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I own a Pinephone with the latest revision board which was bought in the July 31st batch this year (and got shipped in September/November within the EU). I hav
by cookiengineer 6y ago
I own a Pinephone with the latest revision board which was bought in the July 31st batch this year (and got shipped in September/November within the EU).
I have to say that hardware-wise, the Pinephone got very _very_ far already. It's an amazing hacker's device, especially with the USB-C host.
The only issue that persists is software. Phosh is pretty much useless because not a single app will work as a real mobile app, let alone act in a responsive manner with their underlying design philosophies. It all feels like Android 1.x, which was barely useable outside the context of shitty car navigation handhelds.
The available cross-compiled versions of Browsers (e.g. Firefox or Chromium) are totally broken, as they are made for Desktop and do not even downscale their user interface, and are neither responsive anyhow. So for now, I am using my own (prototypical) Browser Stealth [1] due to lack for alternatives because there at least the UI doesn't crash every few seconds when being used within a WebKit2GTK webview.
I don't have many requirements for my phone, to be honest. I don't use social apps, and only communicate via telegram. But currently the amount of software that's available for phosh is still the one reminding me of a developer environment or say, an Android emulator image.
I seriously thought about taking ownership in creating a few apps for it, like one for openstreetmaps, notes, text editor, which are the more important ones for me.
But to be bluntly honest, I don't even know where to start with the whole GTK shitshow. It's absolutely impossible to develop an app without any working examples. There's no non-auto-transpiled-bindings-documentation, there's no libhandy examples that actually work, and there's certainly not any responsive GTK app examples that would show how to make a "real mobile" app. How do people develop apps for mobile GTK?
Seriously, I cannot understand it. I want to, but there's no way anyone can keep the mood up digging through a _mobile phone's gdb output while the on screen keyboard crashed_ to figure out how the API works.
I think what GTK really needs is something like Electron, but maybe based on WebKit2GTK and (maybe?) gjs. Something that allows bundling your assets to build an app that is offline-ready, and is easy to build with common methodologies of UI frameworks.
Because currently I don't see the reason why libhandy exists. It tries to fix a problem, and doesn't fix the underlying cause. GTK boxes and their layouting (and reflow?) concept just isn't made for an adaptive/responsive UI, so you'll always end up with a totally broken UX by modern standards. (You're welcome to challenge me on this, but as long as "make a sidebar that can fade-in/fade-out with a swipe" takes more than a week to build, I think you're wrong.)
[1] https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth
- linmob 6y agoFirefox is bearable with firefox-mobile-config, and Chromium can be usable now (not on all distributions yet): https://fosstodon.org/@linmob/105334115920899338 https://fosstodon.org/@linmob/105334115920899338 (Also, Plasma Mobile‘s Angelfish Browser is quite good, it works on Phosh too). BTW: May I add your Browser to https://linmobapps.frama.io https://linmobapps.frama.io?
- cookiengineer 6y agoOh, didn't know about the firefox-mobile-config. Does this also change the UI layout for the buttons, similar to Android's UI for fennex/fenix? > BTW: May I add your Browser to https://linmobapps.frama.it https://linmobapps.frama.it? Sure, of course, but as I said it's still very prototypical and needs a lot of work :) PS: Really nice blog you got there! How's your experience with Lorimi so far?
- linmob 6y agoYou probably know firefox-mobile-config, it's what makes Firefox somewhat usable on Mobian, Arch Linux ARM, Manjaro and postmarketOS. It scales the UI, but it does not really change it to that degree. Thanks! I have been busy with my day job lately, so I have just been trying to use my PinePhone with Phosh mostly. Lomiri is nice, but Manjaro Lomiri is not yet at the point where it does not break on upgrades, which makes it nice to play with but impossible to use.
- olau 6y agoIf I were you, I'd try to get in contact with the libhandy developer and try to get a conversation started, e.g. on the GNOME discourse instance. I think many in the community are interested in this, but have been waiting for hardware to show up.
- wuuza 6y agoHave you looked at plasma-mobile at all? It seems like they've had convergence in mind longer... I wonder if the environment is any better? I predict a lot of Electron apps and PWAs for these devices.