16 ms·

The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

268 points by ollieparanoid 5y ago

smoldesu 5y ago
This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  I would be totally fine using such a phone for almost everything I do. The only big gap would be using Sweden's identification app BankID and the money transferring app Swish. Unless these were ported to the phone, I would unfortunately lose one of it's most important functionalities for me. Of course I could just have an Apple/Android phone sitting at home for such purposes, but it is definitely less convenient.
  - nazgulsenpai 5y ago
    While I'm not entirely sure on the specifics, this is where Anbox can hopefully create a workable Android runtime layer. While it would be a bit overly optimistic to assume that "secure" authentication type apps would work, it could help with adoption for people like me who are missing that one vitally important app required to make the PinePhone a daily driver.
    - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
      Unfortunately, Anbox isn’t a longterm solution for non-libre Android apps. The problem is that more and more Android apps require passing SafetyNet. It started with banking apps, then spread to games, and Google may one day simply encourage every app to require it. Even Android ROMs stripped of Google services like LineageOS are finding it a challenge to pass SafetyNet, let alone Anbox.
      - nazgulsenpai 5y ago
        Ah okay, that's unfortunate but thank you for clarifying.
  - m4rtink 5y ago
    This is one of the things I worry about - a duopoly not just backed by two wealthy and shady megacorps but also effectively by law as it mandates a mobile app for some things yet the app only exists for iOS and Android & no public API is available.
    - amelius 5y ago
      Shouldn't they at least support the Web?
      - oarsinsync 5y ago
        Several of the “challenger” / “FinTech” banks in the UK (e.g. Monzo, Starling) require the use of their app. They offer limited read-only views via web, but only offer all features via app. No iOS / Android phone? Go to a different bank.
        db579 5y ago
        Starling do offer an API anyone can use to interact with their own account. Doesn't allow full functionality yet though.
      - jlokier 5y ago
        Even when using the web, some of the banks' websites require a step that involves your phone. The phone app is effectively used as a hardware security token.
    - hedora 5y ago
      The short stories in Caroline M Yoachim’s Shadow Prison trilogy explore the implications of locking society in to a single mobile platform: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-shadow-prison-experiment/ https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-shadow-prison... Great stuff. (No affiliation.) I need to dig into her other work. Apparently quite a bit of her other stuff is also available online for free.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    Same for banking apps here in Italy and the OTP generator of our id system. Plus some apps I don't strictly have to use but I want to: WhatsApp (to use the web app I should run the android one somewhere it can receive messages with my phone number, cough), Telegram (probably OK), OSMAnd, NewPipe as a YouTube adless replacement (YouTube web is not OK), Google Street View and satellite maps (the web app is vastly worse), car sharing apps (less of that now), random apps from my customers. All considered I'll have to carry an Android phone anyway so I'm carrying only an Android phone. No Linux phone. But I've been using Ubuntu as my only OS since 2009.
    - jraph 5y ago
      > NewPipe as a YouTube adless replacement (YouTube web is not OK) Actually, Invidious and the likes (viewtube?) are quite good for this. SponsorBlock even works there. FreeTube makes the phone very hot and is very slow, unfortunately. Something like NewPipe would be neat though. > OSMAnd Something like this is sorely missing. A-GPS isn't integrated in current distros too (a script can load AGPS data in the Phone's modem)
    - ognarb 5y ago
      There is a nice plasma mobile replacement for newpipe: https://apps.kde.org/plasmatube/ https://apps.kde.org/plasmatube/ For telegram the official client works, but you could also use Tok (https://invent.kde.org/network/tok https://invent.kde.org/network/tok), but yeah for the rest there is no real solution yet :(
  - ognarb 5y ago
    Mobile banking apps will probably be the hardest challenge in the long term. In my cases, for social media and communication, it's easy. I don't use whatsapp and facebook messengers on Android, and for Telegram there is a native client that works well enough (and Tok[1]), for Matrix I wrote NeoChat[2], for mastodon, I'm writing Tokodon[3], there is also some activity around a QML Signal client and implementing other open protocols is doable. But for banking there is absolutely nothing and bank in the EU requires a mobile phone app to unlock the account. I fear that the only way to solve that is at a political level but this probably also means something unreachable for now. This sucks. [1]: https://invent.kde.org/network/tok https://invent.kde.org/network/tok [2]: https://invent.kde.org/network/neochat https://invent.kde.org/network/neochat [3]: https://invent.kde.org/network/tokodon https://invent.kde.org/network/tokodon
- gizdan 5y ago
  I'm not convinced. I'd love a Linux phone but there must be some standard that ensures apps are easy to develop and the apps must grow significantly for this to catch on. Otherwise it'll be just like Linux on the desktop. It'll become a mess of 15 different standards and apps devs will not bother with that. I really hope it'll work out, but we'll see.
  - lbotos 5y ago
    I'm curious, what apps do you use day to day that need to be native? For me, 99% could easily be web-based, which makes "mobile web" the standard, and not necessarily "linux-phone."
    - jlokier 5y ago
      For me it's banking apps, og which I have many. Some can be operated via the web but they tend to require a hardware authentication token, which is as inconvenient as carrying a second phone (each bank requires a different token or card reader). Some can be operated via the web but use their phone app as an authentication token for web access. And some don't provide full functionality via the web at all. Plus, the apps are way more convenient than logging in via the web in practice.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        I can't speak to your spending habits, but if a bank exclusively operates on a single-platform native app, I'd consider that a dealbreaker for if I want to use it or not.
        jlokier 5y ago
        When you need credit, you take what you can get and if your rating is poor there isn't a choice of providers. Sometimes that's exclusively mobile. I opened a business account with an (at the time) exclusively mobile bank last year, because other banks took too long to authorize setup (they generally take weeks or even months), and I had a new company starting. I went with the only bank I knew where I could get set up within a few days to start taking revenue, as I had a client ready to pay from the start. It turns out that being mobile also meant they had a streamlined electronic setup process, and no visit to a branch during a pandemic. It still took a few days, as various people checked out my identity, read my LinkedIn profile to confirm what kind of business I was in, etc. Last time I opened an account for a new company it took over a month and two in-person interviews, so the mobile bank was a big improvement. Since then they have added web access as well, which is great, but use the phone as an authentication token, which is a bit annoying. It's not ideal, but neither are any other options I know about. Having to carry a separate physical token/reader around (or in practice, leave it at home and not have it when needed), as all the other business banks I've used require, is more annoying.
- okennedy 5y ago
  KDEConnect is supported in KDE/Plasma-based distros. Work is in progress to add it to Gnome/Phosh. KDEConnect is definitely a killer app! Can't speak for the other distros, but Mobian/Phosh has reached a point where it's usable as a primary phone. Tons of work from the community has brought battery lifetimes up from ~1 hour to the point where it lasts me the day under normal use. Firefox is usable, and most every piece of software I need has a workable counterpart. That said, the experience is still quirky (think c.a. 2000 linux on desktops). Most things work, but the final mile still requires a decent amount of poking at config files and trawling wikis. Doable, but not everyone's cup of tea. (Posted from a pinephone)
  - pmontra 5y ago
    GNOME has gsconnect. It talks with KDE connect apps using their protocol. I've been using it for years until a couple of months ago, when it started to eat into CPU and make all my desktop lag. There is an open issue for that. I'll check if new releases fixed the issue. My devices can still talk between themselves.
    - okennedy 5y ago
      GSConnect (which I already use) is written as a GNOME shell extension in order to provide support for clipboard sharing. Unfortunately, none of the mobile-friendly shells/desktop managers support GNOME extensions (yet). There's an effort to port GSConnect to Phosh-based environments (https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/-/issues/514 https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/-/issues/514), but that's still exploratory. It's also possible to install KDEConnect on Mobian, but it doesn't work fully and the UI isn't quite mobile-friendly yet.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  I have never heard of kde connect. Remote Desktop?
  - shakna 5y ago
    KDE Connect [0] is an integrated kind of sync between all your devices. Things like viewing your computer files from tablet or phone, or responding to text messages from your laptop, using your phone as a trackpad, etc. [0] https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
- krastanov 5y ago
  This is the first time I hear of KDE Connect and I am amazed! Thank you, you just made my electronic-related life significantly easier!
  - ognarb 5y ago
    It also works on Windows, Android, from a computer to a computer and is experimental on macOS.
leshokunin 5y ago
I want the PinePhone to work. The Librem too. In fact I had preorders for both. I canceled them looking at the performance. They’re excellent toys. Great effort to ship such a difficult product. But if your phone is going to struggle with running things besides terminal, it’s not going to be a great daily phone. I’d love them to be on par with the latest Android flagships in terms of power. Cost is not an issue. I just want to be able to actually use Linux on a phone, rather than just run it. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Windows side of things. Windows 10x looked really promising on top of the Surface Neo, but both seem to be shelved. Now the closest alternative is handheld devices like the GPD Win 3, but that lacks LTE unfortunately. No ditching Android just yet.
- grawprog 5y ago
  Personally, I'd rather something equivalent to a mid-range android phone. Something that works decently well, but still affordable enough adoption isn't limited only to the wealthy looking for toys. I see most flagship phones that way myself. For me, i need more than what the pinephone offers, but it doesn't need to have all the features of a high end phone. A decent processor and RAM would make the pinephone a lot more appealing just by itself. if it was equivalent to a $300-$500 android phone, you still wouldn't have all the bells and whistles, but it would be a lot more viable for daily use.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    > A decent processor and RAM would make the pinephone a lot more appealing just by itself. The 3GB of the bigger model are enough for most users (LibreOffice or Firefox with several tabs open can run on a XFCE PC deskop with 2GB), but the CPU is indeed limited, and battery life is short. Admittedly just by optimizing the software they recently squeezed out a lot more compared to the first iterations of the software, however we're not there yet. I wonder if having a much beefier battery could allow the use of faster processors although not aimed at the mobile world. Personally I can't even keep in my hand a modern phone without it risking to fall, I find their thinness extremely uncomfortable, and would be thankful if producers made a full 1.5 - 2cm thick one with the additional space occupied by a decent battery.
asah 5y ago
Recently went to a security conference and really wanted a secure low-feature phone to coordinate with friends and keep up with email/web... Speed and features don't matter, don't need games or even video. Can't imagine I'm alone... is this a niche market for a linux smartphone to take off?
- llaolleh 5y ago
  You are not alone!
- UbrtrbNchDneRle 5y ago
  Nope, not alone. I would go with an oldschool mobile, but I need navigation and modern, encrypted internet-based communication. Tethering, calls, SMS, mail, Signal, GPS, OSMand, calendar. Maybe a good camera and payment stuff, but that’s probably too much niche then. But no web, no social networks, no games, no music/podcasts/video. Can be thick as a can of sardines for all I care, but please be operational with a single average hand (not just men’s average hand). Minimalism/down-sizing is a lasting trend, I think quite a few people are fed up with being hooked to modernity’s love bombing and are up for making the phone a tool again.
- kaba0 5y ago
  The pinephone (and a linux distro) is privacy-oriented at most, but most definitely not secure. For that, choose an iPhone or a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS.
rektide 5y ago
In general I really like that this is a low-end device, affordable. I feel like phone prices have gotten totally out of control, but meanwhile we have very low cost pretty excellent chips available. It feels like ARM has let their low end cores languish, which seems to be changing, and I'm hoping we see some natural, logical follow ups to this phone in ~2023. That said, Snapdragon 845 is inching towards becoming a good general purpose Linux platform, with decent upstream support, and some phone platforms supported. Alas, like the rest of the Android ecosystem, only like 2% of the phones made with this chipset have unlocked bootloaders & will be able to be good long term devices that are well supported by mainline kernels. The rest of these devices are already running out the end of their support life, either no longer getting security updates or real soon about to end support. I feel like once a device manufacturer no longer offers security support, then is when Right to Repair laws have a moral, ethical, legal obligation to step in & demand the bootloader be unlocked, so it's possible for owners to maintain their devices, given that the manufacturer wont.
- danielEM 5y ago
  What phone platforms you mean?
luke2m 5y ago
Source: https://tedium.co/2021/05/26/pinephone-mobile-linux-review/ https://tedium.co/2021/05/26/pinephone-mobile-linux-review/
midwestemo 5y ago
I would buy a pinephone at the moment but the performance is just not that much compared to Android phones. It's not good for a daily phone to use at the moment. Until then, I'll stick with my OnePlus 7 Pro until there's a linux phone with good performance, even if it costs more.
- testific8 5y ago
  If you are interested in postmarketOS linux, I think there are some faster phones that have been bootstrapped: http://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices http://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
- linmob 5y ago
  There are a few Snapdragon 845 phones (PocoPhone F1, OnePlus 6(T) that are getting closer and to fully working with postmarketOS and/or Mobian. Maybe that’s something to look out for, currently IIRC the OnePlus 6 is the closest.
sfgweilr4f 5y ago
This is a good start. Bring on the real spec Linux phones with flagship CPU / ram / cameras. If only to act as a catalyst to improve the other platforms. But mostly so I can run What I Want (tm). But first, the market needs to be tested. So, these early devices are a good idea.
Proven 5y ago
Reading the comments, everybody wants a Linux phone at a shit price but even that not just yet - first it has to gets close to Android and iOS performance. Such fans!
meristohm 5y ago
Since I no longer play games on my mobile device, I’m comfortable with lower performance (to run Anki, a password manager, Firefox, text editing, play music and podcasts and audiobooks and text-to-speech ebooks—this might be resource-intensive?, record and view photos and videos, send and receive texts and calls). Battery life is also important, though most of my phone use is while it is plugged in.
- mhitza 5y ago
  The biggest performance issue is going to be the browser. Because for any type of rendering performance hardware acceleration is a must. And Firefox disables that by default on Linux (needs to be manually enabled in about:config). The second issue, which I saw based on reviews alone was a very slow camera interface. One surprise with PinePhone optimized distros is Ubuntu Touch (ubports). Not sure what type of magic they are on, but accelerate 1080p video in the browser and fluid mobile interfaces. Check out the Short Circuit youtube channel for their PinePhone video. Watched it expecting to see just laggy interfaces, but ubports really takes it to the next level.
  - testific8 5y ago
    Speaking from experience with the pinephone, the browser situation is actually pretty good on postmarketOS because they have a custom firefox configuration for mobile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co6qnlw4hgE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co6qnlw4hgE I can also confirm that the camera interface is slow. It takes like 30 seconds to dump a single image and render it into a jpeg. The main camera app is called "Megapixels". I'm not sure, but i've heard there are some paralellism changes coming downstream that may improve performance somewhat now that they have updated to gtk4.
georgeoliver 5y ago
My Pinephone doesn't work for me as a primary phone (yet), but I think it's still a very capable device at home with good integration (via KDE connect). Without millions of dollars in corporate support, hardware vendors like Pine64 and Linux on mobile developers need user support to make progress. If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game.
- pinkybanana 5y ago
  > If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game. The reality is that this ain't going to happen. There will be never enough volunteer-based work to enable the level of effort that it requires to develop consumer devices like smartphones. Commercial actors have so much money and power, and people have bills to pay. This is something where full open source model just doesn't work.
  - suby 5y ago
    Why is Linux Desktop viable (I'm certainly very happy with it at least) but phones are too much work?
    - Ar-Curunir 5y ago
      Because state-of-the-art desktop hardware tends to work with Linux, due to the historical origins of the PC as a relatively non-proprietary technology. The same cannot be said of modern mobile phone hardware.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Non-proprietary only because IBM failed to sink Compaq reverse engineering efforts, and weren't able to drive the PC industry into MCA, PS/2 architecture.
    - wcarss 5y ago
      I think the idea is the array of phones is so comparatively vast, and their release schedule is so frequent, that it's just much harder to reach any really reasonable market coverage for things like good drivers. (I'm not sure I agree, I just think that's the argument)
gentleman11 5y ago
It’s all about killer apps for me. My phone is for anki, taking notes that my other devices can read, using authy, and for podcasts, and a password manager app. A discord app would be convenient but optional. A step counter. Once pinephone or librem can do all those, I’m sold
ruined 5y ago
can you message on signal without a matrix bridge yet pls moxie let me foss axolotl is cute but it's not canonical, you know
fabrice_d 5y ago
The biggest threat to Linux on phones could be Fuchsia. If/when Google decides to switch to a Fuchsia base for Android, all the chipset vendors will follow suit and that will make it even harder to find chipsets that can be used with a Linux kernel - upstream or not. That will dry up the amount of effort put into making Linux a good mobile platform. Maybe the stable binary api of Fuchsia drivers will be usable on Linux with a wrapper, but that obviously won't be open enough for projects like the Librem5 (I'm not sure what is Pine64 position on binary drivers).
- testific8 5y ago
  The pine64 position on binary drivers is not as hard as the purism one (perhaps they try to balance more with cost), but there are still projects to reverse-engineer and replace some non-free firmware, such as the modem firmware: https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk. I agree that Fuchsia will become a problem going forwards, even if Fuchsia drivers can be reverse-engineered. It's also possible that phone hardware is commodified enough that google will be unable to lock us out, or that google abandons or delays the Fuchsia project.
  - posguy 5y ago
    The PinePhone has the same security properties as the Nokia N900 where the modem is connected over USB rather than an interface with direct memory access (eg: PCIe) where the proprietary software running on the modem can read anything in main memory.
    - fragileone 5y ago
      IOMMU groups are supposed to compartmentalise modems here, but as far as I know this tends to be blackboxed on Qualcomm processors.
- UbrtrbNchDneRle 5y ago
  Don’t you think we will see more general computing ARM chips with the M1’s success? Aren’t we approaching a world where your phone, tablet (hopefully eating the laptop…), desktop and server all run more or less the same chip?
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I've seen the pinephone in action and while I'd love to contribute to it, there is an immense amount of work that still needs to be done. Even the basic text editor they have for it takes a while to load up. The phone call app barely worked as well. I mean, the idea is awesome and I want it to succeed. But in order for me to put a dime up for it, phone calls have to work without question, I need a text editor of virtually any kind, a web browser that doesn't take ages to start, a calendar app that works, and the ability to simply listen to mp3's. The phone hardly has any of those features working in a remotely feasible state right now. I really do admire the project, but it's far from ready. It needs financing I know, but I don't like funding things for a subpar experience. I certainly do have excess cash to devote to these projects, but I have no recourse that they will get at the state I want it in in a reasonable time frame. That all being said, I can't wait until this gets better.
- ldarby 5y ago
  I'm a bit confused by this attitude. You want the project to get better, and get better sooner than later. You could donate, in the hope that donating will make it get better faster (or, depending on the amounts involved, you could get an agreement that they'll use the funds to work on the specific things you care about). But you won't donate, because they still need orders of magnitude more funding than what you can provide? Well then you're going to be waiting longer. But then, you will donate once they're good enough, which is when they no longer need your extra funding to do the work? Edit I think I figured it out after thinking about it further. Let's say they're at e.g. 10% of the way to towards a usable device, and you could afford to donate enough to fund 10% progress. If you donate now, 20% usable is still useless and there's no visible difference in how long until it's 100%, but donating later when they're at 90%, if they ever get there, would "immediately" result in a useable device.
ashneo76 5y ago
Using a low power phone for everyday use, for a year now. I would say the "convergence" of the android and iOS devices is creating a device that is tuned to suck you into the marketing and advertising of google, apple, etc. Android and iOS devices are tools and platforms to gather data and use the consumer as a product more than anything else. Break the slab like form factor and my addictive habits dropped, drastically. Break the app stores, and marketing and I got a lot more time back in my life. I have a separate hotspot for internet, a tablet for internet access, a phone only simple communication with a 2GB plan and an offline GPS. The convergence of these is an optimized tool to farm the consumers.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  So what are you using? A feature phone in a 'flip' form factor? I'm wondering what the options are.
- zepto 5y ago
  > Break the slab like form factor and my addictive habits dropped, drastically. I think this is an important point and one of the potential problems with the PinePhone - by having the same form factor as Android and iOS devices, it will end up being sucked into copying along with their designs the way the Linux desktop iterates towards MacOS.
ergocoder 5y ago
I want something small like Palm Phone, which is beautiful and refined. But Palm Phone totally screws it up by marketing themselves as "companion phone" (your second mobile phone, why would I have 2 phones??) and the battery life is 5h (wtf is this??). Other minimal phones focuses on calling, and guess what? 99% of my calls in the past few years were with spam. Currently, there is absolutely no minimal small smart phone.
- butz 5y ago
  I've got Unihertz Jelly 2. It is smaller than "Palm Palm" in width and heigth, but a bit thicker in depth, which is a good thing. Screen is a bit tad too small, but good enough for calls and other basic functions. Typing in portrait mode is tricky, at least.
  - Groxx 5y ago
    I had an earlier version of one of these, when they had a ridiculous sale (it was like $40 or something). It ran quite well. Most apps worked fine. It was a little slow, but it almost never had problems. Typing aside, I'm surprised how reasonable it was, I used it as my only phone for a few days and I really had no complaints.
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    I look at it. Its design looks bulky... Small is good though.
- JackMorgan 5y ago
  What about the Palm phone? It's waterproof, 2oz, and has a feature that cuts power to the cell and wifi chips when the screen is turned off, so no calls or texts until you turn it back on. I love it as my daily driver for a year now. https://palm.com/ https://palm.com/
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    If the battery life can stay the whole day, I will buy. I think it's like 5h max
squarefoot 5y ago
One point that should be repeated ad infinitum for those reading about the Pinephone for the 1st time: it's all about the freedom, not performance. One doesn't buy the Pinephone to brag about its technical achievements with friends, but rather to contribute building an ecosystem, even just by spreading the word, of people who put freedom and privacy above everything. I also should be repeated ad infinitum why its hardware is limited compared to other devices, and I don't mean the well known ones but also those built by the hundreds of thousands by Chinese factories then relabeled under a dozen different lesser known brands. The reason is that Pine64 had to make all of it from scratch since obtaining any meaningful technical information from those hardware makers is impossible, so they had literally to pick what hardware had the most open documentation available. Supporting them is our way to send a strong message: "we've had enough of your black boxes". Big players of course won't give a flying damn since the market of privacy conscious users wouldn't represent a fraction of a fraction of their user base, but hopefully that will help convincing other manufacturers to publish their specs. Phones aside, there are other ways to help them. I'm waiting for a beefier version of the Pinetab, am considering the PineBook pro (with EU keyboard which is out of stock) and in the meantime got their mini solder iron which works surprisingly well (and I have two Wellers).
- Bancakes 5y ago
  It's sad to see free hardware is so comically behind commercial one.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    FOSS and OSH will always sit a few years behind companies which are investing billions of dollars in R&D. But we can try to lift what we can and catch up sooner or later.
    - api 5y ago
      FOSS UI/UX is at least two decades behind and the gap is growing. A major problem is that people almost always underestimate the difficulty of a good UI. Good UIs can be a lot harder than the rest of a system and a modern UI toolkit has a feature set and difficulty level approaching that of a good 3D game engine like Unity.
_joel 5y ago
Unless they manage to get the apps then they'll always be hobbyist or not a daily driver for the vast majority of users. Sure it's fun it's linux but nobody else in my family would use one if they couldn't access banking apps etc.
jokoon 5y ago
Why not just use android on such phone, and remove google dependencies? Android is open source. Android is already using linux. I really don't get it. I wish somebody could answer this question with convincing arguments, because writing another mobile OS doesn't seem like a trivial task.
- amelius 5y ago
  It might not be possible in the future to remove google dependencies.
- richardwhiuk 5y ago
  Then fork Android?
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  So, the problem is that Android is open source in concept and name only, not in practice: Code is developed in the dark, and then published later, it's not a collaborative environment. And the important part is that Google fully controls what direction Android development moves in. So they're going to design it to advantage themselves and disadvantage others. So the first problem with that is that the work to remove their influence becomes progressively harder, and the bigger problem is that if you want to maintain app compatibility, you basically have to accept nearly everything Google decides to do as is... you can't really "just fork it" without losing the main perk of running Android: Running Android apps. As it is, most Android apps won't work on a device without Google Play Services, because Google has pushed app developers year after year to switch from depending on Android platform APIs over to Google Play Services APIs for basic functions like location.
  - jokoon 5y ago
    > So they're going to design it to advantage themselves and disadvantage others. How so? > you can't really "just fork it" without losing the main perk of running Android: Running Android apps. > As it is, most Android apps won't work on a device without Google Play Services Most, so you mean it's still possible to not depend on google play services. Although of course, app developers will always prefer the play store as it's the only way for them to make money in a reliable way. > for basic functions like location. What do you mean? All phone have GPS chips, they don't depend on google for that. Even with all those problems, the main one being that app developers want to make money by participating to the ad ecosystem or with microtransactions, to me it doesn't seem like android is completely tied to the google ecosystem.
amelius 5y ago
What sandboxing/app-deployment systems does Linux offer today, and which one is the most promising? Are they secure, and do they offer fine-grained permissions?
- zozbot234 5y ago
  FlatPak is working on adding support for fine-grained sandboxing, but they're not there yet.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Sandstorm.io is a sandboxing/app-deployment system that runs on Linux servers, which uses capability-based security and fine-grained permissions. (As a note, it sandboxes individual "grains", which are single-documents/instances, not entire apps. Of course, Sandstorm is built to present a cloud-like web app interface, not local desktop or mobile apps. I still think personal servers are the eventual way to go, such that people's mobile devices they carry with them aren't the definitive location of lots of their valuable data.
- fsflover 5y ago
  https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#43-how-secure-is-the-librem-5-compared-to-an-android-phone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Firejail is by far the most mature for sandboxing desktop/phone applications. It's available on Mobian and is shipped with hundreds of profiles for popular applications.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    I’m no security researcher but have read one who said that due to it being a setuid program, it can potentially turn a bug in firejail into an exploit with root access.
Shadonototro 5y ago
linux ecosystem? with what apps? cat, ls, htop?
- linmob 5y ago
  There are a few more than just these: https://linmobapps.frama.io https://linmobapps.frama.io
tontonius 5y ago
FWIW, I just overheard a colleague the other day saying that “2021 could be the year of the Linux smartphone”
bserge 5y ago
I would not buy one of these when I can get a used phone with better specs that was "hacked" for Linux support.
- fsflover 5y ago
  But your hacked phone will never have updated drivers and will never work with latest Linux kernel.
errantspark 5y ago
My only phone is a Pinephone. I don't "daily" drive it because I'm not really much of a phone user but it's still loads better than the experience I had with Android/iOS. I feel like the phone respects me. It's a computer and when I decide that I want to do [X thing a computer can do] it lets me do that. It feels much better to struggle against real problems I can solve than it does to struggle against fake problems inflicted upon me by other people in order to extract value from me. I would seriously much rather deal with "Which file do I pipe `1` into using a shell on a phone screen in order to turn on the flashlight LED?" than having to deny Google location tracking privileges for the millionth time because they will just keep asking me until I accidentally hit yes instead of no one day.
- slim 5y ago
  Can you receive calls on it?
  - fsflover 5y ago
    Calls have been working on both Pinephone and Librem 5 for a long time already.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
The problem for me with a non-(Android, Iphone) mobile is that the apps I use for banking are unlikely to work.
- peterwandering 5y ago
  Banks have websites :P
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    Most of which (in my admittedly limited experience) are next to useless on a small screen device or don't work properly with a touch interface.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I am tempted to create a phone case sticker:: "My Other Phone is Pine64"
draklor40 5y ago
Unpopular Opinion: I don't want a Linux Desktop (XFCE, KDE, etc) on my phone. I don't care about being able to run terminals or `chown -R user xyz` or `htop` on my phone. I want a phone with a decently polished OS, smooth (given hardware constraints) that can run apps that I control (deny ads, location info. etc) and provides an alternative to the Android/IOS duopoly. I just hope that the Pine Community will realize this and focus energy and work towards having a canonical OS on the PinePhone that just works.
- fsflover 5y ago
  In this case Librem 5 would be a better fit for you I guess. This is how Purism advertise their phone.
  - draklor40 5y ago
    Agreed, but irrespective of Librem/PinePhone, companies in general can build much better products when they focus on doing few things good than many things bad.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Ubuntu Touch is closer to that goal.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
michelledepeil 5y ago
This review is totally correct and I share the hope/idea that this might be the big linux-on-phones jumping-off point. I've been daily driving the Librem 5 with postmarketOS/phosh for a couple of months now, and though I certainly wouldn't give it to my grandmother right now, I can already start to imagine her using a maybe PureOS/phosh on a librem 5-v3 five years from now.
yyyk 5y ago
Nope. The Linux ecosystem for some reason is fixed on recreating a purist GNU/Linux experience and toolchain which simply doesn't suit smartphones, or making 2nd class copies of typical smartphone interfaces. By comparison, the toolchain isn't so bad for Desktop, the copies are mature or experimenting in their own ways, and there's wine (Wayland is unfinished, but most users can still use X for now). Still Linux Desktop has a minute marketshare.
danielEM 5y ago
Love the idea of Pinephone, but I don't see even remote plans/talks to get to 1/3rd of modern phones performance, my 300$ phone is literally 11 times faster (multicore). Once you'll get decent hardware performance a lot of devs will happily give up on their laptops and switch to mobile. And that will bring a lot of traction to software for mobile linux...
dang 5y ago
Way too many previous related threads to list, but here are the big ones: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E20%20PinePhone&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E20%20-PinePhone%20pine64&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
advael 5y ago
I've moved my sim card over to a pinephone, and I have to say, the main pain point right now is battery life. I think the thing is a great little linux system, and while the UX of things like Phosh isn't perfectly slick, it can come with time and I mostly use my phone as a way to get interrupt-level messages and serve cellular data as a wi-fi network anyway. But power management for this device seems really immature, so the battery lasts maybe a couple hours in real-world usage at best. I think that's down to power management ultimately, so I think it needs to be a development priority if adoption is to pick up
trok 5y ago
I did a bit of research and it seems that the phone has a removable battery. This got me thinking, how easy is it to find a replacement?
- kaba0 5y ago
  It’s the same battery used by one of Samsung’s phones so it should be trivial
kaba0 5y ago
I’ve read that open hardware is not as important as some claim — I did buy a pinephone and occasionally play with it (and I am very grateful to the small but enthusiastic community around it), but it having stale firmware which never gets updated doesn’t sound good. Also, hardware kill switches are useless — if you can’t trust the software to not listen to you than all is lost. Also, sound can be recorded through the motion sensors as well. And my all around point: Linux’s user space’s security is a joke. If it ever wants to grow out of the niche of 5 tech enthusiast, something should be done.
anshumankmr 5y ago
I don't think mobile phones are the best place to go with Linux. I feel tablets are better. I would be happy to pay a tonne of money if someone could install Ubuntu or some other Linux based OS on my iPad as I still feel the hardware is great but the software is still pulling it back. A full desktop experience still isn't there though what the experience on the iPad is,I enjoy quite a bit.

268 points by ollieparanoid 5y ago

This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.

CogitoCogito 5y ago
I would be totally fine using such a phone for almost everything I do. The only big gap would be using Sweden's identification app BankID and the money transferring app Swish. Unless these were ported to the phone, I would unfortunately lose one of it's most important functionalities for me. Of course I could just have an Apple/Android phone sitting at home for such purposes, but it is definitely less convenient.
- nazgulsenpai 5y ago
  While I'm not entirely sure on the specifics, this is where Anbox can hopefully create a workable Android runtime layer. While it would be a bit overly optimistic to assume that "secure" authentication type apps would work, it could help with adoption for people like me who are missing that one vitally important app required to make the PinePhone a daily driver.
  - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
    Unfortunately, Anbox isn’t a longterm solution for non-libre Android apps. The problem is that more and more Android apps require passing SafetyNet. It started with banking apps, then spread to games, and Google may one day simply encourage every app to require it. Even Android ROMs stripped of Google services like LineageOS are finding it a challenge to pass SafetyNet, let alone Anbox.
    - nazgulsenpai 5y ago
      Ah okay, that's unfortunate but thank you for clarifying.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  This is one of the things I worry about - a duopoly not just backed by two wealthy and shady megacorps but also effectively by law as it mandates a mobile app for some things yet the app only exists for iOS and Android & no public API is available.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Shouldn't they at least support the Web?
    - oarsinsync 5y ago
      Several of the “challenger” / “FinTech” banks in the UK (e.g. Monzo, Starling) require the use of their app. They offer limited read-only views via web, but only offer all features via app. No iOS / Android phone? Go to a different bank.
      - db579 5y ago
        Starling do offer an API anyone can use to interact with their own account. Doesn't allow full functionality yet though.
    - jlokier 5y ago
      Even when using the web, some of the banks' websites require a step that involves your phone. The phone app is effectively used as a hardware security token.
  - hedora 5y ago
    The short stories in Caroline M Yoachim’s Shadow Prison trilogy explore the implications of locking society in to a single mobile platform: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-shadow-prison-experiment/ https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-shadow-prison... Great stuff. (No affiliation.) I need to dig into her other work. Apparently quite a bit of her other stuff is also available online for free.
- pmontra 5y ago
  Same for banking apps here in Italy and the OTP generator of our id system. Plus some apps I don't strictly have to use but I want to: WhatsApp (to use the web app I should run the android one somewhere it can receive messages with my phone number, cough), Telegram (probably OK), OSMAnd, NewPipe as a YouTube adless replacement (YouTube web is not OK), Google Street View and satellite maps (the web app is vastly worse), car sharing apps (less of that now), random apps from my customers. All considered I'll have to carry an Android phone anyway so I'm carrying only an Android phone. No Linux phone. But I've been using Ubuntu as my only OS since 2009.
  - jraph 5y ago
    > NewPipe as a YouTube adless replacement (YouTube web is not OK) Actually, Invidious and the likes (viewtube?) are quite good for this. SponsorBlock even works there. FreeTube makes the phone very hot and is very slow, unfortunately. Something like NewPipe would be neat though. > OSMAnd Something like this is sorely missing. A-GPS isn't integrated in current distros too (a script can load AGPS data in the Phone's modem)
  - ognarb 5y ago
    There is a nice plasma mobile replacement for newpipe: https://apps.kde.org/plasmatube/ https://apps.kde.org/plasmatube/ For telegram the official client works, but you could also use Tok (https://invent.kde.org/network/tok https://invent.kde.org/network/tok), but yeah for the rest there is no real solution yet :(
- ognarb 5y ago
  Mobile banking apps will probably be the hardest challenge in the long term. In my cases, for social media and communication, it's easy. I don't use whatsapp and facebook messengers on Android, and for Telegram there is a native client that works well enough (and Tok[1]), for Matrix I wrote NeoChat[2], for mastodon, I'm writing Tokodon[3], there is also some activity around a QML Signal client and implementing other open protocols is doable. But for banking there is absolutely nothing and bank in the EU requires a mobile phone app to unlock the account. I fear that the only way to solve that is at a political level but this probably also means something unreachable for now. This sucks. [1]: https://invent.kde.org/network/tok https://invent.kde.org/network/tok [2]: https://invent.kde.org/network/neochat https://invent.kde.org/network/neochat [3]: https://invent.kde.org/network/tokodon https://invent.kde.org/network/tokodon
gizdan 5y ago
I'm not convinced. I'd love a Linux phone but there must be some standard that ensures apps are easy to develop and the apps must grow significantly for this to catch on. Otherwise it'll be just like Linux on the desktop. It'll become a mess of 15 different standards and apps devs will not bother with that. I really hope it'll work out, but we'll see.
- lbotos 5y ago
  I'm curious, what apps do you use day to day that need to be native? For me, 99% could easily be web-based, which makes "mobile web" the standard, and not necessarily "linux-phone."
  - jlokier 5y ago
    For me it's banking apps, og which I have many. Some can be operated via the web but they tend to require a hardware authentication token, which is as inconvenient as carrying a second phone (each bank requires a different token or card reader). Some can be operated via the web but use their phone app as an authentication token for web access. And some don't provide full functionality via the web at all. Plus, the apps are way more convenient than logging in via the web in practice.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      I can't speak to your spending habits, but if a bank exclusively operates on a single-platform native app, I'd consider that a dealbreaker for if I want to use it or not.
      - jlokier 5y ago
        When you need credit, you take what you can get and if your rating is poor there isn't a choice of providers. Sometimes that's exclusively mobile. I opened a business account with an (at the time) exclusively mobile bank last year, because other banks took too long to authorize setup (they generally take weeks or even months), and I had a new company starting. I went with the only bank I knew where I could get set up within a few days to start taking revenue, as I had a client ready to pay from the start. It turns out that being mobile also meant they had a streamlined electronic setup process, and no visit to a branch during a pandemic. It still took a few days, as various people checked out my identity, read my LinkedIn profile to confirm what kind of business I was in, etc. Last time I opened an account for a new company it took over a month and two in-person interviews, so the mobile bank was a big improvement. Since then they have added web access as well, which is great, but use the phone as an authentication token, which is a bit annoying. It's not ideal, but neither are any other options I know about. Having to carry a separate physical token/reader around (or in practice, leave it at home and not have it when needed), as all the other business banks I've used require, is more annoying.
okennedy 5y ago
KDEConnect is supported in KDE/Plasma-based distros. Work is in progress to add it to Gnome/Phosh. KDEConnect is definitely a killer app! Can't speak for the other distros, but Mobian/Phosh has reached a point where it's usable as a primary phone. Tons of work from the community has brought battery lifetimes up from ~1 hour to the point where it lasts me the day under normal use. Firefox is usable, and most every piece of software I need has a workable counterpart. That said, the experience is still quirky (think c.a. 2000 linux on desktops). Most things work, but the final mile still requires a decent amount of poking at config files and trawling wikis. Doable, but not everyone's cup of tea. (Posted from a pinephone)
- pmontra 5y ago
  GNOME has gsconnect. It talks with KDE connect apps using their protocol. I've been using it for years until a couple of months ago, when it started to eat into CPU and make all my desktop lag. There is an open issue for that. I'll check if new releases fixed the issue. My devices can still talk between themselves.
  - okennedy 5y ago
    GSConnect (which I already use) is written as a GNOME shell extension in order to provide support for clipboard sharing. Unfortunately, none of the mobile-friendly shells/desktop managers support GNOME extensions (yet). There's an effort to port GSConnect to Phosh-based environments (https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/-/issues/514 https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/-/issues/514), but that's still exploratory. It's also possible to install KDEConnect on Mobian, but it doesn't work fully and the UI isn't quite mobile-friendly yet.
gentleman11 5y ago
I have never heard of kde connect. Remote Desktop?
- shakna 5y ago
  KDE Connect [0] is an integrated kind of sync between all your devices. Things like viewing your computer files from tablet or phone, or responding to text messages from your laptop, using your phone as a trackpad, etc. [0] https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
krastanov 5y ago
This is the first time I hear of KDE Connect and I am amazed! Thank you, you just made my electronic-related life significantly easier!
- ognarb 5y ago
  It also works on Windows, Android, from a computer to a computer and is experimental on macOS.

leshokunin 5y ago

I want the PinePhone to work. The Librem too. In fact I had preorders for both. I canceled them looking at the performance. They’re excellent toys. Great effort to ship such a difficult product. But if your phone is going to struggle with running things besides terminal, it’s not going to be a great daily phone. I’d love them to be on par with the latest Android flagships in terms of power. Cost is not an issue. I just want to be able to actually use Linux on a phone, rather than just run it. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Windows side of things. Windows 10x looked really promising on top of the Surface Neo, but both seem to be shelved. Now the closest alternative is handheld devices like the GPD Win 3, but that lacks LTE unfortunately. No ditching Android just yet.

grawprog 5y ago
Personally, I'd rather something equivalent to a mid-range android phone. Something that works decently well, but still affordable enough adoption isn't limited only to the wealthy looking for toys. I see most flagship phones that way myself. For me, i need more than what the pinephone offers, but it doesn't need to have all the features of a high end phone. A decent processor and RAM would make the pinephone a lot more appealing just by itself. if it was equivalent to a $300-$500 android phone, you still wouldn't have all the bells and whistles, but it would be a lot more viable for daily use.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  > A decent processor and RAM would make the pinephone a lot more appealing just by itself. The 3GB of the bigger model are enough for most users (LibreOffice or Firefox with several tabs open can run on a XFCE PC deskop with 2GB), but the CPU is indeed limited, and battery life is short. Admittedly just by optimizing the software they recently squeezed out a lot more compared to the first iterations of the software, however we're not there yet. I wonder if having a much beefier battery could allow the use of faster processors although not aimed at the mobile world. Personally I can't even keep in my hand a modern phone without it risking to fall, I find their thinness extremely uncomfortable, and would be thankful if producers made a full 1.5 - 2cm thick one with the additional space occupied by a decent battery.

asah 5y ago

Recently went to a security conference and really wanted a secure low-feature phone to coordinate with friends and keep up with email/web... Speed and features don't matter, don't need games or even video. Can't imagine I'm alone... is this a niche market for a linux smartphone to take off?

llaolleh 5y ago
You are not alone!
UbrtrbNchDneRle 5y ago
Nope, not alone. I would go with an oldschool mobile, but I need navigation and modern, encrypted internet-based communication. Tethering, calls, SMS, mail, Signal, GPS, OSMand, calendar. Maybe a good camera and payment stuff, but that’s probably too much niche then. But no web, no social networks, no games, no music/podcasts/video. Can be thick as a can of sardines for all I care, but please be operational with a single average hand (not just men’s average hand). Minimalism/down-sizing is a lasting trend, I think quite a few people are fed up with being hooked to modernity’s love bombing and are up for making the phone a tool again.
kaba0 5y ago
The pinephone (and a linux distro) is privacy-oriented at most, but most definitely not secure. For that, choose an iPhone or a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS.

rektide 5y ago

In general I really like that this is a low-end device, affordable. I feel like phone prices have gotten totally out of control, but meanwhile we have very low cost pretty excellent chips available. It feels like ARM has let their low end cores languish, which seems to be changing, and I'm hoping we see some natural, logical follow ups to this phone in ~2023. That said, Snapdragon 845 is inching towards becoming a good general purpose Linux platform, with decent upstream support, and some phone platforms supported. Alas, like the rest of the Android ecosystem, only like 2% of the phones made with this chipset have unlocked bootloaders & will be able to be good long term devices that are well supported by mainline kernels. The rest of these devices are already running out the end of their support life, either no longer getting security updates or real soon about to end support. I feel like once a device manufacturer no longer offers security support, then is when Right to Repair laws have a moral, ethical, legal obligation to step in & demand the bootloader be unlocked, so it's possible for owners to maintain their devices, given that the manufacturer wont.

danielEM 5y ago
What phone platforms you mean?

luke2m 5y ago

Source: https://tedium.co/2021/05/26/pinephone-mobile-linux-review/ https://tedium.co/2021/05/26/pinephone-mobile-linux-review/

midwestemo 5y ago

I would buy a pinephone at the moment but the performance is just not that much compared to Android phones. It's not good for a daily phone to use at the moment. Until then, I'll stick with my OnePlus 7 Pro until there's a linux phone with good performance, even if it costs more.

testific8 5y ago
If you are interested in postmarketOS linux, I think there are some faster phones that have been bootstrapped: http://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices http://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
linmob 5y ago
There are a few Snapdragon 845 phones (PocoPhone F1, OnePlus 6(T) that are getting closer and to fully working with postmarketOS and/or Mobian. Maybe that’s something to look out for, currently IIRC the OnePlus 6 is the closest.

sfgweilr4f 5y ago

This is a good start. Bring on the real spec Linux phones with flagship CPU / ram / cameras. If only to act as a catalyst to improve the other platforms. But mostly so I can run What I Want (tm). But first, the market needs to be tested. So, these early devices are a good idea.

Proven 5y ago

Reading the comments, everybody wants a Linux phone at a shit price but even that not just yet - first it has to gets close to Android and iOS performance. Such fans!

meristohm 5y ago

Since I no longer play games on my mobile device, I’m comfortable with lower performance (to run Anki, a password manager, Firefox, text editing, play music and podcasts and audiobooks and text-to-speech ebooks—this might be resource-intensive?, record and view photos and videos, send and receive texts and calls). Battery life is also important, though most of my phone use is while it is plugged in.

mhitza 5y ago
The biggest performance issue is going to be the browser. Because for any type of rendering performance hardware acceleration is a must. And Firefox disables that by default on Linux (needs to be manually enabled in about:config). The second issue, which I saw based on reviews alone was a very slow camera interface. One surprise with PinePhone optimized distros is Ubuntu Touch (ubports). Not sure what type of magic they are on, but accelerate 1080p video in the browser and fluid mobile interfaces. Check out the Short Circuit youtube channel for their PinePhone video. Watched it expecting to see just laggy interfaces, but ubports really takes it to the next level.
- testific8 5y ago
  Speaking from experience with the pinephone, the browser situation is actually pretty good on postmarketOS because they have a custom firefox configuration for mobile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co6qnlw4hgE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co6qnlw4hgE I can also confirm that the camera interface is slow. It takes like 30 seconds to dump a single image and render it into a jpeg. The main camera app is called "Megapixels". I'm not sure, but i've heard there are some paralellism changes coming downstream that may improve performance somewhat now that they have updated to gtk4.

georgeoliver 5y ago

My Pinephone doesn't work for me as a primary phone (yet), but I think it's still a very capable device at home with good integration (via KDE connect). Without millions of dollars in corporate support, hardware vendors like Pine64 and Linux on mobile developers need user support to make progress. If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game.

pinkybanana 5y ago
> If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game. The reality is that this ain't going to happen. There will be never enough volunteer-based work to enable the level of effort that it requires to develop consumer devices like smartphones. Commercial actors have so much money and power, and people have bills to pay. This is something where full open source model just doesn't work.
- suby 5y ago
  Why is Linux Desktop viable (I'm certainly very happy with it at least) but phones are too much work?
  - Ar-Curunir 5y ago
    Because state-of-the-art desktop hardware tends to work with Linux, due to the historical origins of the PC as a relatively non-proprietary technology. The same cannot be said of modern mobile phone hardware.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Non-proprietary only because IBM failed to sink Compaq reverse engineering efforts, and weren't able to drive the PC industry into MCA, PS/2 architecture.
  - wcarss 5y ago
    I think the idea is the array of phones is so comparatively vast, and their release schedule is so frequent, that it's just much harder to reach any really reasonable market coverage for things like good drivers. (I'm not sure I agree, I just think that's the argument)

gentleman11 5y ago

It’s all about killer apps for me. My phone is for anki, taking notes that my other devices can read, using authy, and for podcasts, and a password manager app. A discord app would be convenient but optional. A step counter. Once pinephone or librem can do all those, I’m sold

ruined 5y ago

can you message on signal without a matrix bridge yet pls moxie let me foss axolotl is cute but it's not canonical, you know

fabrice_d 5y ago

The biggest threat to Linux on phones could be Fuchsia. If/when Google decides to switch to a Fuchsia base for Android, all the chipset vendors will follow suit and that will make it even harder to find chipsets that can be used with a Linux kernel - upstream or not. That will dry up the amount of effort put into making Linux a good mobile platform. Maybe the stable binary api of Fuchsia drivers will be usable on Linux with a wrapper, but that obviously won't be open enough for projects like the Librem5 (I'm not sure what is Pine64 position on binary drivers).

testific8 5y ago
The pine64 position on binary drivers is not as hard as the purism one (perhaps they try to balance more with cost), but there are still projects to reverse-engineer and replace some non-free firmware, such as the modem firmware: https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk. I agree that Fuchsia will become a problem going forwards, even if Fuchsia drivers can be reverse-engineered. It's also possible that phone hardware is commodified enough that google will be unable to lock us out, or that google abandons or delays the Fuchsia project.
- posguy 5y ago
  The PinePhone has the same security properties as the Nokia N900 where the modem is connected over USB rather than an interface with direct memory access (eg: PCIe) where the proprietary software running on the modem can read anything in main memory.
  - fragileone 5y ago
    IOMMU groups are supposed to compartmentalise modems here, but as far as I know this tends to be blackboxed on Qualcomm processors.
UbrtrbNchDneRle 5y ago
Don’t you think we will see more general computing ARM chips with the M1’s success? Aren’t we approaching a world where your phone, tablet (hopefully eating the laptop…), desktop and server all run more or less the same chip?

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

I've seen the pinephone in action and while I'd love to contribute to it, there is an immense amount of work that still needs to be done. Even the basic text editor they have for it takes a while to load up. The phone call app barely worked as well. I mean, the idea is awesome and I want it to succeed. But in order for me to put a dime up for it, phone calls have to work without question, I need a text editor of virtually any kind, a web browser that doesn't take ages to start, a calendar app that works, and the ability to simply listen to mp3's. The phone hardly has any of those features working in a remotely feasible state right now. I really do admire the project, but it's far from ready. It needs financing I know, but I don't like funding things for a subpar experience. I certainly do have excess cash to devote to these projects, but I have no recourse that they will get at the state I want it in in a reasonable time frame. That all being said, I can't wait until this gets better.

ldarby 5y ago
I'm a bit confused by this attitude. You want the project to get better, and get better sooner than later. You could donate, in the hope that donating will make it get better faster (or, depending on the amounts involved, you could get an agreement that they'll use the funds to work on the specific things you care about). But you won't donate, because they still need orders of magnitude more funding than what you can provide? Well then you're going to be waiting longer. But then, you will donate once they're good enough, which is when they no longer need your extra funding to do the work? Edit I think I figured it out after thinking about it further. Let's say they're at e.g. 10% of the way to towards a usable device, and you could afford to donate enough to fund 10% progress. If you donate now, 20% usable is still useless and there's no visible difference in how long until it's 100%, but donating later when they're at 90%, if they ever get there, would "immediately" result in a useable device.

ashneo76 5y ago

Using a low power phone for everyday use, for a year now. I would say the "convergence" of the android and iOS devices is creating a device that is tuned to suck you into the marketing and advertising of google, apple, etc. Android and iOS devices are tools and platforms to gather data and use the consumer as a product more than anything else. Break the slab like form factor and my addictive habits dropped, drastically. Break the app stores, and marketing and I got a lot more time back in my life. I have a separate hotspot for internet, a tablet for internet access, a phone only simple communication with a 2GB plan and an offline GPS. The convergence of these is an optimized tool to farm the consumers.

wolverine876 5y ago
So what are you using? A feature phone in a 'flip' form factor? I'm wondering what the options are.
zepto 5y ago
> Break the slab like form factor and my addictive habits dropped, drastically. I think this is an important point and one of the potential problems with the PinePhone - by having the same form factor as Android and iOS devices, it will end up being sucked into copying along with their designs the way the Linux desktop iterates towards MacOS.

ergocoder 5y ago

I want something small like Palm Phone, which is beautiful and refined. But Palm Phone totally screws it up by marketing themselves as "companion phone" (your second mobile phone, why would I have 2 phones??) and the battery life is 5h (wtf is this??). Other minimal phones focuses on calling, and guess what? 99% of my calls in the past few years were with spam. Currently, there is absolutely no minimal small smart phone.

butz 5y ago
I've got Unihertz Jelly 2. It is smaller than "Palm Palm" in width and heigth, but a bit thicker in depth, which is a good thing. Screen is a bit tad too small, but good enough for calls and other basic functions. Typing in portrait mode is tricky, at least.
- Groxx 5y ago
  I had an earlier version of one of these, when they had a ridiculous sale (it was like $40 or something). It ran quite well. Most apps worked fine. It was a little slow, but it almost never had problems. Typing aside, I'm surprised how reasonable it was, I used it as my only phone for a few days and I really had no complaints.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  I look at it. Its design looks bulky... Small is good though.
JackMorgan 5y ago
What about the Palm phone? It's waterproof, 2oz, and has a feature that cuts power to the cell and wifi chips when the screen is turned off, so no calls or texts until you turn it back on. I love it as my daily driver for a year now. https://palm.com/ https://palm.com/
- ergocoder 5y ago
  If the battery life can stay the whole day, I will buy. I think it's like 5h max

squarefoot 5y ago

One point that should be repeated ad infinitum for those reading about the Pinephone for the 1st time: it's all about the freedom, not performance. One doesn't buy the Pinephone to brag about its technical achievements with friends, but rather to contribute building an ecosystem, even just by spreading the word, of people who put freedom and privacy above everything. I also should be repeated ad infinitum why its hardware is limited compared to other devices, and I don't mean the well known ones but also those built by the hundreds of thousands by Chinese factories then relabeled under a dozen different lesser known brands. The reason is that Pine64 had to make all of it from scratch since obtaining any meaningful technical information from those hardware makers is impossible, so they had literally to pick what hardware had the most open documentation available. Supporting them is our way to send a strong message: "we've had enough of your black boxes". Big players of course won't give a flying damn since the market of privacy conscious users wouldn't represent a fraction of a fraction of their user base, but hopefully that will help convincing other manufacturers to publish their specs. Phones aside, there are other ways to help them. I'm waiting for a beefier version of the Pinetab, am considering the PineBook pro (with EU keyboard which is out of stock) and in the meantime got their mini solder iron which works surprisingly well (and I have two Wellers).

Bancakes 5y ago
It's sad to see free hardware is so comically behind commercial one.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  FOSS and OSH will always sit a few years behind companies which are investing billions of dollars in R&D. But we can try to lift what we can and catch up sooner or later.
  - api 5y ago
    FOSS UI/UX is at least two decades behind and the gap is growing. A major problem is that people almost always underestimate the difficulty of a good UI. Good UIs can be a lot harder than the rest of a system and a modern UI toolkit has a feature set and difficulty level approaching that of a good 3D game engine like Unity.

_joel 5y ago

Unless they manage to get the apps then they'll always be hobbyist or not a daily driver for the vast majority of users. Sure it's fun it's linux but nobody else in my family would use one if they couldn't access banking apps etc.

jokoon 5y ago

Why not just use android on such phone, and remove google dependencies? Android is open source. Android is already using linux. I really don't get it. I wish somebody could answer this question with convincing arguments, because writing another mobile OS doesn't seem like a trivial task.

amelius 5y ago
It might not be possible in the future to remove google dependencies.
richardwhiuk 5y ago
Then fork Android?
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
So, the problem is that Android is open source in concept and name only, not in practice: Code is developed in the dark, and then published later, it's not a collaborative environment. And the important part is that Google fully controls what direction Android development moves in. So they're going to design it to advantage themselves and disadvantage others. So the first problem with that is that the work to remove their influence becomes progressively harder, and the bigger problem is that if you want to maintain app compatibility, you basically have to accept nearly everything Google decides to do as is... you can't really "just fork it" without losing the main perk of running Android: Running Android apps. As it is, most Android apps won't work on a device without Google Play Services, because Google has pushed app developers year after year to switch from depending on Android platform APIs over to Google Play Services APIs for basic functions like location.
- jokoon 5y ago
  > So they're going to design it to advantage themselves and disadvantage others. How so? > you can't really "just fork it" without losing the main perk of running Android: Running Android apps. > As it is, most Android apps won't work on a device without Google Play Services Most, so you mean it's still possible to not depend on google play services. Although of course, app developers will always prefer the play store as it's the only way for them to make money in a reliable way. > for basic functions like location. What do you mean? All phone have GPS chips, they don't depend on google for that. Even with all those problems, the main one being that app developers want to make money by participating to the ad ecosystem or with microtransactions, to me it doesn't seem like android is completely tied to the google ecosystem.

amelius 5y ago

What sandboxing/app-deployment systems does Linux offer today, and which one is the most promising? Are they secure, and do they offer fine-grained permissions?

zozbot234 5y ago
FlatPak is working on adding support for fine-grained sandboxing, but they're not there yet.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Sandstorm.io is a sandboxing/app-deployment system that runs on Linux servers, which uses capability-based security and fine-grained permissions. (As a note, it sandboxes individual "grains", which are single-documents/instances, not entire apps. Of course, Sandstorm is built to present a cloud-like web app interface, not local desktop or mobile apps. I still think personal servers are the eventual way to go, such that people's mobile devices they carry with them aren't the definitive location of lots of their valuable data.
fsflover 5y ago
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#43-how-secure-is-the-librem-5-compared-to-an-android-phone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
goodpoint 5y ago
Firejail is by far the most mature for sandboxing desktop/phone applications. It's available on Mobian and is shipped with hundreds of profiles for popular applications.
- kaba0 5y ago
  I’m no security researcher but have read one who said that due to it being a setuid program, it can potentially turn a bug in firejail into an exploit with root access.

Shadonototro 5y ago

linux ecosystem? with what apps? cat, ls, htop?

linmob 5y ago
There are a few more than just these: https://linmobapps.frama.io https://linmobapps.frama.io

tontonius 5y ago

FWIW, I just overheard a colleague the other day saying that “2021 could be the year of the Linux smartphone”

bserge 5y ago

I would not buy one of these when I can get a used phone with better specs that was "hacked" for Linux support.

fsflover 5y ago
But your hacked phone will never have updated drivers and will never work with latest Linux kernel.

errantspark 5y ago

My only phone is a Pinephone. I don't "daily" drive it because I'm not really much of a phone user but it's still loads better than the experience I had with Android/iOS. I feel like the phone respects me. It's a computer and when I decide that I want to do [X thing a computer can do] it lets me do that. It feels much better to struggle against real problems I can solve than it does to struggle against fake problems inflicted upon me by other people in order to extract value from me. I would seriously much rather deal with "Which file do I pipe `1` into using a shell on a phone screen in order to turn on the flashlight LED?" than having to deny Google location tracking privileges for the millionth time because they will just keep asking me until I accidentally hit yes instead of no one day.

slim 5y ago
Can you receive calls on it?
- fsflover 5y ago
  Calls have been working on both Pinephone and Librem 5 for a long time already.

kwhitefoot 5y ago

The problem for me with a non-(Android, Iphone) mobile is that the apps I use for banking are unlikely to work.

peterwandering 5y ago
Banks have websites :P
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Most of which (in my admittedly limited experience) are next to useless on a small screen device or don't work properly with a touch interface.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

I am tempted to create a phone case sticker:: "My Other Phone is Pine64"

draklor40 5y ago

Unpopular Opinion: I don't want a Linux Desktop (XFCE, KDE, etc) on my phone. I don't care about being able to run terminals or `chown -R user xyz` or `htop` on my phone. I want a phone with a decently polished OS, smooth (given hardware constraints) that can run apps that I control (deny ads, location info. etc) and provides an alternative to the Android/IOS duopoly. I just hope that the Pine Community will realize this and focus energy and work towards having a canonical OS on the PinePhone that just works.

fsflover 5y ago
In this case Librem 5 would be a better fit for you I guess. This is how Purism advertise their phone.
- draklor40 5y ago
  Agreed, but irrespective of Librem/PinePhone, companies in general can build much better products when they focus on doing few things good than many things bad.
kaba0 5y ago
Ubuntu Touch is closer to that goal.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

michelledepeil 5y ago

This review is totally correct and I share the hope/idea that this might be the big linux-on-phones jumping-off point. I've been daily driving the Librem 5 with postmarketOS/phosh for a couple of months now, and though I certainly wouldn't give it to my grandmother right now, I can already start to imagine her using a maybe PureOS/phosh on a librem 5-v3 five years from now.

yyyk 5y ago

Nope. The Linux ecosystem for some reason is fixed on recreating a purist GNU/Linux experience and toolchain which simply doesn't suit smartphones, or making 2nd class copies of typical smartphone interfaces. By comparison, the toolchain isn't so bad for Desktop, the copies are mature or experimenting in their own ways, and there's wine (Wayland is unfinished, but most users can still use X for now). Still Linux Desktop has a minute marketshare.

danielEM 5y ago

Love the idea of Pinephone, but I don't see even remote plans/talks to get to 1/3rd of modern phones performance, my 300$ phone is literally 11 times faster (multicore). Once you'll get decent hardware performance a lot of devs will happily give up on their laptops and switch to mobile. And that will bring a lot of traction to software for mobile linux...

dang 5y ago

Way too many previous related threads to list, but here are the big ones: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E20%20PinePhone&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E20%20-PinePhone%20pine64&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

advael 5y ago

I've moved my sim card over to a pinephone, and I have to say, the main pain point right now is battery life. I think the thing is a great little linux system, and while the UX of things like Phosh isn't perfectly slick, it can come with time and I mostly use my phone as a way to get interrupt-level messages and serve cellular data as a wi-fi network anyway. But power management for this device seems really immature, so the battery lasts maybe a couple hours in real-world usage at best. I think that's down to power management ultimately, so I think it needs to be a development priority if adoption is to pick up

trok 5y ago

I did a bit of research and it seems that the phone has a removable battery. This got me thinking, how easy is it to find a replacement?

kaba0 5y ago
It’s the same battery used by one of Samsung’s phones so it should be trivial

kaba0 5y ago

I’ve read that open hardware is not as important as some claim — I did buy a pinephone and occasionally play with it (and I am very grateful to the small but enthusiastic community around it), but it having stale firmware which never gets updated doesn’t sound good. Also, hardware kill switches are useless — if you can’t trust the software to not listen to you than all is lost. Also, sound can be recorded through the motion sensors as well. And my all around point: Linux’s user space’s security is a joke. If it ever wants to grow out of the niche of 5 tech enthusiast, something should be done.

anshumankmr 5y ago

I don't think mobile phones are the best place to go with Linux. I feel tablets are better. I would be happy to pay a tonne of money if someone could install Ubuntu or some other Linux based OS on my iPad as I still feel the hardware is great but the software is still pulling it back. A full desktop experience still isn't there though what the experience on the iPad is,I enjoy quite a bit.