5 ms·

It's not quite a modern smartphone, but it's the best we have at the moment; have you looked into the PinePhone? I have mine running openSUSE Tumbleweed.

westpfelia 6y ago
How is it for daily use though? Last I knew Pinephones were still mostly just for developers to work on to one day make it a daily driver.
- 29083011397778 6y ago
  Some people will tell you that the Pinephone is daily-driver ready. They're right, but only in the sense that using a feature phone is daily-driver ready. It's only feasible if your lifestyle permits it, if you're willing to go without sometimes, if leading by example, and voting with not just your wallet, but whatever you value (be it time, money, or uncertainty) is a deal you're happy to make. I love my Pinephone. It is undoubtedly my own, with no strings or trillion-dollar corporation helping steer. It's lots of fun to play with, but unless people already half-jokingly compare you to RMS due to your extremism, it's not ready. Android circa 2009 would be a reasonable comparison: the potential is clear, the software is rapidly evolving, and there's a benevolent dictator at the helm. And that's enough for me to be happy with it :)
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    I'm really heartbroken that I can't use a Pinephone as a daily driver because of the simple fact that it doesn't have a 5ghz wifi antenna. Where I currently live there's just too much interference on 2.4ghz. It's literally the one feature I need. As soon as they come out with a model that has 5ghz wifi I'm happy to jump right on board, especially since they're coming out with a keyboard attachment.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Librem 5 has 5ghz wifi.
      - brokenmachine 6y ago
        The battery time, at 3–5 hours, and the inability of the phone to charge while turned on, they called "A stark reminder of the Librem 5's beta status". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5
        fsflover 6y ago
        This is a very outdated information. Mass production batch (Evergreen) can charge fine. Battery life is currently 13 hours (without suspend): https://puri.sm/posts/charging-the-librem-5/ https://puri.sm/posts/charging-the-librem-5/. See also: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#21-how-long-will-be-the-battery-life-of-the-librem-5-evergreen https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
    - megous 6y ago
      You should be able to just put wifi USB dongle into the USB-C port. These things can be small. Though there are no USB type-c wifi dongles apparently (now that I'm searching the web for them), so you'd need an otg adapter too, and there goes the size benefit.
- COGlory 6y ago
  It's about the same quality as a budget Android 2-4 phone. The basics are pretty much down. Kernel support is solid. It can make calls, send texts (MMS mileage may vary), and use data pretty reliably. Web browsing is actually pretty fast with Angelfish. You technically have access to the full repository of Linux ARM software, and some of it even resizes properly to the phone. The camera is usable but terrible. Anbox works for Android apps but is painfully slow and can't share data with the rest of the phone to my knowledge. Battery life is terrible, I don't think that the phone has power states of any kind, so it's either with the screen on, on with the screen off, or off altogether. Updates frequently break my install, although updating through SSH has been working for me recently on Tumbleweed without breaking anything. Little things like Plasma not having a way to exit the keyboard, apps taking up full screen with no way to exit them, etc. Performance is painfully slow, but has also improved (for KDE anyways) by leaps and bounds. It used to be completely unusable but now it's merely very slow. I would say it's somewhere between for developers, and usable, at this point. You could use it with some sacrifices, and still have a functional wireless communication device. It absolutely is nowhere near replacing my OnePlus running Android, however.
- WildParser 6y ago
  I use Mobian on the Pinephone as a daily driver. Other distributions I tried were not stable.
ekianjo 6y ago
Terribly slow for modern usage though. And you are still missing essential apps on this kind of device.
- dekiphoros 6y ago
  You can run android apps on it with Anbox. And while it's slow, it only costs a mere $150
- sangnoir 6y ago
  user-controlled / cheap / fast - pick 2. There's no way around economies of scale for consumer products.
  - Bancakes 6y ago
    Why can't Pine64 make $400 pinebook pros? I'd happily purchase a device that does something in 21st century standards.
    - pantulis 6y ago
      Probably because then most potential buyers would be purchasing low-end windows laptops, I guess.
    - COGlory 6y ago
      The reason I've seen for the phone hardware is that they simply can't source hardware that is more performant but still open enough to sufficiently develop for.
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      > Why can't Pine64 make $400 pinebook pros? Money: Pine64 is a small operation with limited resources, factories have minimum order quantities among other commitments. Most Pine64 products have pre-alpha software and are aimed at volunteers who can improve it. Lots of people are willing to buy a product for <$150 and "see how it goes". $400 filters out a lot of people who might otherwise chip-away at software bugs on weekends. Additionally, people are less tolerant of dead pixels on a $400 laptop, and Pine64 would rather not deal with returns.
CRConrad 6y ago
How about going at it the other way around: There are laptops with SIM cards / card slots already, for wireless data connectivity. Does it take additional hardware to use that for telephony / SMS, or can the already-present hardware be used for that too, with only a software component to enable it? Sure, not quite as handy — or Handy, for the German-speakers among us — as a physical phone... But, say you keep your laptop with you in a backpack (Rucksack ;-) ) or such, and a Bluetooth hands-free headset clipped to your ear...? I hear lots of youngsters listen to music continually nowadays, so they already have some kind of earbuds in all the time anyway. Or maybe even some kind of Bluetooth "satellite" handset, to make it easier to initiate outgoing calls / read and write text messages?

westpfelia 6y ago

How is it for daily use though? Last I knew Pinephones were still mostly just for developers to work on to one day make it a daily driver.

29083011397778 6y ago
Some people will tell you that the Pinephone is daily-driver ready. They're right, but only in the sense that using a feature phone is daily-driver ready. It's only feasible if your lifestyle permits it, if you're willing to go without sometimes, if leading by example, and voting with not just your wallet, but whatever you value (be it time, money, or uncertainty) is a deal you're happy to make. I love my Pinephone. It is undoubtedly my own, with no strings or trillion-dollar corporation helping steer. It's lots of fun to play with, but unless people already half-jokingly compare you to RMS due to your extremism, it's not ready. Android circa 2009 would be a reasonable comparison: the potential is clear, the software is rapidly evolving, and there's a benevolent dictator at the helm. And that's enough for me to be happy with it :)
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  I'm really heartbroken that I can't use a Pinephone as a daily driver because of the simple fact that it doesn't have a 5ghz wifi antenna. Where I currently live there's just too much interference on 2.4ghz. It's literally the one feature I need. As soon as they come out with a model that has 5ghz wifi I'm happy to jump right on board, especially since they're coming out with a keyboard attachment.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Librem 5 has 5ghz wifi.
    - brokenmachine 6y ago
      The battery time, at 3–5 hours, and the inability of the phone to charge while turned on, they called "A stark reminder of the Librem 5's beta status". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5
      - fsflover 6y ago
        This is a very outdated information. Mass production batch (Evergreen) can charge fine. Battery life is currently 13 hours (without suspend): https://puri.sm/posts/charging-the-librem-5/ https://puri.sm/posts/charging-the-librem-5/. See also: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#21-how-long-will-be-the-battery-life-of-the-librem-5-evergreen https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
  - megous 6y ago
    You should be able to just put wifi USB dongle into the USB-C port. These things can be small. Though there are no USB type-c wifi dongles apparently (now that I'm searching the web for them), so you'd need an otg adapter too, and there goes the size benefit.
COGlory 6y ago
It's about the same quality as a budget Android 2-4 phone. The basics are pretty much down. Kernel support is solid. It can make calls, send texts (MMS mileage may vary), and use data pretty reliably. Web browsing is actually pretty fast with Angelfish. You technically have access to the full repository of Linux ARM software, and some of it even resizes properly to the phone. The camera is usable but terrible. Anbox works for Android apps but is painfully slow and can't share data with the rest of the phone to my knowledge. Battery life is terrible, I don't think that the phone has power states of any kind, so it's either with the screen on, on with the screen off, or off altogether. Updates frequently break my install, although updating through SSH has been working for me recently on Tumbleweed without breaking anything. Little things like Plasma not having a way to exit the keyboard, apps taking up full screen with no way to exit them, etc. Performance is painfully slow, but has also improved (for KDE anyways) by leaps and bounds. It used to be completely unusable but now it's merely very slow. I would say it's somewhere between for developers, and usable, at this point. You could use it with some sacrifices, and still have a functional wireless communication device. It absolutely is nowhere near replacing my OnePlus running Android, however.
WildParser 6y ago
I use Mobian on the Pinephone as a daily driver. Other distributions I tried were not stable.

ekianjo 6y ago

Terribly slow for modern usage though. And you are still missing essential apps on this kind of device.

dekiphoros 6y ago
You can run android apps on it with Anbox. And while it's slow, it only costs a mere $150
sangnoir 6y ago
user-controlled / cheap / fast - pick 2. There's no way around economies of scale for consumer products.
- Bancakes 6y ago
  Why can't Pine64 make $400 pinebook pros? I'd happily purchase a device that does something in 21st century standards.
  - pantulis 6y ago
    Probably because then most potential buyers would be purchasing low-end windows laptops, I guess.
  - COGlory 6y ago
    The reason I've seen for the phone hardware is that they simply can't source hardware that is more performant but still open enough to sufficiently develop for.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    > Why can't Pine64 make $400 pinebook pros? Money: Pine64 is a small operation with limited resources, factories have minimum order quantities among other commitments. Most Pine64 products have pre-alpha software and are aimed at volunteers who can improve it. Lots of people are willing to buy a product for <$150 and "see how it goes". $400 filters out a lot of people who might otherwise chip-away at software bugs on weekends. Additionally, people are less tolerant of dead pixels on a $400 laptop, and Pine64 would rather not deal with returns.

CRConrad 6y ago

How about going at it the other way around: There are laptops with SIM cards / card slots already, for wireless data connectivity. Does it take additional hardware to use that for telephony / SMS, or can the already-present hardware be used for that too, with only a software component to enable it? Sure, not quite as handy — or Handy, for the German-speakers among us — as a physical phone... But, say you keep your laptop with you in a backpack (Rucksack ;-) ) or such, and a Bluetooth hands-free headset clipped to your ear...? I hear lots of youngsters listen to music continually nowadays, so they already have some kind of earbuds in all the time anyway. Or maybe even some kind of Bluetooth "satellite" handset, to make it easier to initiate outgoing calls / read and write text messages?