6 ms·

Software on Librem 5 and PinePhone Linux Phones Is Progressing Nicely

64 points by iamnothere 7y ago

danielscrubs 7y ago
The problem with Linux is that the UX and UI are always lackluster. How do we make people work on those parts as a hobby? Can we make UX/UI have their own demo-scene culture?
- solarkraft 7y ago
  I care about UX, but don't know how to influence development.
Tepix 7y ago
Thanks for posting this, I hadn't heard about the PinePhone at all. Very interesting price point ($149 for the 2GB version)! I just hope they can get the UI smooth and responsive. All UIs of Linux phones I've used in the past (Ubuntu Touch, OpenMoko) had a laggy UI which made them unpleasant to use even if you disregard all the other usability issues. And it wasn't the hardware's fault. The same phone wasn't slow when using Android instead of Ubuntu Touch. I'd rather have a more bland yet snappy UI than a lot of eye candy.
- jonquark 7y ago
  The Wayland based Jolla phones are very responsive in my opinion (uses Android and Jolla regularly)
  - Tepix 7y ago
    Good point, SailfishOS is snappy and smooth from what I remember.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  I think the problem is that if you want to have a smooth UI development costs go up exponentially. There are just a lot of details necessary to be addressed. Hard to do on low budget.
- gurkendoktor 7y ago
  I wonder if it would be easier for these devices to build most of their UI on top of Flutter. That way, these companies could focus on the lower levels of the stack, while developers can build (or port) apps using existing tooling.
neilv 7y ago
A potentially huge difference between the Purism Librem 5 and the Pine64 products is that Purism is emphasizing privacy and security. Both companies are based in countries believed to compel compromises sometimes, but my current gut feel is I'd rather have a Librem 5. I currently have a dumbphone, and a trail of nonworking PostmarketOS, Replicant, and FirefoxOS devices. If we could get the Librem 5 software working reasonably well atop PostmarketOS, that would provide a less-secure "budget" option for getting more people onto the platform, for people who can't swing several hundred dollars. Even were Purism to later introduce a budget device, open source and not being locked to their devices would be an encouraging sign for adopting the platform.
- megous 7y ago
  > A potentially huge difference between the Purism Librem 5 and the Pine64 products is that Purism is emphasizing privacy and security. Dunno, PinePhone is said to have physical switches too. Also all you need for privacy is complete control of the OS, which you will have on PinePhone (complete mainline Linux support, down to GPU drivers). It doesn't matter what country the HW vendor is from if the OS/bootloader is fully controlled by the user. Main thing that will hold PinePhone back initially is lack of suspend to ram support. There are some partial solutions (WIP crust firmware), bit it's not complete, yet. There's still time though. PinePhone will be the first smartphone I'll buy, regardless of SW support, as I'd like to play with the HW anyway. I already had plenty of fun with other mobile Allwinner SoCs in form of a A83T based tablet, and A64 is quite similar to that and very familiar to me. So all the SW I already wrote for the tablet will be easily re-targettable for PinePhone. It will be interesting to see how Pine64 will make it usable for regular people. But for me as a programmer, it's will be a very nice device that I'll be able to fully control and experiment with without any limits. Even the power management co-processor is fully user programmable and has support in gcc toolchain since gcc 9.1.
  - neilv 7y ago
    Hardware backdoors is one real thing (the hardware is mostly closed black boxes), and that's a concern on both devices. Cutoff switches, baseband isolation, etc. don't solve everything. BTW, that's great news about upstreamed kernel and toolchain support. IIUC, an earlier problem with some of those tablets was that there were hundreds of variations, and good luck getting a mainline kernel on any of them, or finding a second tablet if you got the first one booting with all the devices.
camjohnson26 7y ago
If these devices are useable it could start a movement away from Apple and Google’s ecosystems. Smart phones are no longer novel and iPhone releases don’t have the same excitement they used to. We’re getting to the point where the technology is cheap and developed enough that 3rd parties can develop their own, where before Apple and Google were the only projects with enough information to innovate on what was already out their. In the same way IBM used to dominate the computer market but now we have raspberry pi’s with just as much power but available for basically nothing.
jammygit 7y ago
I think v1 of these phones will be disappointing, but promising. If the projects survive to launch their v3s, I’ll get excited. If anyone on their teams is reading, the deal breaker for me is this: I need Authy, or an equiv, and Anki. Also need a step counter and my password manager to sync across devices easily. Probably slack too. Phone and texting also, but honestly the web browser would be secondary. Maps could be optional. If a new phone could provide that, I think I could safely buy it and be able to use it as a daily driver.

64 points by iamnothere 7y ago

The problem with Linux is that the UX and UI are always lackluster. How do we make people work on those parts as a hobby? Can we make UX/UI have their own demo-scene culture?

solarkraft 7y ago
I care about UX, but don't know how to influence development.

Tepix 7y ago

Thanks for posting this, I hadn't heard about the PinePhone at all. Very interesting price point ($149 for the 2GB version)! I just hope they can get the UI smooth and responsive. All UIs of Linux phones I've used in the past (Ubuntu Touch, OpenMoko) had a laggy UI which made them unpleasant to use even if you disregard all the other usability issues. And it wasn't the hardware's fault. The same phone wasn't slow when using Android instead of Ubuntu Touch. I'd rather have a more bland yet snappy UI than a lot of eye candy.

jonquark 7y ago
The Wayland based Jolla phones are very responsive in my opinion (uses Android and Jolla regularly)
- Tepix 7y ago
  Good point, SailfishOS is snappy and smooth from what I remember.
maxxxxx 7y ago
I think the problem is that if you want to have a smooth UI development costs go up exponentially. There are just a lot of details necessary to be addressed. Hard to do on low budget.
gurkendoktor 7y ago
I wonder if it would be easier for these devices to build most of their UI on top of Flutter. That way, these companies could focus on the lower levels of the stack, while developers can build (or port) apps using existing tooling.

neilv 7y ago

A potentially huge difference between the Purism Librem 5 and the Pine64 products is that Purism is emphasizing privacy and security. Both companies are based in countries believed to compel compromises sometimes, but my current gut feel is I'd rather have a Librem 5. I currently have a dumbphone, and a trail of nonworking PostmarketOS, Replicant, and FirefoxOS devices. If we could get the Librem 5 software working reasonably well atop PostmarketOS, that would provide a less-secure "budget" option for getting more people onto the platform, for people who can't swing several hundred dollars. Even were Purism to later introduce a budget device, open source and not being locked to their devices would be an encouraging sign for adopting the platform.

megous 7y ago
> A potentially huge difference between the Purism Librem 5 and the Pine64 products is that Purism is emphasizing privacy and security. Dunno, PinePhone is said to have physical switches too. Also all you need for privacy is complete control of the OS, which you will have on PinePhone (complete mainline Linux support, down to GPU drivers). It doesn't matter what country the HW vendor is from if the OS/bootloader is fully controlled by the user. Main thing that will hold PinePhone back initially is lack of suspend to ram support. There are some partial solutions (WIP crust firmware), bit it's not complete, yet. There's still time though. PinePhone will be the first smartphone I'll buy, regardless of SW support, as I'd like to play with the HW anyway. I already had plenty of fun with other mobile Allwinner SoCs in form of a A83T based tablet, and A64 is quite similar to that and very familiar to me. So all the SW I already wrote for the tablet will be easily re-targettable for PinePhone. It will be interesting to see how Pine64 will make it usable for regular people. But for me as a programmer, it's will be a very nice device that I'll be able to fully control and experiment with without any limits. Even the power management co-processor is fully user programmable and has support in gcc toolchain since gcc 9.1.
- neilv 7y ago
  Hardware backdoors is one real thing (the hardware is mostly closed black boxes), and that's a concern on both devices. Cutoff switches, baseband isolation, etc. don't solve everything. BTW, that's great news about upstreamed kernel and toolchain support. IIUC, an earlier problem with some of those tablets was that there were hundreds of variations, and good luck getting a mainline kernel on any of them, or finding a second tablet if you got the first one booting with all the devices.

camjohnson26 7y ago

If these devices are useable it could start a movement away from Apple and Google’s ecosystems. Smart phones are no longer novel and iPhone releases don’t have the same excitement they used to. We’re getting to the point where the technology is cheap and developed enough that 3rd parties can develop their own, where before Apple and Google were the only projects with enough information to innovate on what was already out their. In the same way IBM used to dominate the computer market but now we have raspberry pi’s with just as much power but available for basically nothing.

jammygit 7y ago

I think v1 of these phones will be disappointing, but promising. If the projects survive to launch their v3s, I’ll get excited. If anyone on their teams is reading, the deal breaker for me is this: I need Authy, or an equiv, and Anki. Also need a step counter and my password manager to sync across devices easily. Probably slack too. Phone and texting also, but honestly the web browser would be secondary. Maps could be optional. If a new phone could provide that, I think I could safely buy it and be able to use it as a daily driver.