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But you pay 750$ for a 3GB quad core phone; I've got these specs on a 300€ OnePlus One five (six?) years ago. Sure, replaceable battery and open hardware are a

But you pay 750$ for a 3GB quad core phone; I've got these specs on a 300€ OnePlus One five (six?) years ago. Sure, replaceable battery and open hardware are a _very_ good thing, but the value/$ of these phones are horrendous. That's not to defend OnePlus or any other manufacturer, but when I can get a high end Samsung or Xiaomi device with 4 times the specs at every corner for the same price or less and simply install Lineage on it. I definitely support the effort and I love that they finally got the design modern, but those prices are hard to swallow, even for someone pretty privacy-focused.

na85 6y ago
>value/$ of these phones are horrendous Sounds like you value the open/libre aspect at $0. Not everyone feels the same way: Those phones are for people who value the replaceable battery and libre stack at $x where x > 0.
- adamc 6y ago
  Seems more like $X >> 0.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  Sure, there's a market for these phones and I absolutely do not speak for everyone :) Still, I can get a Samsung Galaxy A20e for 150€ right now, which has about the same specs (actually slightly better) and spend two hours to get Lineage on it. My point is, I do value my privacy a lot, even to the point of running my phone without GApps (which drops a lot of features), and I think these projects are absolutely awesome, but with their current offering those phones are simply not a general solution to someone with a budget.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    Your cheap Samsung phones are not running open firmware with mainline Linux, nor have hardware kill switches. A PinePhone/Librem 5 will also always be capable of running emacs/golang etc. which is not easily doable on Android if termux isn't possible anymore.
    - Sebb767 6y ago
      A rooted Android will probably still be able to run termux and most other software. But fair point.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      > A PinePhone/Librem 5 will also always be capable of running emacs/golang etc. which is not easily doable on Android if termux isn't possible anymore. So can a phone running Lineage. The thing blocking termux is a config file; any phone that isn't locked down can handle it. You're not getting all of the openness for free, but you can get a lot of it for free.
      - AsyncAwait 6y ago
        I think it's important to point out that you'll always rely on proprietary blobs and generally hostile hardware that way. For now it's a config. As these things progress and get more locked down with each release in the name of security, it's going to be harder and harder and I don't want to scramble the moment it is practically impossible. I'd rather push for a free, open, libre hardware now so that the polish is there when there's no alternative.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        > As these things progress and get more locked down with each release in the name of security If that actually happens. I haven't seen any downward trend of LineageOS. I haven't seen any downward trend of Samsung hardware.
        AsyncAwait 6y ago
        I have certainly seen a much longer lag between a phone release that is not a Pixel and it being rootable+able to run Lineage compared to the Cyanogen days. I've also noticed that nowdays, few phones are able to run more than one newer major Android version ahead because the OEM will simply not release the firmware needed to run newer versions and Lineage doesn't have the capacity to update/release their own firmware rebased against the latest Android, (I am talking about things such as the radio firmware, OnePlus is a famous example I know of).
- thayne 6y ago
  The most I've ever paid for a phone is $300. I value open/libre more than $0, but not more than I value the phone itself.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    These phones are for people willing to push the boundaries of free software and early adopters. This is for the people who ran early GNU stuff in the 90s, not the ones who said, "well, I can get a more polished toolset from <insert commercial vendor here>"
zozbot234 6y ago
They're serving a niche market, which will always come at a cost. Your Samsung, Xiaomi, ASUS, OnePlus or even Google device will not be running a mainline Linux kernel with wholly open drivers (ala x86) unless you get very, very lucky with your hardware choice (even the pmOS folks admit as much). You don't want to be stuck running a downstream LineageOS kernel with random patches and userspace binary blobs; it's a recipe for your device getting harder and harder to support and being dropped altogether, even by the ROM-development community.
- rjeli 6y ago
  > Your Samsung, Xiaomi, ASUS, OnePlus or even Google device will not be running a mainline Linux kernel with wholly open drivers (ala x86) unless you get very, very lucky with your hardware choice. Only half true. There is a lot of activity on linux-arm-msm, and mainlining is much easier than it would have been a few years ago. Snapdragon 845 has great support (3d accel, modem, all that) and if your specific phone isn’t ported yet, you just need a hundred lines or so of board-specific config. Personally I’ve been mainlining my Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T, with an SDM665, a phone released Nov ‘19. It’s only taken a work week or so to boot pmos and get a shell over usb, the drivers are already all there. It would be a lot faster if this weren’t my first time ever doing kernel dev. Yeah, it’s a lot of engineering effort, but it’s well within the scope of an evening-hacker community project.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Yes, of course you can have a "lucky" platform that ends up getting more support from hobbyists and OEM's alike. The SD845 gets used (in an overclocked version) for ARM laptops, that's why there's a lot of interest in having it work "properly" and even be usable as a comparatively "free" platform. Most Snapdragon chips do not get the same level of support.
    - rjeli 6y ago
      As I said in my reply, I have been porting my phone which has a 665, an SoC released 2 years after the 845, and it's a pretty smooth process. Each SoC has a different topology and vendor quirks, but they use the same few drivers and interconnects (glink, rpm, smd, etc). Many of the drivers I am using are for components more recent than the 845, upstreamed by Linaro and Qcom folks.
AsyncAwait 6y ago
These phones are primarily about user-freedom, privacy and my ability to do whatever I want with a device that I've purchased, without restrictions imposed by the OEM. Also, honest question; What do you actually 'use' the latest specs for? These Android/iOS phones are basically all about media consumption, something that has been sufficiently performant for years. You have great hardware, but no software to take real advantage of it. On the other hand, the Linux phones can do so much more on the software side that if they do become successful enough for a second/third... generation with more powerful hardware, it would be much more noticeable than a paper spec bump.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  > Also, honest question; What do you actually 'use' the latest specs for? Browsing, chatting, navigating and some smaller task. Don't get me wrong, the hardware specs aren't _bad_ and 3G are okay now, but this phone costs as much as all three smartphones I've owned combined and I don't think this will be enough 5+ years in the future, which would by my expected lifespan of this device. Adding to that are the singular speaker and, by todays standard, rather weak camera offering. Again, don't get me wrong: I'd love to buy one of those and support their (absolutely great!) cause. It's simply hard to justify the investment, when 700$ are a lot to me.
  - j-james 6y ago
    > 3G are okay now Is it really? AT&T and Verizon, two of the largest mobile data conglomerates in the US, have stated their intentions to shut down 3G service in favor of 5G by February 2021 and December 2020 respectively. https://techblog.comsoc.org/2019/02/22/att-to-shut-down-3g-network-in-2022-verizon-at-end-of-2019/ https://techblog.comsoc.org/2019/02/22/att-to-shut-down-3g-n... https://stopthecap.com/2019/08/01/verizon-delays-shutdown-of-3g-cdma-network-until-the-end-of-2020/ https://stopthecap.com/2019/08/01/verizon-delays-shutdown-of...
    - est31 6y ago
      I think that quote refers to the 3 gigabytes of RAM of the Librem 5 that was mentioned higher up in the chain, not the 3G wireless technology: > But you pay 750$ for a 3GB quad core phone Both Librem 5 and the Pinephone support LTE, although no 5G. You are entirely right that phones which don't support LTE will have major usability regressions very soon so when you buy an older model phone you should really watch out to buy LTE capable ones.
esotericn 6y ago
The PinePhone is $150.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mtgx 6y ago
I remember when everyone (basically all Nokia fans) was attacking the original iPhone for "only" having a 2MP camera, when the Nokias of the day had 3MP, or even 5MP cameras. Or that it only had 2G support. That turned out to be a pretty myopic view in the end in terms of declaring a phone a winner or loser.
ksk 6y ago
Well, causes need sacrifices to succeed :)
fsflover 6y ago
Why it costs so much: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714352 "First hardware kill switches; first replaceable cellular modem and Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth (on M.2 cards); first smart card reader (for 2FF OpenPGP card); first running 100% free software; only current phone to offer convergence as PC without special hardware" “It's also one of the few phones to have hardware baseband isolation - making you immune to IMSI catchers and other cellular-based attacks.” More in the link.
- fsflover 6y ago
  In addition, because all software is free, "Respects Your Freedom" certification [0] from Free Software Foundation is expected [1]. Tentative recommendation has been given [2]. [0] https://fsf.org/ryf https://fsf.org/ryf [1] https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/october https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/october [2] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/ethical-tech-giving-guide-freedom-is-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/ethical-tech-giving-guid...
RMPR 6y ago
> Sure, replaceable battery and open hardware are a _very_ good thing No mention of the headphone jack, how sad

na85 6y ago

>value/$ of these phones are horrendous Sounds like you value the open/libre aspect at $0. Not everyone feels the same way: Those phones are for people who value the replaceable battery and libre stack at $x where x > 0.

adamc 6y ago
Seems more like $X >> 0.
Sebb767 6y ago
Sure, there's a market for these phones and I absolutely do not speak for everyone :) Still, I can get a Samsung Galaxy A20e for 150€ right now, which has about the same specs (actually slightly better) and spend two hours to get Lineage on it. My point is, I do value my privacy a lot, even to the point of running my phone without GApps (which drops a lot of features), and I think these projects are absolutely awesome, but with their current offering those phones are simply not a general solution to someone with a budget.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  Your cheap Samsung phones are not running open firmware with mainline Linux, nor have hardware kill switches. A PinePhone/Librem 5 will also always be capable of running emacs/golang etc. which is not easily doable on Android if termux isn't possible anymore.
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    A rooted Android will probably still be able to run termux and most other software. But fair point.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > A PinePhone/Librem 5 will also always be capable of running emacs/golang etc. which is not easily doable on Android if termux isn't possible anymore. So can a phone running Lineage. The thing blocking termux is a config file; any phone that isn't locked down can handle it. You're not getting all of the openness for free, but you can get a lot of it for free.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      I think it's important to point out that you'll always rely on proprietary blobs and generally hostile hardware that way. For now it's a config. As these things progress and get more locked down with each release in the name of security, it's going to be harder and harder and I don't want to scramble the moment it is practically impossible. I'd rather push for a free, open, libre hardware now so that the polish is there when there's no alternative.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        > As these things progress and get more locked down with each release in the name of security If that actually happens. I haven't seen any downward trend of LineageOS. I haven't seen any downward trend of Samsung hardware.
        AsyncAwait 6y ago
        I have certainly seen a much longer lag between a phone release that is not a Pixel and it being rootable+able to run Lineage compared to the Cyanogen days. I've also noticed that nowdays, few phones are able to run more than one newer major Android version ahead because the OEM will simply not release the firmware needed to run newer versions and Lineage doesn't have the capacity to update/release their own firmware rebased against the latest Android, (I am talking about things such as the radio firmware, OnePlus is a famous example I know of).
thayne 6y ago
The most I've ever paid for a phone is $300. I value open/libre more than $0, but not more than I value the phone itself.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  These phones are for people willing to push the boundaries of free software and early adopters. This is for the people who ran early GNU stuff in the 90s, not the ones who said, "well, I can get a more polished toolset from <insert commercial vendor here>"

zozbot234 6y ago

They're serving a niche market, which will always come at a cost. Your Samsung, Xiaomi, ASUS, OnePlus or even Google device will not be running a mainline Linux kernel with wholly open drivers (ala x86) unless you get very, very lucky with your hardware choice (even the pmOS folks admit as much). You don't want to be stuck running a downstream LineageOS kernel with random patches and userspace binary blobs; it's a recipe for your device getting harder and harder to support and being dropped altogether, even by the ROM-development community.

rjeli 6y ago
> Your Samsung, Xiaomi, ASUS, OnePlus or even Google device will not be running a mainline Linux kernel with wholly open drivers (ala x86) unless you get very, very lucky with your hardware choice. Only half true. There is a lot of activity on linux-arm-msm, and mainlining is much easier than it would have been a few years ago. Snapdragon 845 has great support (3d accel, modem, all that) and if your specific phone isn’t ported yet, you just need a hundred lines or so of board-specific config. Personally I’ve been mainlining my Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T, with an SDM665, a phone released Nov ‘19. It’s only taken a work week or so to boot pmos and get a shell over usb, the drivers are already all there. It would be a lot faster if this weren’t my first time ever doing kernel dev. Yeah, it’s a lot of engineering effort, but it’s well within the scope of an evening-hacker community project.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Yes, of course you can have a "lucky" platform that ends up getting more support from hobbyists and OEM's alike. The SD845 gets used (in an overclocked version) for ARM laptops, that's why there's a lot of interest in having it work "properly" and even be usable as a comparatively "free" platform. Most Snapdragon chips do not get the same level of support.
  - rjeli 6y ago
    As I said in my reply, I have been porting my phone which has a 665, an SoC released 2 years after the 845, and it's a pretty smooth process. Each SoC has a different topology and vendor quirks, but they use the same few drivers and interconnects (glink, rpm, smd, etc). Many of the drivers I am using are for components more recent than the 845, upstreamed by Linaro and Qcom folks.

AsyncAwait 6y ago

These phones are primarily about user-freedom, privacy and my ability to do whatever I want with a device that I've purchased, without restrictions imposed by the OEM. Also, honest question; What do you actually 'use' the latest specs for? These Android/iOS phones are basically all about media consumption, something that has been sufficiently performant for years. You have great hardware, but no software to take real advantage of it. On the other hand, the Linux phones can do so much more on the software side that if they do become successful enough for a second/third... generation with more powerful hardware, it would be much more noticeable than a paper spec bump.

Sebb767 6y ago
> Also, honest question; What do you actually 'use' the latest specs for? Browsing, chatting, navigating and some smaller task. Don't get me wrong, the hardware specs aren't _bad_ and 3G are okay now, but this phone costs as much as all three smartphones I've owned combined and I don't think this will be enough 5+ years in the future, which would by my expected lifespan of this device. Adding to that are the singular speaker and, by todays standard, rather weak camera offering. Again, don't get me wrong: I'd love to buy one of those and support their (absolutely great!) cause. It's simply hard to justify the investment, when 700$ are a lot to me.
- j-james 6y ago
  > 3G are okay now Is it really? AT&T and Verizon, two of the largest mobile data conglomerates in the US, have stated their intentions to shut down 3G service in favor of 5G by February 2021 and December 2020 respectively. https://techblog.comsoc.org/2019/02/22/att-to-shut-down-3g-network-in-2022-verizon-at-end-of-2019/ https://techblog.comsoc.org/2019/02/22/att-to-shut-down-3g-n... https://stopthecap.com/2019/08/01/verizon-delays-shutdown-of-3g-cdma-network-until-the-end-of-2020/ https://stopthecap.com/2019/08/01/verizon-delays-shutdown-of...
  - est31 6y ago
    I think that quote refers to the 3 gigabytes of RAM of the Librem 5 that was mentioned higher up in the chain, not the 3G wireless technology: > But you pay 750$ for a 3GB quad core phone Both Librem 5 and the Pinephone support LTE, although no 5G. You are entirely right that phones which don't support LTE will have major usability regressions very soon so when you buy an older model phone you should really watch out to buy LTE capable ones.

esotericn 6y ago

The PinePhone is $150.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mtgx 6y ago

I remember when everyone (basically all Nokia fans) was attacking the original iPhone for "only" having a 2MP camera, when the Nokias of the day had 3MP, or even 5MP cameras. Or that it only had 2G support. That turned out to be a pretty myopic view in the end in terms of declaring a phone a winner or loser.

ksk 6y ago

Well, causes need sacrifices to succeed :)

fsflover 6y ago

Why it costs so much: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714352 "First hardware kill switches; first replaceable cellular modem and Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth (on M.2 cards); first smart card reader (for 2FF OpenPGP card); first running 100% free software; only current phone to offer convergence as PC without special hardware" “It's also one of the few phones to have hardware baseband isolation - making you immune to IMSI catchers and other cellular-based attacks.” More in the link.

fsflover 6y ago
In addition, because all software is free, "Respects Your Freedom" certification [0] from Free Software Foundation is expected [1]. Tentative recommendation has been given [2]. [0] https://fsf.org/ryf https://fsf.org/ryf [1] https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/october https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/october [2] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/ethical-tech-giving-guide-freedom-is-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/ethical-tech-giving-guid...

RMPR 6y ago

> Sure, replaceable battery and open hardware are a _very_ good thing No mention of the headphone jack, how sad