10mo ago

"But my friend runs a PinePhone as a daily driver"

You're viewing a single thread.

393 comments

I tried to daily drive a PinePhone for a long time, then a PinePhone Pro. It is not really ready. Too many dropped/failed to answer calls and missed texts. I love having a fully capable Linux PC in my pocket and am typing this on my OnePlus 6T with postmarketOS, but as a phone it is not ideal. My setup now is that I have a OnePlus 6 with stock Android and my main SIM for doing phone stuff (calls, texts, some apps, Bluetooth handsfree) and the OnePlus 6T with pmOS for Linux experimentation and doing pocket computer things (browsing, coding, SSH, VPN, testing Waydroid). I got a second cheap SIM so I can have service on both devices, but as the 6T with pmOS can't receive calls in 4G mode it really doesn't work as a phone. The PinePhones can work as a phone but the modem dropouts make it less than ideal and their battery life and performance leave much to be desired while the OP6T has fairly good performance and battery life on pmOS.
- I daily drive mine and haven't noticed any missed calls, but maybe I'm just lucky or it's the Pro version that has the issue. The battery life can be increased with extended cases, but the performance will always suck and there are lots of annoying software issues too.
  
  I had call drops on both the original and the Pro. They both use the same USB-attached modem and the modem has (had?) an issue where it would lose USB connection to the main processor sometimes, so you would just randomly lose cell connectivity. Sometimes the USB connection would restart right away and sometimes it would not and you'd have to restart eg25 manager to reboot the modem.
  
  Ah, I see. It's often hard to tell if some issue is still there if I don't experience it myself. Some things get solved eventually, but you have to run the latest software (and I'm not) and then test things to see it. I think nowadays people recommend to install the libre modem firmware, so that's also another variable.
  
  I had this issue using the libre modem firmware on both phones. I'm not sure if it's a modem side issue or a Linux side issue. I haven't used either PinePhone with a SIM card in almost a year though so my knowledge could be outdated.
  
  Thanks for clarifying. I also use the libre firmware and sometimes the modem doesn't wake up from suspend when I unlock the phone (I sometimes also have to restart wifi with a script). So maybe I just didn't notice the missed calls or something.
  Lately I found that there is some USB controller and I saw some messages about it when running dmesg:
  
  So maybe that causes the modem issues. When I use the keyboard addon, I can't get any USB device to work when plugging it to the phone and I suspect that might be a connected problem too. I don't know much about hardware, tough.

393 comments