PS2 ports, both the keyboard and touchscreen have noticeably less latency than any other device I have. However, it’s really slow when actually opening a program!

Arch-TK4• 5 years ago

Because your pentium 3 GUI linux had a GUI designed around pentium 3 era hardware. All the linux phone GUIs seem to be designed around the latest in special GUI effects and animations and transparency. For some reason all the people who know how to design UIs for linux are incapable of understanding hardware requirements.

swiley3• 5 years ago

Lightweight X11 Desktops like Fluxbox or FVWM work pretty well on the Pinephone, I'm posting from Fluxbox right now infact.

Also the main bottleneck is really the slow RAM and not the CPU.

CubsFan10604• 5 years ago

"If you depend on proprietary mainstream mobile messenger applications, banking applications, use loyalty or travel apps, consume DRM media, or play mobile video games on your fruit or Android smartphone, then the PinePhone Pro is likely not for you."

Yikes. I appreciate they are up front about it, but that eliminates literally everyone I know.

ryukafalz2• 5 years ago

Then literally everyone you know is dependent on either Apple or Google.

CubsFan10604• 5 years ago

Probably. But I don't think those requirements are unreasonable. It feels like it largely boils down to "I buy a smartphone to accomplish certain tasks easily". If you eliminate many of those tasks, is it a useful device for those people anymore?

smallerfish• 5 years ago

Theoretically you can run those apps via anbox. I've tested whatsapp via anbox on my desktop ubuntu install at least, and it works fine. Remains to be seen how well it'll work on this upgraded hardware, and I'm sure they're being conservative because of that.

betwixthewires5• 5 years ago

There's also this somewhat new project called waydroid that runs android applications closer to the metal than an emulator would. https://waydro.id/

thepete22• 5 years ago

I mean, couldn't you dual-boot android on this thing? Or is the SoC not supported?

officeplant7• 5 years ago

Android is supported on some Rockchip SBC's out there. I imagine the problem would be getting modem support working.

MatthiasPortzel• 5 years ago

I think there's a difference between "depend on" and "use." Most everyone that currently has an iPhone or Android is going to use those features.

But for every Youtube video that I watch on my phone, I watch many more on my computer. I use my phone for browsing HN and Twitter, taking pictures, checking my email, and of course getting texts. I have a banking app installed, but that's not the reason that I have a phone.

I would have to post to Instagram from my computer, but other than that, I could use a PinePhone. Unfortunately, it looks like the only positive of the PinePhone right now is "free software." But my point is that it's possible for PinePhone to convince me by adding brand new features—they don't necessarily have to support every iPhone app to win users over.

aiilns• 5 years ago

A bit irrelevant, but I don't think you can post to Instagram from your computer, got to use the app.

reginold7• 5 years ago

This is the reality today. The device is still developer-only. I just bought one thinking I could ditch my iPhone -- not yet. It's hard knowing that there are no good options besides Android and iOS. I'm aware of de-Googled Android versions but those are less appealing given the Google base. We need an open source solution.

djent6• 5 years ago

That's the vendor lock-in to the walled garden app stores. It works, and if you want to break the cycle, you need something new.

tromp• 5 years ago

A display resolution of 1440x720 feels a bit limited, especially for something labeled "Pro". Wonder why they didn't go for 2160x1080...

kop3163• 5 years ago

https://www.pine64.org/2021/10/15/october-update-introducing...

They go into it there:

"The decision to maintain the original PinePhone’s screen resolution of 1440×720 was made early on; higher resolution panels consume more power and increase SoC’s load, resulting in shorter battery life and higher average thermals. A few extra pixels aren’t worth it."

MartijnBraam2• 5 years ago

The resolution is absolutely fine.

belval2• 5 years ago

I curious about the opinion of HN on the absence of 1080p (it's still 720p). Specially this part of the blog post:

The decision to maintain the original PinePhone’s screen resolution of 1440×720 was made early on; higher resolution panels consume more power and increase SoC’s load, resulting in shorter battery life and higher average thermals. A few extra pixels aren’t worth it.[1]

While I understand the point they are making, the PinePhone's screen is almost 6" and pixel density is probably the first thing that I notice on a new smartphone. It just seems very low?

For context I am fully aware of the project, its goals and that it's not trying to take over the global smartphone market, but for some reason 1080p feels like the baseline in 2021.

[1] https://pine64.org/2021/10/15/october-update-introducing-the...

noasaservice3• 5 years ago

While I understand the point they are making, the PinePhone's screen is almost 6" and pixel density is probably the first thing that I notice on a new smartphone. It just seems very low?

With convergence, its HDMI out.

belval2• 5 years ago

Didn't think of that one, that would make sense.

nousermane2• 5 years ago

Depends on how good user's eyesight is. Many are just not able to tell the difference between 5-6" 720 and 1080 lines.

Not without reading glasses, at least.

emteycz• 5 years ago

But people that need glasses keep them on

jchw• 5 years ago

I own an original PinePhone. Most people are aware of its issues by now, but I always found the screen (and by and large, the general build quality) to be oddly sufficient. It isn’t overkill, but I don’t think it is terribly limiting either. I suppose a higher DPI screen would be a nice luxury, but it can definitely wait for the SoC to catch up.

ben-schaaf• 5 years ago

I've got both a pinephone and a 1080p android phone. Compared to a laptop/desktop everything is already scaled to 2x or more, so while I can tell them apart I can't say I'm actually losing anything from the 720p display. The only exception I've found is content consumption, but if I care enough I've got plenty better, larger screens to use.

opencl2• 5 years ago

I think the performance loss for a higher resolution screen would not be worthwhile here. The GPU in the Pinephone Pro is a lot faster than the original but it's a 6 year old design that is not exactly great by modern standards. And a lot of the existing software stack is not even GPU accelerated yet. 1080p would probably give quite noticably worse performance.

megous13• 5 years ago

Pinebook Pro (same SoC) has 1080p panel.

It works fine and SoC is fast enough to drive it. Even A64 will drive 1080p external monitor just fine (if you turn off the GPU and use older software made for it, like Xorg, and i3wm).

I believe the power efficiency argument, though. Pinephone pro needs every bit of power savings it can get, because RK3399 is not exactly a phone SoC.

reginold7• 5 years ago

As a new PinePhone owner this month, screen res is a non-issue. No one is buying this phone as a daily driver right now. There's very few apps available. GPS was 50 miles off when I tried it. For devs interested in a new project, PinePhone needs your help!

MVP = Linux on a smartphone

That said, I haven't read the announcement closely but wonder why they used the "Pro" moniker. Just say it's the new version of the PinePhone? What problem does naming it "Pro" solve?

Vinnl• 5 years ago

That said, I haven't read the announcement closely but wonder why they used the "Pro" moniker. Just say it's the new version of the PinePhone? What problem does naming it "Pro" solve?

I think they wanted to avoid (unsuccessfully, it seems) people thinking it's the "new" Pinephone. Rather, as I understand it both will be sold at the same time, and one is just more powerful than the other.

swiley3• 5 years ago

I've been daily driving a Pinephone since 2020. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't work, when it's bad enough I deal with it.

officeplant7• 5 years ago

1080p feels like the baseline in 2021.

The lower end Android market is still dominated by 720p(ish) phones. Especially the sub $150 market. Having used a few of them I don't think its an issue. Especially when you get a phone with a 720 screen, a modern low end efficient octo-core SoC, and a 4000mAh battery. The 3-4 days of battery life feel like you've gone back in time 15 years to cellphones lasting most of the week again.

Fnoord8• 5 years ago

Yeah, but... the Pro is not in a low-end sub $150 market. The Pro is twice as expensive as the normal Pinephone: 400 USD + taxes. I don't see how its worth the money if it still isn't gonna be usable as daily driver.

Steam Deck only supports 1280 x 800, and that's gonna be OK for handheld gaming. I rather have 120 Hz and OLED but it ain't gonna happen for now.

I really doubt you get 3-4 days on a Pinephone once you start using sync services (for photo's, e-mail, IM, etc). Or use the screen extensively (browsing, video, etc). Of course the device lasts long if you don't use it for much.

While a Pinephone would be good for watching video's, it isn't because no Widevine, and that's what people need. Without Android emulation, it ain't gonna be popular. Microsoft knows this. Its why they're going for rolling out WSLg's successor on Windows 11, targeting Android GUI apps.

megous13• 5 years ago

There's more to screen quality than just pixels.

hcal• 5 years ago

I have one and I'm using it right now. It is more than fine. My eyes aren't perfect so maybe others would care more but the image is super crisp and looks really good.

The screen outclasses the rest of the hardware.

SkeuomorphicBee• 5 years ago

the PinePhone's screen is almost 6" and pixel density is probably the first thing that I notice on a new smartphone. It just seems very low?

I don't think it is as big an issue. I have an old 1st Gen Nexus 7, it has 720p resolution on a 7" screen, it is perfectly readable and a generally nice screen to use (I would still be using the device frequently if it wasn't painfully slow due to degrading flash). The difference to a super-high resolution modern device is obvious on a side by side comparison, but not on its own. When I'm just using the device I don't even notice the lower resolution.

ziml77• 5 years ago

I think modern phones have gotten absurd with their resolutions and that 1440x720 is plenty for a 6 inch screen. That's 268ppi, which is denser than most non-phone screens.

I want more devices to use sane resolutions so I'm not burning through battery for little benefit. One of the reasons that my laptop is a MacBook Pro 16" is because I think 1080p is too low at that size and 4K is too high. Apple is one of the few companies that uses a screen resolution in between those.

noasaservice3• 5 years ago

Damn, and I just put in an order for the PinePhone 1.5 days ago.

Just emailed them to see if they can make this work, and upgrade appropriate for the difference.

TheUnelisted5• 5 years ago

Well, the "Explorer Edition" units haven't gone on sale yet. Right now only developer units are on sale, and those are strictly for developers who will contribute to the kernel, firmware, drivers, and shell. But I'm sure they will be willing to process a refund for you if your device hasn't shipped out yet, otherwise you'll have to return it minus the cost of shipping.

noasaservice3• 5 years ago

I just received the email indicating that they've issued a refund.

Hopefully, I'll be included on the early batch, and can contribute to helping make the overall GUI experience better.

jjmellon2• 5 years ago

I received a Pinephone in the latest shipment, about three weeks ago. I also got the convergence dock to be able to attach a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I am extremely motivated to get off Android on my phone, and yet my Pinephone has already been discarded (and I never even put a SIM card in it).

There are far too many out-of-the-box bugs and glitches to consider this a usable product. For example, the convergence dock will not display on a monitor. Firefox browser displays too wide for the phone screen, so unusable. A dozen other issues on first day.

Even a development board should work better than this, have documentation of the known problems, and have some support mechanism that works.

I don't think better/more expensive hardware is the problem. It's software, caused by lack of users, lack of investment, and too many "competing" distributions of Linux.

tediousdemise• 5 years ago

I noticed many of the same issues, but the most concerning one for me was that the modem (behind the upper rear of the phone) gets extremely hot. This has to be terrible for battery life and general longevity.

290830113977789• 5 years ago

Many people are running an open-source re-implementation of the modem [0]. Neither the proprietary nor the open-source firmware for the modem are perfect, but the latter has the advantage of being clocked down to 100MHz instead of the default 400. This allows much better battery life, as well as giving off far less heat :)

[0] https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk

megous13• 5 years ago

Modem is a heatsink for pretty much all the other heat producing stuff in that phone. It gets hot when whatever else gets hot (PMIC when charging, or SoC when doing soc stuff).

betwixthewires5• 5 years ago

In the article we are discussing, the gist of your concerns is addressed. The pinephone (and mobile Linux in general) is extremely immature and only really for hobbyists and people developing for it. You expected a daily driver, right now it is a toy for nerds.

Lack of users, investment and too many competing distros were all given in the early days of desktop Linux as reasons why it was simply not worthwhile. The thing is, this phase of development, where some devices exist that only nerds play with for a while, is necessary for there to ever be a mature Linux mobile UX. When you buy one of these devices you're not buying a Linux phone, you're choosing to participate in the process by which a Linux phone becomes a reality. And that process is picking up steam, Ubuntu tried it, many people have run Linux on their android devices with unlocked bootloaders, but pine (and librem and others) have actually created a market environment where things are actually advancing, and in my opinion advancing much faster than desktop Linux did.

Aeolun5• 5 years ago

right now it is a toy for nerds

I have some standards for my toys though. If it’s sold as a phone, it should actually work as a phone (even a shitty one).

If they were selling it as a mini linux computer with integrated screen I wouldn’t mind so much.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 5 years ago

I largely agree with the assessment. I am still glad I bought mine, because even though it is gathering dust, I am hoping the purchase contributed somewhat to a better mobile future.

I may have mentioned it before, but default OS is just painful to use ( thankfully, there are other options ). And here is the part of the problem. I am motivated to use it. Right now it still feels so janky, most people won't even get past initial boot process.

howlin• 5 years ago

I have one from a year or so ago, and it just collects dust right now. If I understood how utterly unusable it was and how unusable it would continue to be, I would have preferred to just donate to Pine's organization rather than have them send me clutter.

squarefoot• 5 years ago

When you buy one of these devices you're not buying a Linux phone, you're choosing to participate in the process by which a Linux phone becomes a reality.

That is very true, and I would add that some of this reality is already in front of us. How many Android or Apple devices can run full featured office suites, graphics and audio manipulation software, development systems etc. complete browsers, electronics simulation software, etc, and I mean the real ones, not cut down mobile versions, all for free? Probably none. The problem with the PinePhone is that it still lacks functionality in those two fields where 99.9% of normal non tech users would want it to excel, that is, calls and messaging. Non tech users want it for calls, SMS, MMS and Whatsapp, period, and they very much prefer a costly Android or Apple phone that addresses those needs although it would be way inferior in everything else, including privacy and security. I think the PinePhone developers are already addressing some of these requirements, so hopefully it's a matter of time, but for most people, being able to run the WhatsApp client at decent speed would be the killer feature. No matter if run sandboxed with Android libraries, under a VM or reverse engineered; WhatsApp compatibility is the #1 feature that could bring the most users on the PinePhone bandwagon.

reginold7• 5 years ago

Similar experience with a new PinePhone last week but different conclusion.

PinePhone is our only hope. It's still in Beta, months or years from being consumer ready. And that's just where it needs to be from a development standpoint. Don't rush.

That said, reading your comment I also wonder about having too many distros of Linux going after PinePhone. I had an SD card with I believe 14 distros. Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? It seems like combining together strengths would be beneficial.

officeplant7• 5 years ago

Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times?

Honestly I don't think personally that it hurts things as much as one might expect. There is a lot of work from each distro that benefits all of the others. For example the Mobian dev was one of the first to really tackle the issue of battery life and their work benefited all the other teams.

That being said it might be better to have a few larger dev teams, but as long as their works contribute back to the community there is always benefit to the whole.

idle_zealot2• 5 years ago

Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times?

I don’t think it’s quite that simple. A lot of these competing mobile distros are using and working on the same libraries and porting desktop applications to mobile in similar ways. The biggest differences are usually the desktop distro that they’ve made their base and their desktop environment of choice. It’s common to see enhancements to an application or even core functionality like battery utilization or suspend improvements land in one distro and then be quickly adopted by others. As someone who’s mostly a bystander, the outliers seem to be the people working on the distros that aren’t ports of desktop Linux, like Sailfish, Nemo, and Ubuntu Touch. Of the main desktop-Linux-ports cluster the biggest divide seems to exist between launcher/DE development. Developers are split between the Gnome-based Phosh interface and the Plasma mobile interface. But a similar dichotomy exists on desktop. I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using.

290830113977789• 5 years ago

I wouldn't want to say you must try again, but if you're interested in playing more with the toy for nerds, the Mobian wiki [0] is full of helpful tips.

You're right, lots of things don't fit the screen. Running

    scale-to-fit firefox on [1]

would fix your issues with Firefox not scaling correctly, for the most part. The other person that replied to you is right - it's currently a toy for nerds more than a drop-in replacement. With compromise and some effort (such as running your own Matrix server to replace Signal / Whatsapp / Discord), it can be done. But I'd hope to inspire you to try again, while tempering expectations for just how ready mobile Linux currently is :)

[0] https://wiki.mobian-project.org/

[1] https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=tweaks&s[]=scale...

linmob2• 5 years ago

From reading OP I it sounds more like mobile-config-firefox is not installed and thus Firefox does not work properly.

_joel2• 5 years ago

For me, the deal breaker is not being able to run any banking apps. That's not a fault of the PinePhone, but a sad reflection of the state of affairs.

MerelyMortal2• 5 years ago

Can you open banking websites? The only downside of not using an Android/iOS app (in my case at least) would be "mobile deposits" (depositing a check by taking a picture of it).

casept• 5 years ago

Why do you want to move off Android? Depending on the reason, your needs would probably be better met with an alternative Android distribution on Android hardware.

290830113977789• 5 years ago

Not OP, but I'd assume everyone with the goal of dropping iOS and Android is doing so for philosophical reasons. I still have my BlackBerry KeyOne. Battery life is still measured in days, but GApps bloat has pushed me to Open Street Maps. Literally every single aspect of the KeyOne is better, from battery life to performance to app availability and polish - but opting out of all tracking may be more meaningful to some.

abacadaba2• 5 years ago

Unfortunately I think AOSP distributions are a long-term dead-end. Unless maybe if there was a hard fork. Or else it's just a scramble to keep up with whatever changes google is making, dealing with unsupported hardware and hoping that whoever maintains the build for you device knows what they're doing, and re-implementing gapps to try to get some mostly broken compatibility.

prox3• 5 years ago

I never liked Android, having owned a few. The hardware is quickly obsolete, interface has this clunky feeling, apps don’t work properly, often because devs don’t see the same rewards as their iOS brethren. And however you spin it, it’s all proprietary sponsored.

A linux phone might have the same problems, but at least its far more closer to the Open Source side of things.

jjmellon2• 5 years ago

I am a software developer. I would honestly not have the nerve to release a product with software in the state the Pinephone is in today. But of course, pine64.org takes no responsibility for the software on their phone, it's a "community project".

Until there's somebody who is willing to be embarrassed by the state of this software, and able to do something about it, there is no hope here. It does not get better.

Shared404• 5 years ago

What Pine has done is break the chicken/egg cycle of "there's no hardware -> there's no software"

I disagree with your assessment. There are plenty of competent programmers who are working on pushing forward this software, and even following from the outside I've watched massive improvements over time.

We needed (more) open hardware before the software could get properly started, and that's what Pine provided.

idle_zealot2• 5 years ago

I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the progression of development, but every few months I get the itch to play around with my PinePhone and flash the latest version of one of the OSes. The experience is consistently greatly improved over the last time. I’m at the point now where the greatest usability issue I run into is performance, though I’m sure if I were to daily-drive I’d bump into more.

megous13• 5 years ago

People are improving the SW constantly. And it does steadily get better ever since the release (and before, because A64 is older than the pinephone, and was also implemented in mainline Linux by someone other than the SoC vendor).

jjulius3• 5 years ago

I would honestly not have the nerve to release a product with software in the state the Pinephone is in today.

To be fair, they're clearly marked as "Beta" on their store.

https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...

dbeley4• 5 years ago

What OS did you use? I use mine with Phosh (tested Mobian and Archlinux) and I don't have the same experience at all. The device is still severely underpowered though so the Pro version with a much better CPU is a welcome change.

horsawlarway• 5 years ago

Can confirm that the Arch build for my pinephone performed significantly better than the default KDE rom that shipped with my device. Vibration, lights, volume & volume rockers, responsiveness, calls, keyboard etc - all mostly working on the arch release.

But I 100% agree - the device is just too slow for me. Would love the increased RAM and extra CPU power.

3np• 5 years ago

Plasma Mobile does not have autoscaling of windows like Phosh does.

131012• 5 years ago

A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably?

Smartphones are so bloated with functionalities, it seems nobody ever talks about that. I don't see the answer on the website.

blueblob• 5 years ago

I saw an article that touched on this for the pinephone (not the pro) and they said that it made and received calls fine but did not originally have dtmf support. If you need to check your voicemail and enter a passcode or use an automated system to pick up your prescription, you could not use it for that. It seems that has been ironed out depending on which OS you put on it.

Klasiaster5• 5 years ago

Not reliably, the modem can crash at any time and until you restart it manually from the terminal you can't send/receive text/calls.

hutzlibu3• 5 years ago

"A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably"

Half a year ago, when I looked into it, the answer was a clear: no. And there were not many things that did work reliable, without frequent freezes and crashes.

I doubt that fundamentally changed, so if you are looking for stability and reliability right now, than better look somewhere else. This project is about to get to such a state.

jjulius3• 5 years ago

There are far too many out-of-the-box bugs and glitches to consider this a usable product.

Their phones are clearly marked as "Beta" on their store[1]. Forgive me for being so blunt, but what did you expect?

[1]https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...

mixmastamyk5• 5 years ago

Beta traditionally means it works in the common case, with some glitches and bugs around obscure uses that wider testing will identify.

The PP I received was crashy and couldn't even update the OS because a file or library was broken. :-(

I had to start it up ten times, run a terminal with a mobile keyboard in a 4pt font to fix the updater before it crashed at the one minute mark.

I'd call it pre-alpha.

Groxx• 5 years ago

tbh I think Pine has been extremely, excessively clear about this being the expected state of their phones. It's stated over and over on almost every page that the software is incomplete and not suitable for most people, it's primarily a developer target to try to achieve that over the span of years.

pengaru2• 5 years ago

For example, the convergence dock will not display on a monitor.

I recently watched a presentation [0] that focused on the pinephone state-of-affairs, and it did not leave me with the impression the dock couldn't display on a monitor.

Are you sure you're not just experiencing some pathological incompatibility problem? Or am I going senile and need to re-watch the video?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEL_GJ1Y2s

megous13• 5 years ago

He's experiencing a known HW issue, most likely. There's a manual workaround for now: https://xnux.eu/log/#045

I'll implement a SW workaround eventually, but I'm still recuperating a bit from the work on the Pinephopne keyboard. Once it's released, donations will hopefully increase a bit again, and I'll be able to do more development other than a kernel maintenance.

Now there's also Pinephone Pro and Quartz64 based router sitting on my table which I'm mostly playing with these days, so I'm a bit torn on where to focus my energy next. :)

kop3163• 5 years ago

If you want to read more about it, I would recommend reading Pine64's Monthly update:

https://www.pine64.org/2021/10/15/october-update-introducing...

DerekBickerton• 5 years ago

I'd like this as a sort of toy phone to play and tinker with, but wouldn't use it as my daily driver. Always nice to have spare phones hanging around when you're bored to do casual surfing and maybe play a game or two.

philliphaydon• 5 years ago

Physically it just looks like every other android phone :( I really wish the Ubuntu phone got funded cos I liked the look of that.

Edit: meant ubuntu edge phone not Mozilla.

dbeley4• 5 years ago

That's basically because they outsourced the design to a cheap chinese smartphone manufacturer. It was definitely the right choice as the Pinephone has basically zero hardware issues, unlike the Librem 5 or even the Fairphone.

rich_sasha• 5 years ago

Honest question: what is the path to something resembling wider-audience usability (i.e. not a toy project)? Or is that not really a plan?

I'd LOVE an open, Linux-based phone. But I also need a phone that does video calls, has a working browser, messenger etc. One that works with at least a good bunch of most common apps.

Is that likely to ever happen? Or is this a very interesting project, but really aimed at tinkerers, or people who don't use WhatsApp etc.

amarsahinovic• 5 years ago

I recently backed Astro Slide on Indiegogo[0] and they do say it will be able to boot Linux alongside Android 11. The designer behind Astro Slide is Martin Riddiford who was also the designer of Psion Series 5[1].

[0] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5

WhatIsDukkha• 5 years ago

Be aware that planetcomputers/astro slide has done a really really bad job of supporting their devices with os updates on the Android side.

Even with some linux support (which I haven't checked lately) it was a hard pass to support the slide.

opan5• 5 years ago

I made a comment elsewhere in the thread about the Gemini PDA. Do not trust this company to deliver proper GNU/Linux support. Ever. They keep using MediaTek chips and horrible shims to use Android drivers on GNU/Linux and none of it works well at all. It's not even close to the experience you would get with a PinePhone or Librem 5. You are giving up a lot to get those better specs. After getting a Gemini PDA I am never buying anything from Planet Computers again.

olau• 5 years ago

Probably only if people chip in and help. I don't know much about this eco system, but it's my impression that most of the components are already there, including Android emulation, they just need more work.

Probably rewarding work, too.

betwixthewires5• 5 years ago

It is likely to happen, yes. It just takes time. Remember, desktop Linux was aimed at tinkerers for gears before it became useable by your average person.

The big difference is that at that time desktop machines had pretty standard hardware, and hardware was largely interoperable, whereas with mobile these guys basically have to develop hardware, set the standard, and software developers have to develop the software specifically for the hardware. It's a lot harder, but if you look at the pace of things since librem and pine started, the development of this is moving at a faster pace than desktop Linux did.

treesknees• 5 years ago

Never say never, but I'm not optimistic for it. The biggest issue is app compatibility. Even with a huge budget and namesake like Microsoft Windows, you can see how Microsoft's mobile OS projects have essentially disappeared when trying to compete against iOS and Android. Maybe someone will get Android apps running natively on a Linux distro, but then you're still missing the unlicensed framework around Google Play that breaks many existing popular apps.

We also don't even have this with desktops or laptops today. CPUs are still proprietary and running closed-source software. On mobile it's even more locked down, where I can almost guarantee you will never have open software running on baseband controller or SIM card on any public network like Verizon.

TobTobXX6• 5 years ago

Maybe someone will get Android apps running natively on a Linux distro

Depending on what you mean by 'native', you might find Waydroid[0] interesting. It only does containerization, not emulation.

And also: While yes, Linux on the desktop isn't too successful, it is at a state that you can daily drive with it for all tasks. Maybe you won't get the MS Office suite running, but there are alternatives.

I think the Linux mobile niche will go into the same direction. It won't be successful, if measured by raw numbers, but it will be successful in that it will provide a functional alternative for those willing to do it. It won't ever run WhatsApp, but it will run usable alternatives.

Depending on what you mean by 'native', you might find Waydroid[0] interesting. It only does containerization, not emulation.

[0] https://github.com/waydroid/waydroid

dbeley4• 5 years ago

But I also need a phone that does video calls, has a working browser, messenger etc

The current Pinephone has almost all of that right now (desktop firefox run very well, messaging works - MMS too -, video calls works in the browser).

One that works with at least a good bunch of most common apps.

That's on the "most common apps" devs to do the work, and they are very unlikely to do so.

You could use something like Waydroid on the Pinephone to run some Android apps in a stable-ish way (SailfishOS has a similar feature).

CameronNemo9• 5 years ago

How performant are video calls in Firefox on the Pinephone? (Or Pinebook Pro for that matter?)

Last I tried zoom with 4 people on my PBP, it was stutter city.

KingMachiavelli• 5 years ago

The result of this cooperation is the RK3399S – a RK3399 variant made specifically for the PinePhone Pro.

Looks like the RK3399 was used in some chromebooks so hopefully that means it has great upstream Linux support. We can hope it doesn't require any device overlays or weird kernel patches.

officeplant7• 5 years ago

The RK3399 is also in the pinebook pro and their higher end SBC offering. Linux support is fairly good especially since the community developed Panfrost drivers for the Mali GPU.

I've played around with a chromebook on the same chip and while ChromeOS is of course much more polished the Pinebook Pro is very usable.

Klasiaster5• 5 years ago

For me the main pain point of the current PinePhone is not its performance, it's the driver and firmware issues. Mainline Linux does not work well with the current PinePhone and various patches are not upstreamed or not even written yet to fix the remaining bugs. The cameras don't work with most software, the out-of-tree WiFi driver has stability issues to the point where I rather use LTE or USB, the USB-C firmware is flunky, the modem firmware crashes and needs a lot of workarounds.

I hoped they chose components for the PinePhone Pro that work out of the box in terms of firmware and having no downstream Linux patches in the near future, but it seems quite similar to the current PinePhone, only slight improvements. The camera OV5640 is the same (hopefully someone came up with better v4l2 integration since the second camera is different?), the modem EG25-G is the same, no info on the used USB-C chip, but at least there is a better WiFi chip.

guerrilla• 5 years ago

I think your expectations may not be aligned with what they're selling. From the website:

We’re not in the business of selling empty promises – a much faster mainline Linux smartphone won’t make the existing operating systems more refined, nor will it magically spawn software replacements for your iOS or Android applications. There is a long road ahead of us, all of us, and it will require time and effort for the software to reach a degree of maturity that would satisfy mainstream users.

Klasiaster5• 5 years ago

I'm not a hardware guy and think it's a question about the approach: do you build something and throw it to the kernel devs to see if they can make it work, or do you build something and see yourself if it works well with existing software.

CameronNemo9• 5 years ago

Weird that they advertise how this is a mainline Linux experience, while at the same time claiming video output through the typec port.

I own a PinebookPro. The only way I get video output through the typec port is through some hacky patchset that will not be accepted upstream, and which occasionally breaks on new kernel releases. Some people report that it does not work whatsoever. I actually have to flip the typec plug to get it to work -- the video output is not reversible for some reason.

They also mention that the Pinephone Pro will support a suspend mode, which is something I have never been able to get working on my PinebookPro. The best that device can do is 1.7W while idle.

I'm glad to see this announcement, because I hope that these new rk3399-ish devices will improve software support for my PBP, but I implore anyone who is concerned about the above two features to wait and see. I certainly won't be buying another rk3399 device anytime soon, even though it is one of the best supported high performance offerings for mainline TF-A, U-Boot, and Linux.

megous13• 5 years ago

Wifi is different, with mainline driver and regularly updated firmware from cypress (same as Rpi4 wifi chip). Type-C stuff is different, more sane. Main camera is different and selected to already have mainline linux support...

I don't think this complaint is fair. Only major thing that's the same is the modem, but that would be quite annoying thing to change, because it would void the hard work of people working on the FOSS Linux stack for EG25-G modem.

Klasiaster5• 5 years ago

Great to hear about the USB-C situation improving and confirmation about better WiFi! Do both cameras already work with common V4L2 applications like Firefox, Cheese etc?

Yes, it's sane to keep the EG25-G modem only because there is one guy doing an enormous work with https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk

Fnoord8• 5 years ago

but at least there is a better WiFi chip.

Strangely, it sports Bluetooth 4.1, while 5.1 is from December 2019.

MartijnBraam2• 5 years ago

The ov5640 is the same, but it's now the front camera instead of the rear camera. It's replacing the gc2145 front sensor on the pinephone that's not doing great.

The new imx rear camera also already has a driver in mainline that can be built on. The majority of the work will be getting the rk3399 side of the cameras to work

dleslie• 5 years ago

They seem to have fixed my personal gripe with the PinePhone: the camera was terrible.

TobTobXX6• 5 years ago

I think most of the limitation might actually lie in software. I have a CE and Megapixels (the camera app I'm using) can store raw files and the raw files and the processed jpg files have a significant gap in quality.

officeplant7• 5 years ago

I've had the Braveheart and later Mobian releases of the Pinephone. Currently have a Pinebook Pro. I'm super excited for the Pinephone Pro to finally get moved to rockchip hardware even if it is just a downclocked 2016 SoC with a few more tweaks for Pine64.

The progress they are making is great but still far from daily driving for me personally. I'm just glad the community exists. Even with the bugs and flaws the products may have it is better than nothing.

pcdoodle• 5 years ago

The CPU has a passmark of around 2000 I think. It's clearly quite an upgrade. Also, they have kept backwards hardware compatibility (Pogo Pins, Screen size and Button Placement), that's a huge motivator for a hardware eco system to pop up around it. Can't wait for these tires to warm up!

billyjobob• 5 years ago

I put my Pinephone back in its box about 6 months ago. Have they fixed the massive lag between touching the screen and it responding yet? That was the main reason it wasn’t usable for me.

dbeley4• 5 years ago

In 6 months there have been tons of progress yes. Though I didn't have any issue with the touchscreen 6 months ago so your issue might lies elsewhere. You should try reflashing completely yours with Mobian or another well-supported OS.

opan5• 5 years ago

Things are properly 60fps and hardware accelerated now if that's what you mean. postmarketOS is a lot smoother now than it was at first.

Aeolun5• 5 years ago

Forget being able to use it for office. Is it able to take a decent picture or video yet?

The performance of those apps on the original pinephone is just hideous.

Also, is it just me, or was the original already pretty chunky, and now they’ve added 2mm making it 11mm thick.

nyanpasu64• 5 years ago

I don't think I'm ordering this at $399. This is over twice the price of the previous PinePhone (admittedly it was borderline useless), and solidly out of "novelty buy" territory. If I wanted a tech toy, I'd order a handheld emulation device with (questionably comfortable) physical buttons and working games/emulators for $50.

_v7gu• 5 years ago

Thus, the device cannot considered a consumer-ready product.

Right off the store page. Why are people in the comments expecting to daily drive this? You buy this for the excitement and sense of accomplishment of actually managing to run things.

CameronNemo9• 5 years ago

Perhaps because it is at a similar price point as a Fairphone 3, which you can daily drive.

ocdtrekkie4• 5 years ago

But the Fairphone 3 is running a hostile OS that has already done most of the work, and the PinePhone is still very much an early development platform.

int_19h4• 5 years ago

In fact, it seems to be impossible to pre-order PinePhone Pro as a consumer right now. If you click on the button to pre-order, this is what you get:

https://preorder.pine64.org/#/pinephone-pro-dev

ericmay• 5 years ago

I love the desktop-ness of this. I wish Apple enabled this with iPhone. I'd finally be able to have one device.

h0p3• 5 years ago

Is there anyone here who has more than 3 months of using their [[Pinephone|https://philosopher.life/#Pinephone]] as a daily driver (a solid habit) or who knows someone who does? I'd like to speak with you (or them) because I'm in need of patient guidance. I'm willing to live off a commandline if I'm forced to do that.

julienchastang3• 5 years ago

One thing I will note is how absolutely essential smart phones have become to our daily existence. A colleague's phone recently broke and her life shutdown because she could not 2fa anywhere, including for reporting her time card, etc. As a result, I cannot take any risks when purchasing a phone. I have to have the most reliable option possible.

capableweb• 5 years ago

Agree, it's a bit frightening we're so locked to our phones today.

But why leave that comment on this particular submission? The PinePhone is not meant to be a phone you use day-to-day, it's meant for curious developers to hack around on. They are being very upfront about this as well. Maybe in the future this will change.

julienchastang3• 5 years ago

But why leave that comment on this particular submission?

Sorry if I sounded negative. I agree, efforts like these should be lauded.

Iolaum• 5 years ago

No matter how reliable your phone is you can always have an accident, like the phone drops and breaks. A good practice, if possible, is to keep an old(er) phone as a backup device and make sure you have proper/backups migration paths.

P.S. As a pinephone owner I don't consider it to be a good options for a backup device. I can only hope that one day the ecosystem gets there.

Arch-TK4• 5 years ago

As a result, I cannot take any risks when purchasing a phone.

Or you could make better choices when it comes to how you organise your life so that you do not get in situations where losing your phone completely screws you over.

Seriously I don't get why people wilfully get into situations where important things in their life rest on the reliability of their phone.

It takes a minimal amount of awareness. And there's no excuse for it. My life is not massively negatively impacted by just refusing to be get chained to a phone.

julienchastang3• 5 years ago

The problem is what do you do about 2fa which more and more organizations are requiring almost always via sms ? I suppose yubikeys could be part of the solution of getting away from the phone for auth.

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

I want to see a radically different approach to Phone user interfaces. It's just the same cookie cutter trends from Apple and Google.

TobTobXX6• 5 years ago

Take a look at sxmo[0]. It is inspired by the niche of tiling window managers and shortcut-driven workflow. I don't know if it is your style, but it qualifies as radiaclly different.

[0] https://sxmo.org/

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

This is awesome, thanks for sharing. I am a huge fan of suckless tools and despite of the fact that it is niche, I agree, it is radically different.

nottaylorswift4• 5 years ago

$400? Absolutely never.

aero-glide2• 5 years ago

If anyone from India bought a PinePhone previously and is no longer using it, feel free to ship it to me :D

bluecatswim• 5 years ago

Do they ship here? A lot of products shipping from China have trouble getting to India.

luis8• 5 years ago

I hope that someday a billionaire could donate a few hundred million to a product like this so we can finally have a true Linux phone that can compete with android and Linux.

What about finding 1 million nerds like me that would like to donate 100 to a crowdfunding campaign just to the software side of the phone?.

db5793• 5 years ago

This exists and is probably the closest thing to trying to do that. Stalled out well short of millions though...

https://puri.sm/fund-your-app/

LeifCarrotson• 5 years ago

It has a Quectel EG25-G modem.

I've not used this particular device, but I have used Quectel GNSS modules, and they've been a surprisingly helpful company to work with. I'm a nobody, and working with Sony, Trimble, or ublox has been an exercise in frustration; you have to convince a salesperson that you're a big company and you can sell thousands of devices in order to just read the datasheet. This one does have some of the documents locked behind an access request, but in my experience, they've been very generous with those grants.

The modem supports the following bands:

    LTE-FDD: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12/B13/B18/B19/B20/B25/B26/B28   
    LTE-TDD: B38/B39/B40/B41 
    WCDMA: B1/B2/B4/B5/B6/B8/B19  
    GSM: B2/B3/B5/B8

which is pretty good. Americans will want 4G bands B2, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 41, 66, and 71; this implements 9/15, it's missing bands 14, 17, 29, 30, 66, and 71. Those missing bands are either subsets or supersets of other bands (which could be interesting from a firmware perspective - will a tower with a band 66 antenna give this modem some of the central band 4 subset, or will it try to negotiate a channel that this can't access?), little-used ATT bands, or the 600 MHz T-mobile band 71, which has a wide rollout but poor device support.

gorgoiler• 5 years ago

Is an LTE band the same as a category? (As in the iPhone X was the first cat16 capable device, for example.)

opencl2• 5 years ago

No, the category is a performance specification (higher category is faster), the band is the frequency of the radio signal.

zeta0134• 5 years ago

My biggest question is, if I buy this phone today, with AT&T allow it on their network? My gut says no, they've been brandishing an ugly whitelist around for their big LTE push in February...

username1902• 5 years ago

Nope, even before February they won't let you use the device, unfortunately. They're shutting down "incompatible" (non-whitelisted) devices and shipping out anything from $50 to used flagship replacements (pre-activated, so as soon as you receive the new one, your existing one will be shut off).

Unfortunately T-Mobile isn't a great option for this phone either, because the phone lacks band 71 (T-Mobile's only nationwide low-band). It may work well in some areas, but have no coverage in others. Verizon has a sort of pseudo-whitelist; you probably will have to activate a whitelisted phone and then swap the SIM, but it may work.

https://www.att.com/idpassets/images/support/wireless/Device...

swiley3• 5 years ago

I've been using a Pinephone on At&t's network since August last year.

username1902• 5 years ago

will a tower with a band 66 antenna give this modem some of the central band 4 subset, or will it try to negotiate a channel that this can't access?

Here in the US (and likely in other places), carriers use MFBI[0] to solve this issue - it lets them broadcast both AWS-1 (as B4 and B66) and AWS-3 (as B66 only).

This first came into use when AT&T wanted to use B17 (Lower 700MHz blocks B-C) for their LTE network, rather than B12 (Lower 700MHz A-C). This prevented users from bringing their phones to smaller carriers (T-Mobile and US Cellular), who had significant 700A holdings. The FCC eventually pushed ATT to use both B12 and B17.

little-used ATT bands

This phone likely wouldn't work on AT&T anyway - despite California's SB822 [1] forbidding it, they whitelist only specific devices on their network, and can go as far as soft blocking your account if you have one that is incompatible. I've linked the compatible phone list[2] below.

SB822's net neutrality provision has already been upheld in court (AT&T subscribers lost "data-free TV" on AT&T owned platforms because of it), but it remains to be seen whether other provisions (bans on tethering restrictions or device whitelisting, for instance) will be upheld as well.

That said, one nitpick I'd have is that these bands aren't necessarily "little-used" - B14 is FirstNet spectrum, and AT&T is currently rolling it out to a point where it reaches 99% of the population indoors. That's a strong commitment, and the band's support for HPUE means it can support coverage further than others at a similar frequency. B30 is WCS, which AT&T uses for capacity in a lot of places - but at 2300MHz it's not particularly useful for coverage. B17 is irrelevant due to MFBI and B29 is supplemental downlink (only useful for capacity).

It's important to think about the carrier aggregation combos that this device supports too - for folks who live in cities, carrier aggregation means a significantly more usable experience when the networks are congested. I don't see a supported list for that modem online, but it would depend on which are enabled in firmware anyway.

600 MHz T-mobile band 71, which has a wide rollout but poor device support.

As for T-Mobile; Band 71 is necessary in a lot of places, because they've been spectrum constrained for a long time. Until the 2017 auction for this 600MHz spectrum (which was rebanded from Digital TV service), they had no nationwide low-band holdings (unlike AT&T, who held many 850MHz Cellular licenses from decades ago, and Verizon, who won nationwide licenses to the 700MHz Upper C block in 2008). In 2015, they picked up licenses in the the Lower 700MHz range, mostly exclusive to A block - but they acquired almost none in US Cellular markets (much of the midwest, and parts of the northeast/northwest).

It's difficult to build out a network on midband alone - cell sites must be spaced far closer, and in-building coverage is very poor. This was one of T-Mobile's main limiting factors for a long time, and they didn't truly resolve it until that 2017 auction.

T-Mobile had a reputation for a long time for dropping service as soon as you entered a large building - this is why. Physics mean that lower frequencies are useful to telcos because they travel further, while higher frequencies are useful because they can carry more data.

The post-auction DTV transition wasn't short - it happened over 9 or 10 phases, which extended from 2018 until early 2020 (and were then extended again, due to the pandemic). This is part of why phones seem to have poor support - the 600MHz band is not widely used for cellular outside of the US and Canada even today, so it's common on popular phones made for those markets[3], but not in more niche devices like the PinePhone.

[0] Multiple Frequency Band Indicator (https://www.phonescoop.com/glossary/term.php?gid=551) [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml... [2] https://www.att.com/idpassets/images/support/wireless/Device... [3] https://www.tmoband71.com/

ece• 5 years ago

B71 and this would be an instant-buy from me, though I might still pick it up.

barbacoa• 5 years ago

Question

Why are projects like this starting from scratch and not forking from the abandoned Ubuntu phone OS?

CameronNemo9• 5 years ago

I suspect Pine ships Manjaro ARM because that distro will apply nearly any patch to the kernel if it makes something work, no matter how hacky or unsustainable the patch is. Right now their kernel has 43 patches, and they are not even organized or annotated well.

https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/packages/core/linux

TheUnelisted5• 5 years ago

They ship Manjaro ARM because the people behind PINE64 are manjaro fans and they think that Manjaro has a good business setup. It would have been much nicer to have PostmarketOS shipped stock.

opan5• 5 years ago

I got the UB Ports Community Edition of the PinePhone and found Ubuntu Touch to be a very unpleasant experience and not at all what I signed up for. Luckily postmarketOS was exactly what I wanted and I moved to that within a week or so of owning the device.

Ubuntu Touch mounts stuff read-only, pushes you into using webapps, discourages using normal shell stuff like you would on a desktop GNU/Linux system, and has some poorly-working container system for if you wanna use shell stuff. It honestly felt worse than using Termux on an Android phone.

With pmOS you can install nvim, firefox, mpv, minetest... Things just work how you'd expect. It's like a single board computer (raspberry pi, etc.) that comes with a screen and other things already attached. You can ssh into it and update your packages all at once. It's really nice.

I think it's a stretch to say they're starting from scratch, but if you just mean the UI, Manjaro supports Lomiri (the UI from Ubuntu Touch) while also giving you a more normal OS experience. I'm glad to have some diversity in the desktop environment. Phosh is one of the more polished options, but has the issue of being GNOME-flavored and having all the issues you'd see with regular GNOME. Plasma Mobile feels more Android-like and familiar, but is still rough around the edges. Eventually it will hopefully be as good as Phosh and people can choose whatever they like the look and feel of more.

djent6• 5 years ago

Pine64 itself is a hardware company. The software side is community-driven, and UBports (the old Ubuntu phone OS) is one of the operating systems you can install on your PinePhone.

filmgirlcw2• 5 years ago

This isn’t for me and I don’t ever expect Linux phones to actually take off, but I’m heartened that Pine64 exists and that they are doing this stuff.

I have a Pinebook that I got as a toy machine and was very impressed with the execution. And unlike Purism, Pine64 has good customer/developer communication and isn’t making impossible-to-keep promises about deliverability or even capabilities.

So not for me, but I’m glad this sort of project exists.

md8z8• 5 years ago

I don't have any comments on the Purism customer support because I haven't bought their phone, but as a Pinephone owner it's good to have them around. Purism has been investing a lot more in the software side of things. They work well with upstream. Their new projects are good too, phosh and libhandy came from Purism and are both extremely useful on the Pinephone.

GeckoEidechse• 5 years ago

Same. I may have bought a PinePhone but it's running mobian with phosh, so all the heavy lifting to get a working phone UI was done by Purism including GTK libraries like libhandy (now libadwaita).

I'm ever grateful for their work.

filmgirlcw2• 5 years ago

I’m not trying to discount Purism’s software work, but hearing so many people wait four plus years to have phones delivered or more than a year for a laptop - unable to get refunds, it leaves a bad taste. My own limited experience is that I wound up on their press list and then they sent me an unsolicited request to “invest” in their company (by way of a convertible note…lol, no thanks) and apparently they’ve done this to customers they still owe products to.

So it’s cool they contribute to upstream. Still strikes me as a very poorly run business.

pengaru2• 5 years ago

Disappointed they didn't take this opportunity to make hardware switches more conveniently accessible without removing the rear cover, like the Librem 5.

Maybe that's not such a priority when you're fully aware the thing isn't actually usable as a daily driver one might be regularly toggling cell/wifi/camera on.

megous13• 5 years ago

Compatibility with all the pinephone back covers and the upcoming keyboard is more important, I guess.

nightski• 5 years ago

Nokia is re-releasing their 6310 phone this year and honestly I'm more tempted to go down that path at this point. Just a regular, reliable phone. The most painful thing for me at this point will probably be authenticator apps.

That said the pine phone looks really cool and I hope they succeed. Mobile Linux is going to be such a large uphill battle without huge investments. But with Google/Apple having compensation packages amounting in the 300k-500k+ per year you'd think there would be room for a competitor in there somewhere.

[1] https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-6310

busymom02• 5 years ago

Does the Nokia allow you to load mp3 files and play them? That would solve it for me.

rjsw2• 5 years ago

All of the HMD/Nokia feature phones can play mp3 files.

baby-yoda• 5 years ago

is there a roadmap for Nokia feature phones? would take an updated 6310 but would really love an e71/72 successor with modern features.

slim• 5 years ago

6300 has kaios. It should have the authenticator apps in store.

wott• 5 years ago

Unfortunately Nokia is just a brand now, in the hands of a Chinese company which sells rather quickly and cheaply developed products. The phones which are sold under this brand are often buggy and never updated. Some run Series 30+, some run KaiOS, some run Android derivatives.

The landscape of dumb/features phones is worse now than it was 10 years ago, which is a pity. For example, jut imagine that it is hard these days to get one which does predictive typing right... or that the cameras are worse than 10 years ago.

timwaagh• 5 years ago

I'd expect the battery performance to suffer. Android did a lot of things to optimize that vis a vis 'normal' linux.

smokelegend• 5 years ago

4GB mem.....? Really 4GB? That's it?

Would it really have been that bad to at least offer a 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB Memory upgrade.

Just feels like a huge let down. I get it the price of electronics(i.e. memory) is more expensive, but this makes it look like a joke in comparison with other "phones".

And if it were marketed as a mini computer 4GB of ram isn't saying much. Hexacore processor, 128GB Emmc storage awesome but then I read 4GB of ram and it's like a smack in the face. If this is to be a "flagship" for years to come, I'm really disappointed they went with limited memory.

Would I pay $699 instead of $399 for more memory... yeah I would

cammikebrown• 5 years ago

My iPhone 12 (4 GB RAM) is usually faster than my Windows PC (16 GB, Ryzen 2600).

nsonha2• 5 years ago

is that a joke? they run completely different things

busymom02• 5 years ago

iOS has always handles memory much better than other competitors. Even simple apps I develop for iOS use lesser RAM than the same thing on Android.

CameronNemo9• 5 years ago

That is the limit for the rk3399 SoC. I'm surprised they did not wait for the rk3588, or just use a Mediatek Dimensity SoC.

If you are based in Europe, you may be interested in the Fairphone 4, which has 6 or 8 GB of RAM.

opan5• 5 years ago

MediaTek is horribly hostile to free software and would be a terrible fit in something like this. MediaTek is the reason the Gemini PDA couldn't do what the PinePhone is doing despite making some similar claims.

As for not waiting for a newer Rockchip part, it sounds like they are making it clear this is not a second generation PinePhone, just a more powerful version of what we already had. There will likely be a proper second generation with more major changes later on.

bluGill9• 5 years ago

Pine64 has other CPUs they can work with, but they are not well supported yet. I wouldn't be surprised to see another phone rev with a much better CPU in the future once the Quarts-64 line starts working well. Right now the people who can do that work already have plenty of hardware to work with, while people who can do phone work really want a somewhat faster CPU now.

nsonha2• 5 years ago

The spec is so unimpressive. I don't know about other people but I'm not getting a Linux phone for minimalism, I'm getting one that could host all my personal computing need and even replace a desktop.

drewda• 5 years ago

I recall seeing pictures and notes about a PinePhone with a physical keyboard. Is that actually under development as well? Or is that just someone's experiment?

bluGill9• 5 years ago

Yes, someone else posed a link to the full update elsewhere. The keyboard should be shipping soon.

Or you can use a USB-c adapter to use any USB keyboard today.

megous13• 5 years ago

It was delayed several times because of repeated issues with the quality of the keyboard membrane.

djent6• 5 years ago

It is frustrating to me that despite the blunt verbiage about it being a beta device for software and hardware developers, people even here are griping about it being not ready for everyday use. If a free and open-source mobile operating system is missing software support for a feature you want, please contribute to its development.

542458• 5 years ago

Part of the problem is that the meaning of “beta” has gotten extremely diluted, and is often used as a CYA rather than an actual indicator of where the software is in the dev cycle. Gmail was in “public beta” for what, five years? Game companies routinely give out “alpha” access that’s really more of a pre-release test and hype tool.

officeplant7• 5 years ago

As a owner of many pine64 products I wish there was a clear path to learning how to contribute. My last time coding was C++ class over 16 years ago and I wish I had some sort of idea on how to get started with hobby programming in my spare time as an adult.

Edit// Especially since I've jumped on the ARM bandwagon and replaced my desktop with an M1 mac and my laptop with a Pinebook Pro.

kop3163• 5 years ago

Heh. Contributing to open source is....interesting. Pine64 really seems to only do the hardware aspect, everything else is up to others.

I guess I would ask: how do you want to contribute? Is there a specific niche you want to help fix? That's how I got involved, I wanted MMS (and later visual voicemail) for my Pinephone.. Or perhaps there's a specific project you like that needs help, or theres a particular bug that annoys you in a FOSS project. Those may be the best ways to get involved to help.

bluGill9• 5 years ago

Mostly it is you just need to dig in and make false starts until you figure it out.

djent6• 5 years ago

It certainly depends on what feature or what app you would like to work on. Mobian and Manjaro are both on GitLab, and the public is able to create an account. Issues there may be marked Help Wanted or similar.

In regard to motivation to continue programming, that can be the most difficult. Overall if you are proud of your work and find it useful yourself, you will probably continue the habit of contributing and supporting your code.

seniorivn• 5 years ago

go smaller, if u use some open source software check it's repositories and community forums and find something that people don't like to do

documentation is definitely a candidate also automated tests

TobTobXX6• 5 years ago

btw, being on arm makes Pinephone development easier, since you don't have to cross compile.

blihp• 5 years ago

Just pick something that bothers you or you think is missing and start working on it. I'd recommend something application, as opposed to system, level to get started. That way you can develop using something like Python and not worry about lots of other dependencies on whatever you're working on.

There generally isn't much in the way of formal organization in the open source world... just scratch an itch that you have. There are relatively few people working on things specific to Linux on mobile so even a modest contribution can have a big impact. For example, the developer of the Megapixels camera app, which is a vast improvement over what existed previously but still needs much work, just wanted a better camera app.

ognarb• 5 years ago

Create apps! This is the most needed. We created a tutorial for Kirigami here: https://develop.kde.org/docs/kirigami/. There are also a few tutorials for GTK/libhandy with e.g. https://tuxphones.com/tutorial-developing-responsive-linux-s...

Also join the developer channels on matrix: #plasmamobile:kde.org (not sure that the address for the GNOME one)

unexpected• 5 years ago

I feel like programmers have become "soft". I bet the old guard is okay with something like this - a lot of C, C++, assembly skills - this is what it meant to mess around with computers!

Now, you can just be modifying CSS and call yourself a programmer. You get one of these devices, and you're sorely disappointed!

no_time• 5 years ago

As the complexity of our every day devices increase, less and less people are capable of contributing anything meaningful to an OS like Linux, let alone in their free time. It also doesn't help that the abundance of high level languages discourages learning about computer internals in younger generations.

Or that we indeed became softies lol.

twis• 5 years ago

The pool of programmers has grown. There are more good programmers than ever, but the barrier to entry is also lower. It isn't necessary to pass through that kind of trial by fire anymore.

djent6• 5 years ago

I don't think the elitism here is necessary or even the root of the issue of code contributions. The apps currently present in these PinePhone operating systems were developed and are supported by knowledgeable and hardworking PinePhone users, but the fewer developers there are, the more limited the support is.

marcellus23• 5 years ago

a lot of C, C++, assembly skills - this is what it meant to mess around with computers!

I can't believe this is getting upvoted on HN. What kind of gatekeeping elitist bullshit is this?

spaetzleesser• 5 years ago

From my experience a “beta” should be ready for daily use but some bugs should be expected. If it’s really unstable call it ”alpha”.

robbedpeter• 5 years ago

How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver? I see the fragmented approach on the software side as a major hindrance to the goal of achieving a device that can be used by a normal person as a reasonable replacement for other smart phones.

I check in on it every l every 6 months or so, update my pinephone and give it a few days. So far, it doesn't meet reliability or usability for serious use.

It's a high caliber foot gun of a methodology - if they corralled all of the effort and enthusiasm currently scattered amongst a dozen (!) different os's and communities, they could establish a high quality functional baseline.

The hardware is great. The mission is great. The software is fragmented and scattered and missing the force multipliers that focused collaborative development could bring. There's not enough to riff on, toomuch goes wrong in complicated ways, and so the device is an exercise in frustration instead of a passion project.

bluGill9• 5 years ago

How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver?

Zero. What is needed is a few hundred developers writing actually code to make it useful. The enthusiasts are at best nice to haves. You can blur the line if you write good bug reports, but right now the pinephone doesn't need end users.

The above will change over time. Millions of users would be enough to force carriers to support activating it on their network, something that developers cannot do (at least not legally). Likewise large numbers of users would be enough to those banking apps written. However today millions of users wouldn't make any difference to the important parts of making it work (except in so far as users sometimes become developers)

don-code• 5 years ago

How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver?

I know your question was rhetorical, but when I think about this, it took close to 20 years of Linux maturing on the desktop before I felt comfortable handing a family member a laptop running Linux. As an enthusiast, I started running it much earlier, but everyday tasks like "printing" or "using Wi-Fi" prevented it from being a daily driver.

Personal computing, though, had a much deeper hacker culture, that encouraged pushing the hardware to its limits, and doing new and novel things with it. Progress stemmed from that (Windows including BSD sockets, for instance). I've never seen anything similar in the phone ecosystem - as soon as you play outside of the walled garden, you drop off into fringe territory. And the PinePhone, as much as I love it, is by definition outside of the walled garden.

I'm not sure, given the culture around phones, we might ever get to the point of it being viable.

deaddodo• 5 years ago

I don't know if fragmented is the right word. Just like desktop Linux, mobile Linux has pretty much settled on one major standard (Phosh a la Gnome) and slightly less popular alternative (Plasma Mobile a la KDE). Sure, you can go about customizing it to your whims, but fragmentation isn't nearly that bad, especially since the distribution options are so much lesser.

The problem really is getting the commercial software people want on the phone. But if you just want to use it as a phone (e.g. no special apps or mobile games), it does most of that in a pretty streamlined manner (albeit, rougher than the commercial options).

novok4• 5 years ago

TBH I think having a flutter port for this operating mobile system is probably the most likely way for it to succeed. That way you can do a flutter app and it will work on this too, while still having mainline OS support.

Then you would need to fill in some common services like push and such.

amelius3• 5 years ago

One problem is even governments support only the duopoly of smartphone makers. For example, try downloading a "Covid App" for a Linux phone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_apps

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

How many hundreds or thousands

Hundreds of millions. That's how many you need for mainstream apps to be built.

Even Microsoft couldn't get past that hurdle and money is not a problem for them.

Android compatibility might help somewhat but it will undermine the usefulness of the open platform by introducing the very things it fights against. The OS is not the only problem. Apps can still datamine the Android layer then. You won't be much better off than with a privacy focused Android fork.

matheusmoreira2• 5 years ago

How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver?

I just need a WhatsApp client. Enthusiasts once made one but WhatsApp started banning their users.

sangnoir• 5 years ago

I check in on it every l every 6 months or so, update my pinephone and give it a few days.

Why did you buy the phone? They pretty much shout that they are only targeting developers who can bring about your dream. They never promised what you're expecting of them.

if they corralled all of the effort and enthusiasm currently scattered amongst a dozen (!) different OSes and communities, they could establish a high quality functional baseline.

If Apple and Microsoft combined efforts on Mac OS/Windows, they'd do amazing things too - but that's not going to happen either: once formed, organizations expend significant energy in self-perpertuating. Perhaps you could pick a promising project (or a couple of complementary ones), and support them technically or financially.

mixmastamyk5• 5 years ago

Unfortunately I'm fully booked, and would gladly pay an extra hundred or two for someone else to do it. Not clear on who that is yet.

bluGill9• 5 years ago

Unless you are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars though your money isn't really useful. Developers are on the higher end of the income curve and so few people alone can afford to hire them like that. You can donate a few hundred so several projects, it will make a difference, but thousands of other people need to do the same before they can hire even one person (and the first people hired will do more IT or administrative work that needs to be done)

seba_dos16• 5 years ago

I happen to work for a company that employs a team of people to do just that, which allows me and others to work on mobile GNU/Linux ecosystem full-time. It's called Purism, and the product that pays for it is called Librem 5.

loser777• 5 years ago

I bought a "beta edition" regular PinePhone and it seemed anything but "beta." Random crashes after boot every 30 seconds, even with "workarounds" such as patching the memory frequency (really?). This may have been a hardware defect but one of the nice things about calling everything a "beta" as an excuse for the flakiness I'll never know. It was essentially a paperweight, not something that would enable me to become a "contributor."

sieabah• 5 years ago

Sounds like a beta to me. Perhaps you're thinking of a release candidate?

turtlebits• 5 years ago

The product page doesn’t include the word “beta” anywhere.

I wouldn’t even call it a phone if it can’t act as a phone out of the box, let alone use the “pro” moniker.

Why is it not labeled as a development board with a touchscreen and cell modem?

OJFord• 5 years ago

It says it's available for developers.

hypertele-Xii• 5 years ago

You mean the thing called PRO isn't ready for professional use?

ghoward3• 5 years ago

Mini Ask HN:

The comments here seem to say that PinePhone and friends are not ready to be daily drivers or even occasional drivers. I think that's fine.

However, I do want to support these people and their work. I also need an ARM machine to do tests on (for portability of software and such), so I'm thinking of buying this Pro version. Yes, I'll spend a lot more than I need to, but I really want to support them.

So question: are the PinePhone and friends good enough to do development on? And not even normal development; just downloading, building, and testing?

freeopinion• 5 years ago

Yes

ghoward3• 5 years ago

Thank you!

I have more questions if you don't mind.

Is the experience alright? Are there any gotchas that I would need to know?

djent6• 5 years ago

A Raspberry Pi may be more useful for your ARM build server related tasks, as the PinePhone runs on battery, has only one USB C port, etc. If you are developing applications for the PinePhone or other mobile viewports, then absolutely the PinePhone is for you.

ghoward3• 5 years ago

The battery and port is a fair point. Thank you.

bluGill9• 5 years ago

Instead of a phone, pine64 makes a lot of other computers designed more for what you want. They are cheaper and have cases that make it a lot easier to use for what you want. (I'm typing this on a pinebook pro laptop from them)

The only reason to buy a phone vs something else from them is the phone donates a bit of money to some other project. But you can directly donate to KDE or whatever and get the same result.

TobTobXX6• 5 years ago

I have a PP CE and I'm trying to do Rust GUIs. Now the Rust compiler is known to be slow, and with C (and maybe using an optimized compiler like tcc), YMMV. But Rust development (at least when using any amount of dependencies) is unbearable.

I have hopes for getting cross-compilation working, but no luck so far...

seba_dos16• 5 years ago

I wouldn't compile things on the PinePhone because of its performance, but I do it just fine on the Librem 5, so I imagine PinePhone Pro should be fine too as long as it doesn't excessively thermal throttle (it may be tricky to achieve that though).

wetpaws• 5 years ago

ctrl+f battery 3000mAh

sigh

darkwater• 5 years ago

Is there any real technical reason that forbid a non Android underdog phone maker like Pine64 to be able to run banking apps as MFA devices? I mean, I don't see any tech issue for this phone to provide a secure enclave chip (I mean, like one in a yubikey) and enroll in a standard WebAuthn workflow. I'm specifically looking at UE banks regulations that forces me to use my Android phone to permit/deny any operation instead of letting me use if I want my yubikey to do the same in the browser

codezero• 5 years ago

This looks neat and I appreciate how clear they are about expectation setting. With that said it's disappointing to see only Bluetooth 4.1. A lot of modern devices rely on features from 5.0 either for low power usage, or bi-directional high quality audio.

It seems fine for a general productivity device, but not for things like video conferencing, or media consumption, which I guess aligns with their inability to support DRM.

segalord• 5 years ago

Just give us accesible hardware kill switches on the side and I'm sold

ocdtrekkie4• 5 years ago

Eh, I disagree. I'd hate to accidentally enable one of the things shut off by those switches. Software controls are likely adequate for day-to-day "I just don't want tracking here or there" events, but the physical hardware switch should give you an "I don't want this happening ever" comfort, which is best done by something more secured behind a cover.

justinclift• 5 years ago

You've got to be frigging kidding. Literally just received a PinePhone earlier this week.

And now it's obsolete?

Not happy at all. :(

rjsw2• 5 years ago

I don't consider the original PinePhone obsolete, I'm still planning to get one at some point even after the announcement today.

Suspect you can sell your one on to someone if you want.

megous13• 5 years ago

Pinephone is supposed to be manufactured for 5 years since the initial release. Hardly obsolete.

liendolucas• 5 years ago

I've recently ordered a PinePhone. At 200 bucks I consider it a donation. I encourage other people to also buy one, even if it is not what you expect. This along the Framework laptops is definitely the way to think about consumer products. I wish appliances were also manufactured open source. Imagine fridges, microwaves, toasters, etc. Things that you can open, understand and learn from and maybe eventually build your own thing if you have the will and time to do so.

megous13• 5 years ago

I don't think Pine64 donates part of the profit anymore from the Beta sales. I think this change was announced in one of the previous community updates.

I guess you mean "donation" to Pine64 to encourage them to do more fun HW development? :)

second--shift• 5 years ago

If I buy this phone today, in {6 months, 1 year, 5 years} when Linux is ready for phones, will I be supported in that future still?

I'd hate to buy this phone to support a project and then never have access to what I wished the product was.

Program_Install• 5 years ago

As a concept this is fine, mainstream will never happen with the current set of societal priorities. It’s not flashy enough, it requires some tinkering, and my friends won’t think it’s cool enough. Unfortunate, because at least in my opinion this is the direction we should all be going.

blunte• 5 years ago

It was a joy to read their website, particularly where they describe "who is it for" and "who is it not for". Clear and honest. No excuses, presumably no lies.

I wish all product websites were like this.

SergeAx• 5 years ago

Got my Pinephone today. Currently the most usable modus operandi is to install openssh server and remote from desktop) Getting so much fun anyway, worth every buck.

I wonder. Firefox has Android version with mobile-optimized look and feel. I beleive it shares a lot of code with desktop version. How hard will it be to build that version for Linux graphics desktop?

seba_dos16• 5 years ago

I beleive it shares a lot of code with desktop version.

Except for the engine, it does not. It's a very Android-specific app. It used to be platform-agnostic (early mobile Firefox ran even on Nokia N900), but that has changed many years ago already.

jokoon• 5 years ago

I will ask this question again: why not use android instead, since android is open source? Building another mobile OS from scratch seems ill advised, or what am I missing?

If android is open source, it's not google-dependent. I think there's something that I don't understand, but I bet that the core of android can still be used by any phone manufacturer, so I don't really see why pinephone is making their own OS.

Does that mean that android, despite being open source, is hardly usable/customizable by developers, or too complex/bloated?

jt_thurs_82• 5 years ago

There's a couple of big reasons, as I see it:

- licensing: some people, myself included, think a FOSS/Libre license such as LGPL/GPL3 is better for people and society. Android is mostly apache, which means it's not resistant at all to a company "stealing" it without giving back to the community.

- dependency on google: like it or not, key components of android are completely maintained by google. That means that the future of an open platform is at the whims of one organization. Sure, you could fork, but android is a massive project and a small team could hardly keep up.

- "the core of android can still be used by any phone manufacturer": android, and the related IPs, is pretty firmly in the control of the US government. A lot of funding for non-android mobile OSes comes from other governments interested in a platform and support that is unencumbered from five eyes states

My personal opinion? Having more platforms is good, as are more compatibility layers. Android is more than just an OS or a platform, it's a set of ABIs for running apps that's used by over a billion people.

matheusmoreira2• 5 years ago

The improved hardware seems great!! Hope to see a PinePhone one day with the best mobile hardware available! Best processor, best GPU, best touch screen, best camera, best sensors... A flagship PinePhone.

PinePhone Pro Announced

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