4 ms·

I've already asked the question here and there but so far no good answer. I'm an old hacked : that is, I use a phone 99% of the time to send SMS and 1% of the t

by wiz21c 6y ago

I've already asked the question here and there but so far no good answer. I'm an old hacked : that is, I use a phone 99% of the time to send SMS and 1% of the time to give voice calls. Everybody test various things : youtube, browser, camera, consoles, various OS'es, etc. But does this pinephone can actually make phone calls (and receive phone calls) in a reliable way ? That's the only thing that prevents me from buying one. (if you look on the web, you'll find a handful of comments about actually receiving phone calls and they are worrying at best)

megous 6y ago
Yes, the HW can do that, and I've made them personally. Ubports will be able to make/receive calls soon if it does not already. Though if you just want a phone for calling, you can get a dumbphone. I have that and it beats any smartphone anytime, including pinephone. "Charge and forget about for a month" is an unbeatable feature for people who don't call much or receive many calls. I also developed a routing configuration for pinephone audio https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html#toc-voice-call-audio-routing-setup https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html#toc-voice-call... that will eventually make this a very fascinating device and allow features (https://xnux.eu/ui/voice-calls-app.html https://xnux.eu/ui/voice-calls-app.html) that no iPhone or Android will ever give you. So PinePhone has a potential to be a much more interesting phone device.
- panpanna 6y ago
  Quick question: How is the pinephone software development coordinated and how did you get into it?
  - megous 6y ago
    There's no single central development (aside from HW) effort, AFAIK. There are various individuals that work on particular aspects of the SoC/Phone support in the Linux kernel with some cross-over with linux-sunxi community. And there are distribution/userspace efforts which I don't have much insight into, because I'm more focussed on the Linux kernel side of things. But from the edges it looks like a fairly small group of people pushing things forward. I got originally interested in Linux kernel programming through various Xunlong Orange Pi boards (probably since Linux 4.6 times), Allwinner tablets, etc. I spent some years on it, and got to know a good bunch of Allwinner SoCs, and Linux driver development quite well. So when PinePhone got announced with Allwinner A64 in it, I was immediately interested. Pine64 community founder then offered me the developer unit, after noticing my interest. That was the start of it. ;)

by wiz21c 6y ago

megous 6y ago

Yes, the HW can do that, and I've made them personally. Ubports will be able to make/receive calls soon if it does not already. Though if you just want a phone for calling, you can get a dumbphone. I have that and it beats any smartphone anytime, including pinephone. "Charge and forget about for a month" is an unbeatable feature for people who don't call much or receive many calls. I also developed a routing configuration for pinephone audio https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html#toc-voice-call-audio-routing-setup https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html#toc-voice-call... that will eventually make this a very fascinating device and allow features (https://xnux.eu/ui/voice-calls-app.html https://xnux.eu/ui/voice-calls-app.html) that no iPhone or Android will ever give you. So PinePhone has a potential to be a much more interesting phone device.

panpanna 6y ago
Quick question: How is the pinephone software development coordinated and how did you get into it?
- megous 6y ago
  There's no single central development (aside from HW) effort, AFAIK. There are various individuals that work on particular aspects of the SoC/Phone support in the Linux kernel with some cross-over with linux-sunxi community. And there are distribution/userspace efforts which I don't have much insight into, because I'm more focussed on the Linux kernel side of things. But from the edges it looks like a fairly small group of people pushing things forward. I got originally interested in Linux kernel programming through various Xunlong Orange Pi boards (probably since Linux 4.6 times), Allwinner tablets, etc. I spent some years on it, and got to know a good bunch of Allwinner SoCs, and Linux driver development quite well. So when PinePhone got announced with Allwinner A64 in it, I was immediately interested. Pine64 community founder then offered me the developer unit, after noticing my interest. That was the start of it. ;)