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  • [X] doubt

    (I say that as a PinePhone owner)

    • What are we doubting? That their friend runs a pinephone? I agree.

      I have a pinephone and pinephone pro. and neither one has felt good enough to be a daily driver. but then again, i havent really tried using it since like february 2022 when I got the pro. maybe the software has gotten a ton better since then. (I dont have high hopes. Drew Devault has a real nice blog post about pine64 chasing devs away: here)

      Realistically all I need in a phone is password manager, phone app, camera, signal. And I dont think I ever had any of those things work in a "actually reliable and smooth enough for daily driving" state.

      • I used a pinephone as a daily driver for a year. It served me fine. Waydroid for any android apps I absolutely couldn't go without.

        • I believe you, but the hard part about "It was good enough for me" is that an old Nokia brick phone is "good enough" for some people. I have no idea what your standards are.

          Maybe there's a way to get it to that state. But the lock screen on my pinephone pro stutters, much less "making apps work". I was able to do all the things I wanted to do, it just was a horrible experience.

          I bought two pinephones. I REALLY want this to work out. I'm not some sort of anti-linux phone antagonist. I've tried to make it work personally. I would love to know what the setup (what OS, phosh, etc?) I need to make my devices work great, if they are truly that usable.

          edit: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro#State_of_the_software

          The "official" state of the software from pine64.org itself states the modem crashes often and results in missed calls, camera still a WIP, and no push notifications when the phone sleeps (so the phone just never sleeps, thus the terrible battery, i presume).

          "Good enough" feels like it's only true if you're the kind of person who otherwise argues that smart phones are bad, and not if you're the kind of person who uses your phone as a multi-tool in your pocket.

          • I distro-hopped a bit, but if I'm remembering correctly I settled on Mobian with Phosh. I don't like desktop Gnome but Phosh is nice IMO. It's also smooth if a bit slow due to the age of the hardware. It's not a stuttery slowness. Plasma mobile seems a bit further behind in that regard.

            This was an original PinePhone, not the Pro, so maybe the community simply had more time to mature the software (there's not exactly many developers). I still have it but the screen is smashed and I need to replace it.

            Note: this was over a year ago, things have most likely changed, maybe Plasma mobile is where Phosh is now.

          • I believe you, but the hard part about “It was good enough for me” is that an old Nokia brick phone is “good enough” for some people.

            The main difference is that the old Nokia phone runs proprietary software. You also can't run any desktop programs or apps on it. But PinePhone requires GNU/Linux experience and sometimes workarounds are needed.

            The “official” state of the software from pine64.org itself states the modem crashes often and results in missed calls

            I haven't noticed any missed calls on my original PinePhone, so this is surprising. I don't have the Pro version to check, but the cited bug report is a year old, so it might be no longer the case. On the other hand, this recent blog post says there are some issues with the modem and some other strange bugs. That would be a shame, because it's been 2 years since its release and I was hoping to switch to it at some point.

            camera still a WIP

            I think there is only one guy working on the software. Here is his last blog post, if you are curious: https://blog.brixit.nl/fixing-the-megapixels-sensor-linearization/

            no push notifications when the phone sleeps (so the phone just never sleeps, thus the terrible battery, i presume).

            There are no push notifications. So you won't be notified when you receive a message in some app, while the phone is suspended. As a workaround you can use a script to wake the phone up periodically. Short battery life is caused by an old and inefficient SoC, not by software, so there is nothing we can do about that other than getting a bigger case and a bigger battery (some people do that).

            • The main difference is that the old Nokia phone runs proprietary software.

              The point was that different people have different standards. There are a lot of people on places like HN that will say things like "People use their phone too much, a Nokia has everything that everyone needs! That's what I use!" without accounting for other people's use cases. That's a very self centric view. I need X, some people might need X+Y or X-Z. If you have to hedge your "it's good enough" with "if you can handle these 100 workarounds" then it's more accurate to say "it's not good enough, unless you're ok dealing with these 100 workarounds."

              I haven’t noticed any missed calls on my original PinePhone

              That's awesome. I rarely answer phone calls anyway, so that doesn't impact me much. This was purely reflective of the state of things. "Probably fine" and "definitely works" can be a MAJOR difference in the scope of daily driver readiness for most people.

              camera

              The camera on my pinephone actually opens and can take pictures. it just looks terrible. To the degree that I'm at least 75% sure that it's a sensor issue, and no amount of software tuning is going to bring the sensor up to the level of other phones. Considering my primary use for my phone is taking pictures, "the camera works, but its terrible" doesn't fit my use case (admittedly, this may be a specific to me use case).

              no push notifications

              Oh. yeah. That's probably a deal breaker for most people too.

              And to re-iterate. I can totally see this being a usable device. I own two. I've seen how it can perform. and I'm excited for the possibilities. It just feels a bit too jank for me still, and im pretty tolerant of jank. If other people are more tolerant than me, I applaud them.

              • The point was that different people have different standards.

                Ah, you are right about that. But I do wish that freedom was the main goal for people, because that's the point of the Free Software movement. Switching to GNU/Linux is inconvenient too and there might be things that a person won't be able to do on it. Obviously an average person won't be able to handle a PinePhone, so I don't have hope they will try (and they probably shouldn't), but an average GNU/Linux user might. It all depends on how much a person values freedom. But at the same time I understand that getting freedom is usually a gradual journey, which might take a lot of time.

                That’s awesome. I rarely answer phone calls anyway, so that doesn’t impact me much. This was purely reflective of the state of things. “Probably fine” and “definitely works” can be a MAJOR difference in the scope of daily driver readiness for most people.

                I also don't answer many phone calls, so it's possible I was just lucky or haven't noticed.

                The camera on my pinephone actually opens and can take pictures. it just looks terrible. To the degree that I’m at least 75% sure that it’s a sensor issue, and no amount of software tuning is going to bring the sensor up to the level of other phones. Considering my primary use for my phone is taking pictures, “the camera works, but its terrible” doesn’t fit my use case (admittedly, this may be a specific to me use case).

                If you are talking about the original PinePhone, then yes, it's a 5 megapixel camera and it will always be terrible. PinePhone Pro's camera is much better, though. There seems to be a lot of very technical stuff that goes into making pictures look good. For example stuff like auto-exposure and color correction. Here is a quote from the developer of the Megapixels camera app from the blog post that I linked:

                Making a piece of software that dumps camera frames from V4L2 into a file is not very difficult to do, that's only a few hundred lines for C code. Figuring out why the pictures look cheap is a way harder challenge.

                I have a separate camera for taking photos, but I understand the need to have one in a phone that you can take with you everywhere.

                Oh. yeah. That’s probably a deal breaker for most people too.

                Yeah, push notifications probably won't be solved for a while. There is some hope, though:

                Internal WDS (Wireless Data Service) Client (in BETA!, expect problems)
                Allows you to connect to the internet directly from the modem's userspace (only IPv4 for now, sorry!)
                Allows for always on networking in the modem no matter if your PinePhone is sleeping

                https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/releases/tag/0.7.4

      • I have all those things working well on a Librem 5

      • 2 years is a lot of time. Things have changed a lot since then. The community and Purism are the ones developing the software. Pine64 has nothing to do with it.

        Out of all the things you just mentioned, Signal is the only one that won't work, because it requires an Android/iOS app. You can't use it on desktop by itself either. But you could try running the Android version with Waydroid. I use Matrix instead.

        • I'm sure it has. Pine64 has nothing to do with it, but it's their hardware, so they should. And the point of Drew's blog was that they did a nice job of disincentivizing the community. so the community is smaller than it could have been.

          And "work" here being a shorthand for "work to satisfactory levels".

          The camera works on my pinephone, and it takes pictures that remind me of the digital camera I had in 1999 that saved images to floppy disks.

          Bitwarden would run, but it was running as a desktop app and was a pain to use (no lib handy here), and it obviously wasn't going to offer to auto fill across the entire OS.

          Phone worked, but I don't receive enough calls to validate it, and pine's own wiki states that the there are modem issues. It may be perfectly fine for me, but not something i fully trust, and that's a factor in acceptance.

          and signal I would assume I would have to waydroid. But I never got waydroid set up. Hopefully that's something that has gotten easier in the past 2 years. 2 years ago there was multiple hoops to jump through with installing kernel modules or something, and seeing a list of steps to take (and not just being able to install it from a repo in 1 go), when I was already dealing with performance issues, I just assumed it wasn't going to be worth it.

          Who knows, maybe I'll give it a try again and come to a more favorable "it's fine i guess, but still not as good as my 2017 android phone in any capacity except 'not google'"

          • Pine64 has nothing to do with it, but it’s their hardware, so they should.

            I agree. I wish we had better companies making GNU/Linux phones, but this is all we have for now. It's either Pine64 or Purism.

            The camera works on my pinephone, and it takes pictures that remind me of the digital camera I had in 1999 that saved images to floppy disks.

            Yeah, the original PinePhone has only a 5 megapixel camera. PinePhone Pro's camera is way better, but I'm not sure about the current state of software support. The author of the Megapixels camera app is working on a new, improved version, but it seems very complicated: https://blog.brixit.nl/fixing-the-megapixels-sensor-linearization/

            Bitwarden would run, but it was running as a desktop app and was a pain to use (no lib handy here), and it obviously wasn’t going to offer to auto fill across the entire OS.

            I use Gnome's Secrets (available in Mobian Bookworm). It works well on mobile, but I don't know about autofill. For 2fa you can use Gnome Authenticator (not available in Mobian Bookworm) or Numberstation (available in Mobian Bookworm).

            Phone worked, but I don’t receive enough calls to validate it, and pine’s own wiki states that the there are modem issues. It may be perfectly fine for me, but not something i fully trust, and that’s a factor in acceptance.

            You would just have to test it. I only have the original PinePhone with the libre modem firmware and I haven't noticed any missed calls, but I don't get a lot of calls in general. According to this recent blog post there seem to be some modem issues with PinePhone Pro (but I'm not sure if that includes missed calls): https://zerwuerfnis.org/daily-driving-the-pinephone-pro

            and signal I would assume I would have to waydroid. But I never got waydroid set up. Hopefully that’s something that has gotten easier in the past 2 years. 2 years ago there was multiple hoops to jump through with installing kernel modules or something, and seeing a list of steps to take (and not just being able to install it from a repo in 1 go), when I was already dealing with performance issues, I just assumed it wasn’t going to be worth it.

            Ah, that sounds painful. I've never used Waydroid, but a lot of people say it works well for them. I don't see it packaged in Debian or Mobian, but 2 years is a lot of time in software development, so maybe it's easier now. There is also some alternative Signal client called Axolotl. Some people use it, but I don't fully understand how it works, so you would have to investigate on your own.

            Who knows, maybe I’ll give it a try again and come to a more favorable “it’s fine i guess, but still not as good as my 2017 android phone in any capacity except ‘not google’”

            Yeah, it probably won't be as good. It requires GNU/Linux experience and some workarounds. But if you manage to set it up in a way that makes you use Android less, that would be pretty great.

393 comments