5 ms·

I'd be the perfect target for the products of a company like Pine. A long-time geek who uses open-source software on nearly all of his devices, a tinkerer who d

I'd be the perfect target for the products of a company like Pine. A long-time geek who uses open-source software on nearly all of his devices, a tinkerer who doesn't mind recompiling a kernel or picking a solderer to make things work, and someone who seeks for absolute flexibility from his devices with zero corporate compromises. Unfortunately, the mediocre hardware used in their devices keeps holding me back. First came a phone with a 9-year-old A53 Cortex chipset. Then a tablet with the same outdated chipset. Then a laptop that ships with a Rockchip RK3399 with 4GB of RAM, in an era when 4GB barely suffice to run a browser with a few tabs. And now they are releasing a smartwatch with a 64 MHz core and 64 KB of RAM - some specs you would have expected from a very cheap smartwatch released 7-8 years ago. Why should I use a device whose hardware is almost a decade old at the time of purchase? And how do they even expect anyone to actually use these devices as their primary daily drivers, and not as proofs of concept, nice toys to tinker on every now and then or show off to friends? I understand that Pine wants to use 100% open hardware, and that comes with heavy compromises, but are these compromises worth it? If you ask even the geekest user out there whether they prefer a device whose source code is 100% pure and doesn't contain any binary blobs, or a device that doesn't start freezing/lagging after a couple of minutes of normal usage, I bet that anyone would opt for the latter.

ohazi 6y ago
The best ARM SoC you can currently buy on the open market (without a backroom deal) is a combo A72/A53, which is what Pine64 sells. If you want to change this, you'd need to either start a semiconductor company, or engineer some sort of coup at one or more of the "most unpleasant to deal with" Silicon vendors (Broadcom, Qualcomm, etc.).
- blacklight 6y ago
  Well, that's exactly my point when I speak of compromises. If you want to be nude and pure then you go for the A72/A53, well aware that you're selling hardware that is almost a decade old and can't be used as a daily driver today. Otherwise, as unpleasant as it can be, you have to make a deal with Broadcom/Qualcomm, or get some other vendors to license their ARM chipset to you. The latter doesn't seem like the end of the world to me TBH. Of course I'd love an ideal world where open architectures like RISC V have taken over and are actually usable, but until we get there usability remains more important than purity - unless you're RMS of course - even if it involves a small "deal with the devil". I believe that most of the geeks out there love open-source products not much because they work daily with kernels and drivers (if that's the case then the argument for a pure open hardware without hex bloats makes sense), but because of the flexibility that they offer. Because they can install anything that they want on them and aren't prone to abandonware/planned deprecation like many products powered by Google or Apple. But if you don't give them products that they can use as main daily drivers, you'll rarely get enough momentum outside of the small tinker-and-show-off circles.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    > you're selling hardware that is almost a decade old and can't be used as a daily driver today. My iPhone 6S is more than 5 years old, and is perfectly usable as a daily driver (and my SO's iPhone 6 is too - it's 6 years old, only runs iOS 12, but still gets security updates and is perfectly usable). It's fine if on the freedom/performance/up-to-dateness tradeoff, you're not pine64's customer. Many people are.
    - comex 6y ago
      If you’re talking about 5-year-old Apple products, the first Apple Watch is also 5 years old and runs at 520 MHz with 512 MB of RAM. I expect it too is usable. But that’s quite a bit different from 64 MHz and 64 KB of RAM.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        I wouldn’t be too sure of that. It was slow out of the gate and got progressively worse as time went on; it’s entirely possible that a much slower device might feel more responsive.
    - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
      That's a kind of a… difficult comparison. The 6S was right when Apple shifted from chips that were highly competitive to chips that were ridiculously overpowered. If you're making a point about 5-year-old hardware being still useful today, I think you need to reference typical 5-year-old hardware. The 6S was weird (albeit in a good way).
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        iPhone 5s on iOS 12 was a fairly decent phone.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bartvk 6y ago
> And now they are releasing a smartwatch with a 64 MHz core and 64 KB of RAM - some specs you would have expected from a very cheap smartwatch released 7-8 years ago My Xiaomi Mi Band probably has similar specs. I bought it last year. You position this as outdated, but for me, the specs mean that I only have to charge it every couple of weeks.
- blacklight 6y ago
  Sure, if all you need is a watch that only shows you the time, can support a couple of skins and maybe comes with a basic heart rate monitor, then you probably don't need more. But I wouldn't advertise it (like Pine does) as "you can install any OS on it". I wouldn't even advertise it as a smartwatch TBH. It's more like a tiny embedded device to be worn on a wrist, with specs much more comparable to those of an ESP8266 or a modern Arduino rather than (even the cheapest) RaspberryPi.
  - teleforce 6y ago
    You can go more than basic heart rate monitor since you can easily host a single lead ECG sensor with the "decade old" hardware that you are referring to, just like the latest smartwatch from Apple and Samsung. Heck, you can even host a multi-lead ECG sensor that is more capable than the latest smartwatch products from Apple and Samsung with the "decade old" processor. Couple that wearable smartwatch based multi-lead ECG sensor with any latest Android phone then you have a potent and energy efficient ECG system that is probably as good as the most expensive ECG machine at any hospital but powered only by a coin battery! This out-of-hospital gadget based on "decade old" processor is going to be useful to detect heart arrhythmia and ischemia that is the main cause of mortality in the world and capable of detecting pre-symptomatic Covid-19 as well [1]. I know this is a bad cliche, but this "decade old" processor is more powerful than the most powerful PDP-11 systems that have ever existed, that were last sold back in 1990s. [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-00640-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-00640-6
  - kaba0 6y ago
    They have a post detailing why they went with a more embedded-like processor over one that could run linux.
bertmuthalaly 6y ago
Isn’t freezing/lagging after a couple of minutes of use a symptom of an ailing software ecosystem, not a criticism of the hardware?
eightails 6y ago
Sure the Pine devices aren't particularly powerful. But they're not priced as powerful high-end devices. The Pinebook Pro is $199 -- what other thin, metal chassis ultrabook with reasonable display, input devices etc can you get for that price new? This watch is $25, no-one expects it to have monster specs. An older, proven low-power chipset arguably makes things easier for a device to tinker with anyway. That said, I too would love to see higher specced devices from Pine. An update to the Pinebook with a fancy new ARM chip and 16GB ram would be tempting indeed.
- goldforever 6y ago
  Well said!
bjarneh 6y ago
> ..and doesn't contain any binary blobs, or a device that doesn't start freezing/lagging after a couple of minutes of normal usage,.. It's always hard to stay true to ones beliefs; when it comes with so many shortcomings.
neilparikh 6y ago
64 MHz is a bit too low, but I think being in that range is the right choice to make, even ignoring cost concerns. The Pebble Time had a 180 MHz processor, and I think as a smartwatch, it was a much better product than the Apple Watch. When you have a powerful processor like the Apple Watch does, your power draw is pretty high. This is why the Apple Watch only gets 1-2 days of battery life, while the Pebble has 7 days, and the Apple watch just got a display that is always on, while the Pebble has had a always on display since day 1.
jepper 6y ago
Yes the compromise is worth it. These are the best SoCs available on the open market. If we aspire to more open and repairable devices then we need to start somewhere, and we have to put our money where our mouth is. If volume goes up we get better open products. Luckily Pine64 is doing really well so much so that non geeks are buying their products (with all the software support problems that come with them) I bought a pinebook pro and i have some SBCs. The PBP is perfect travel laptop with long battery life that can run on my phone charger. Firefox runs buttery smooth on Manjaro i3.
fsflover 6y ago
> First came a phone with a 9-year-old A53 Cortex chipset. You might be interested in Librem 5 phone: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.
- blacklight 6y ago
  The Librem project got me really interested when it was released. But after reading many reviewes that complained about its usability (it seems that they haven't even bothered to make GTK apps fit on a small screen, and even charging and battery duration had macroscopic issues) I've decided to wait until the next iteration.

ohazi 6y ago

The best ARM SoC you can currently buy on the open market (without a backroom deal) is a combo A72/A53, which is what Pine64 sells. If you want to change this, you'd need to either start a semiconductor company, or engineer some sort of coup at one or more of the "most unpleasant to deal with" Silicon vendors (Broadcom, Qualcomm, etc.).

blacklight 6y ago
Well, that's exactly my point when I speak of compromises. If you want to be nude and pure then you go for the A72/A53, well aware that you're selling hardware that is almost a decade old and can't be used as a daily driver today. Otherwise, as unpleasant as it can be, you have to make a deal with Broadcom/Qualcomm, or get some other vendors to license their ARM chipset to you. The latter doesn't seem like the end of the world to me TBH. Of course I'd love an ideal world where open architectures like RISC V have taken over and are actually usable, but until we get there usability remains more important than purity - unless you're RMS of course - even if it involves a small "deal with the devil". I believe that most of the geeks out there love open-source products not much because they work daily with kernels and drivers (if that's the case then the argument for a pure open hardware without hex bloats makes sense), but because of the flexibility that they offer. Because they can install anything that they want on them and aren't prone to abandonware/planned deprecation like many products powered by Google or Apple. But if you don't give them products that they can use as main daily drivers, you'll rarely get enough momentum outside of the small tinker-and-show-off circles.
- beagle3 6y ago
  > you're selling hardware that is almost a decade old and can't be used as a daily driver today. My iPhone 6S is more than 5 years old, and is perfectly usable as a daily driver (and my SO's iPhone 6 is too - it's 6 years old, only runs iOS 12, but still gets security updates and is perfectly usable). It's fine if on the freedom/performance/up-to-dateness tradeoff, you're not pine64's customer. Many people are.
  - comex 6y ago
    If you’re talking about 5-year-old Apple products, the first Apple Watch is also 5 years old and runs at 520 MHz with 512 MB of RAM. I expect it too is usable. But that’s quite a bit different from 64 MHz and 64 KB of RAM.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      I wouldn’t be too sure of that. It was slow out of the gate and got progressively worse as time went on; it’s entirely possible that a much slower device might feel more responsive.
  - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
    That's a kind of a… difficult comparison. The 6S was right when Apple shifted from chips that were highly competitive to chips that were ridiculously overpowered. If you're making a point about 5-year-old hardware being still useful today, I think you need to reference typical 5-year-old hardware. The 6S was weird (albeit in a good way).
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      iPhone 5s on iOS 12 was a fairly decent phone.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bartvk 6y ago

> And now they are releasing a smartwatch with a 64 MHz core and 64 KB of RAM - some specs you would have expected from a very cheap smartwatch released 7-8 years ago My Xiaomi Mi Band probably has similar specs. I bought it last year. You position this as outdated, but for me, the specs mean that I only have to charge it every couple of weeks.

blacklight 6y ago
Sure, if all you need is a watch that only shows you the time, can support a couple of skins and maybe comes with a basic heart rate monitor, then you probably don't need more. But I wouldn't advertise it (like Pine does) as "you can install any OS on it". I wouldn't even advertise it as a smartwatch TBH. It's more like a tiny embedded device to be worn on a wrist, with specs much more comparable to those of an ESP8266 or a modern Arduino rather than (even the cheapest) RaspberryPi.
- teleforce 6y ago
  You can go more than basic heart rate monitor since you can easily host a single lead ECG sensor with the "decade old" hardware that you are referring to, just like the latest smartwatch from Apple and Samsung. Heck, you can even host a multi-lead ECG sensor that is more capable than the latest smartwatch products from Apple and Samsung with the "decade old" processor. Couple that wearable smartwatch based multi-lead ECG sensor with any latest Android phone then you have a potent and energy efficient ECG system that is probably as good as the most expensive ECG machine at any hospital but powered only by a coin battery! This out-of-hospital gadget based on "decade old" processor is going to be useful to detect heart arrhythmia and ischemia that is the main cause of mortality in the world and capable of detecting pre-symptomatic Covid-19 as well [1]. I know this is a bad cliche, but this "decade old" processor is more powerful than the most powerful PDP-11 systems that have ever existed, that were last sold back in 1990s. [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-00640-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-00640-6
- kaba0 6y ago
  They have a post detailing why they went with a more embedded-like processor over one that could run linux.

bertmuthalaly 6y ago

Isn’t freezing/lagging after a couple of minutes of use a symptom of an ailing software ecosystem, not a criticism of the hardware?

eightails 6y ago

Sure the Pine devices aren't particularly powerful. But they're not priced as powerful high-end devices. The Pinebook Pro is $199 -- what other thin, metal chassis ultrabook with reasonable display, input devices etc can you get for that price new? This watch is $25, no-one expects it to have monster specs. An older, proven low-power chipset arguably makes things easier for a device to tinker with anyway. That said, I too would love to see higher specced devices from Pine. An update to the Pinebook with a fancy new ARM chip and 16GB ram would be tempting indeed.

goldforever 6y ago
Well said!

bjarneh 6y ago

> ..and doesn't contain any binary blobs, or a device that doesn't start freezing/lagging after a couple of minutes of normal usage,.. It's always hard to stay true to ones beliefs; when it comes with so many shortcomings.

neilparikh 6y ago

64 MHz is a bit too low, but I think being in that range is the right choice to make, even ignoring cost concerns. The Pebble Time had a 180 MHz processor, and I think as a smartwatch, it was a much better product than the Apple Watch. When you have a powerful processor like the Apple Watch does, your power draw is pretty high. This is why the Apple Watch only gets 1-2 days of battery life, while the Pebble has 7 days, and the Apple watch just got a display that is always on, while the Pebble has had a always on display since day 1.

jepper 6y ago

Yes the compromise is worth it. These are the best SoCs available on the open market. If we aspire to more open and repairable devices then we need to start somewhere, and we have to put our money where our mouth is. If volume goes up we get better open products. Luckily Pine64 is doing really well so much so that non geeks are buying their products (with all the software support problems that come with them) I bought a pinebook pro and i have some SBCs. The PBP is perfect travel laptop with long battery life that can run on my phone charger. Firefox runs buttery smooth on Manjaro i3.

fsflover 6y ago

> First came a phone with a 9-year-old A53 Cortex chipset. You might be interested in Librem 5 phone: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.

blacklight 6y ago
The Librem project got me really interested when it was released. But after reading many reviewes that complained about its usability (it seems that they haven't even bothered to make GTK apps fit on a small screen, and even charging and battery duration had macroscopic issues) I've decided to wait until the next iteration.