9 ms·

I received a Pinephone in the latest shipment, about three weeks ago. I also got the convergence dock to be able to attach a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I am e

I received a Pinephone in the latest shipment, about three weeks ago. I also got the convergence dock to be able to attach a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I am extremely motivated to get off Android on my phone, and yet my Pinephone has already been discarded (and I never even put a SIM card in it). There are far too many out-of-the-box bugs and glitches to consider this a usable product. For example, the convergence dock will not display on a monitor. Firefox browser displays too wide for the phone screen, so unusable. A dozen other issues on first day. Even a development board should work better than this, have documentation of the known problems, and have some support mechanism that works. I don't think better/more expensive hardware is the problem. It's software, caused by lack of users, lack of investment, and too many "competing" distributions of Linux.

tediousdemise 5y ago
I noticed many of the same issues, but the most concerning one for me was that the modem (behind the upper rear of the phone) gets extremely hot. This has to be terrible for battery life and general longevity.
- megous 5y ago
  Modem is a heatsink for pretty much all the other heat producing stuff in that phone. It gets hot when whatever else gets hot (PMIC when charging, or SoC when doing soc stuff).
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  Many people are running an open-source re-implementation of the modem [0]. Neither the proprietary nor the open-source firmware for the modem are perfect, but the latter has the advantage of being clocked down to 100MHz instead of the default 400. This allows much better battery life, as well as giving off far less heat :) [0] https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk
betwixthewires 5y ago
In the article we are discussing, the gist of your concerns is addressed. The pinephone (and mobile Linux in general) is extremely immature and only really for hobbyists and people developing for it. You expected a daily driver, right now it is a toy for nerds. Lack of users, investment and too many competing distros were all given in the early days of desktop Linux as reasons why it was simply not worthwhile. The thing is, this phase of development, where some devices exist that only nerds play with for a while, is necessary for there to ever be a mature Linux mobile UX. When you buy one of these devices you're not buying a Linux phone, you're choosing to participate in the process by which a Linux phone becomes a reality. And that process is picking up steam, Ubuntu tried it, many people have run Linux on their android devices with unlocked bootloaders, but pine (and librem and others) have actually created a market environment where things are actually advancing, and in my opinion advancing much faster than desktop Linux did.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > right now it is a toy for nerds I have some standards for my toys though. If it’s sold as a phone, it should actually work as a phone (even a shitty one). If they were selling it as a mini linux computer with integrated screen I wouldn’t mind so much.
  - necrotic_comp 5y ago
    That's how I'm seeing this - as a mini linux computer with the ability to make calls and send text messages at some point in the future. Just a linux computer with a cellular modem sounds amazing to me, tbh.
    - nottaylorswift 5y ago
      Then buy any of the 3 billion Android handsets. Most average $100 and were out of beta in 08'.
      - necrotic_comp 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reginold 5y ago
Similar experience with a new PinePhone last week but different conclusion. PinePhone is our only hope. It's still in Beta, months or years from being consumer ready. And that's just where it needs to be from a development standpoint. Don't rush. That said, reading your comment I also wonder about having too many distros of Linux going after PinePhone. I had an SD card with I believe 14 distros. Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? It seems like combining together strengths would be beneficial.
- officeplant 5y ago
  >Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? Honestly I don't think personally that it hurts things as much as one might expect. There is a lot of work from each distro that benefits all of the others. For example the Mobian dev was one of the first to really tackle the issue of battery life and their work benefited all the other teams. That being said it might be better to have a few larger dev teams, but as long as their works contribute back to the community there is always benefit to the whole.
  - 29083011397778 5y ago
    I'd second your assumption. Geary, MegaPixels (the camera app), Phosh (one of the few window managers), the modem firmware, and more are mostly shared between all the distros. Doubly so for upstreamed SoC firmware, battery efficiency improvements, and more that I'm sure I'm overlooking. Frankly, it makes me question anyone who says desktop Linux is divided because we have options - at this point, it's more like there's no large corporate backer with a vested interest in making the desktop experience mainstream.
    - abacadaba 5y ago
      SteamOS?
      - 29083011397778 5y ago
        Good catch, thank you. While Steam currently prints money AFAIK, they're simultaneously 30 years behind Apple and Microsoft (as far as being the driving force of a desktop) and the reason Steam (and gaming on Linux) has come so far, so fast recently.
29083011397778 5y ago
I wouldn't want to say you must try again, but if you're interested in playing more with the toy for nerds, the Mobian wiki [0] is full of helpful tips. You're right, lots of things don't fit the screen. Running scale-to-fit firefox on [1] would fix your issues with Firefox not scaling correctly, for the most part. The other person that replied to you is right - it's currently a toy for nerds more than a drop-in replacement. With compromise and some effort (such as running your own Matrix server to replace Signal / Whatsapp / Discord), it can be done. But I'd hope to inspire you to try again, while tempering expectations for just how ready mobile Linux currently is :) [0] https://wiki.mobian-project.org/ https://wiki.mobian-project.org/ [1] https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=tweaks&s[]=scale&s[]=fit#automatic-app-scaling https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=tweaks&s[]=scale...
- linmob 5y ago
  From reading OP I it sounds more like mobile-config-firefox is not installed and thus Firefox does not work properly.
_joel 5y ago
For me, the deal breaker is not being able to run any banking apps. That's not a fault of the PinePhone, but a sad reflection of the state of affairs.
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  Can you open banking websites? The only downside of not using an Android/iOS app (in my case at least) would be "mobile deposits" (depositing a check by taking a picture of it).
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    A lot of banks in the UK offer better IX through their apps when compared to websites, some don't offer a fully featured web client at all (Monzo and friends).
    - HeckFeck 5y ago
      With this 'mobile app' duoply, it feels like we're back in the days of IE6 and ActiveX controls.
  - _joel 5y ago
    In addition to the UX they also lack the functionality and some use the mobile app as a 2FA mechanism for the website site, so to use that I'd have to carry around another android/iphone just to 2FA.
casept 5y ago
Why do you want to move off Android? Depending on the reason, your needs would probably be better met with an alternative Android distribution on Android hardware.
- abacadaba 5y ago
  Unfortunately I think AOSP distributions are a long-term dead-end. Unless maybe if there was a hard fork. Or else it's just a scramble to keep up with whatever changes google is making, dealing with unsupported hardware and hoping that whoever maintains the build for you device knows what they're doing, and re-implementing gapps to try to get some mostly broken compatibility.
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  Not OP, but I'd assume everyone with the goal of dropping iOS and Android is doing so for philosophical reasons. I still have my BlackBerry KeyOne. Battery life is still measured in days, but GApps bloat has pushed me to Open Street Maps. Literally every single aspect of the KeyOne is better, from battery life to performance to app availability and polish - but opting out of all tracking may be more meaningful to some.
- prox 5y ago
  I never liked Android, having owned a few. The hardware is quickly obsolete, interface has this clunky feeling, apps don’t work properly, often because devs don’t see the same rewards as their iOS brethren. And however you spin it, it’s all proprietary sponsored. A linux phone might have the same problems, but at least its far more closer to the Open Source side of things.
jjmellon 5y ago
I am a software developer. I would honestly not have the nerve to release a product with software in the state the Pinephone is in today. But of course, pine64.org takes no responsibility for the software on their phone, it's a "community project". Until there's somebody who is willing to be embarrassed by the state of this software, and able to do something about it, there is no hope here. It does not get better.
- jjulius 5y ago
  >I would honestly not have the nerve to release a product with software in the state the Pinephone is in today. To be fair, they're clearly marked as "Beta" on their store. https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e66 https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...
- megous 5y ago
  People are improving the SW constantly. And it does steadily get better ever since the release (and before, because A64 is older than the pinephone, and was also implemented in mainline Linux by someone other than the SoC vendor).
- Shared404 5y ago
  What Pine has done is break the chicken/egg cycle of "there's no hardware -> there's no software" I disagree with your assessment. There are plenty of competent programmers who are working on pushing forward this software, and even following from the outside I've watched massive improvements over time. We needed (more) open hardware before the software could get properly started, and that's what Pine provided.
- idle_zealot 5y ago
  I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the progression of development, but every few months I get the itch to play around with my PinePhone and flash the latest version of one of the OSes. The experience is consistently greatly improved over the last time. I’m at the point now where the greatest usability issue I run into is performance, though I’m sure if I were to daily-drive I’d bump into more.
dbeley 5y ago
What OS did you use? I use mine with Phosh (tested Mobian and Archlinux) and I don't have the same experience at all. The device is still severely underpowered though so the Pro version with a much better CPU is a welcome change.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  Can confirm that the Arch build for my pinephone performed significantly better than the default KDE rom that shipped with my device. Vibration, lights, volume & volume rockers, responsiveness, calls, keyboard etc - all mostly working on the arch release. But I 100% agree - the device is just too slow for me. Would love the increased RAM and extra CPU power.
- 3np 5y ago
  Plasma Mobile does not have autoscaling of windows like Phosh does.
131012 5y ago
A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably? Smartphones are so bloated with functionalities, it seems nobody ever talks about that. I don't see the answer on the website.
- blueblob 5y ago
  I saw an article that touched on this for the pinephone (not the pro) and they said that it made and received calls fine but did not originally have dtmf support. If you need to check your voicemail and enter a passcode or use an automated system to pick up your prescription, you could not use it for that. It seems that has been ironed out depending on which OS you put on it.
- Klasiaster 5y ago
  Not reliably, the modem can crash at any time and until you restart it manually from the terminal you can't send/receive text/calls.
  - josteink 5y ago
    I send and receive texts all the time on my PP. What are you talking about?
    - Klasiaster 5y ago
      Normally happens during suspend and when you wake the phone up again, the modem is gone until you do `sudo systemctl restart eg25-manager` (using the FLOSS firmware on the latest release). When it happened once, it will happen more often, until the phone is rebooted, than you get it working for longer time again.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably" Half a year ago, when I looked into it, the answer was a clear: no. And there were not many things that did work reliable, without frequent freezes and crashes. I doubt that fundamentally changed, so if you are looking for stability and reliability right now, than better look somewhere else. This project is about to get to such a state.
jjulius 5y ago
>There are far too many out-of-the-box bugs and glitches to consider this a usable product. Their phones are clearly marked as "Beta" on their store[1]. Forgive me for being so blunt, but what did you expect? [1]https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e66 https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Beta traditionally means it works in the common case, with some glitches and bugs around obscure uses that wider testing will identify. The PP I received was crashy and couldn't even update the OS because a file or library was broken. :-( I had to start it up ten times, run a terminal with a mobile keyboard in a 4pt font to fix the updater before it crashed at the one minute mark. I'd call it pre-alpha.
Groxx 5y ago
tbh I think Pine has been extremely, excessively clear about this being the expected state of their phones. It's stated over and over on almost every page that the software is incomplete and not suitable for most people, it's primarily a developer target to try to achieve that over the span of years.
pengaru 5y ago
> For example, the convergence dock will not display on a monitor. I recently watched a presentation [0] that focused on the pinephone state-of-affairs, and it did not leave me with the impression the dock couldn't display on a monitor. Are you sure you're not just experiencing some pathological incompatibility problem? Or am I going senile and need to re-watch the video? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEL_GJ1Y2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEL_GJ1Y2s
- megous 5y ago
  He's experiencing a known HW issue, most likely. There's a manual workaround for now: https://xnux.eu/log/#045 https://xnux.eu/log/#045 I'll implement a SW workaround eventually, but I'm still recuperating a bit from the work on the Pinephopne keyboard. Once it's released, donations will hopefully increase a bit again, and I'll be able to do more development other than a kernel maintenance. Now there's also Pinephone Pro and Quartz64 based router sitting on my table which I'm mostly playing with these days, so I'm a bit torn on where to focus my energy next. :)

tediousdemise 5y ago

I noticed many of the same issues, but the most concerning one for me was that the modem (behind the upper rear of the phone) gets extremely hot. This has to be terrible for battery life and general longevity.

megous 5y ago
Modem is a heatsink for pretty much all the other heat producing stuff in that phone. It gets hot when whatever else gets hot (PMIC when charging, or SoC when doing soc stuff).
29083011397778 5y ago
Many people are running an open-source re-implementation of the modem [0]. Neither the proprietary nor the open-source firmware for the modem are perfect, but the latter has the advantage of being clocked down to 100MHz instead of the default 400. This allows much better battery life, as well as giving off far less heat :) [0] https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk

betwixthewires 5y ago

In the article we are discussing, the gist of your concerns is addressed. The pinephone (and mobile Linux in general) is extremely immature and only really for hobbyists and people developing for it. You expected a daily driver, right now it is a toy for nerds. Lack of users, investment and too many competing distros were all given in the early days of desktop Linux as reasons why it was simply not worthwhile. The thing is, this phase of development, where some devices exist that only nerds play with for a while, is necessary for there to ever be a mature Linux mobile UX. When you buy one of these devices you're not buying a Linux phone, you're choosing to participate in the process by which a Linux phone becomes a reality. And that process is picking up steam, Ubuntu tried it, many people have run Linux on their android devices with unlocked bootloaders, but pine (and librem and others) have actually created a market environment where things are actually advancing, and in my opinion advancing much faster than desktop Linux did.

Aeolun 5y ago
> right now it is a toy for nerds I have some standards for my toys though. If it’s sold as a phone, it should actually work as a phone (even a shitty one). If they were selling it as a mini linux computer with integrated screen I wouldn’t mind so much.
- necrotic_comp 5y ago
  That's how I'm seeing this - as a mini linux computer with the ability to make calls and send text messages at some point in the future. Just a linux computer with a cellular modem sounds amazing to me, tbh.
  - nottaylorswift 5y ago
    Then buy any of the 3 billion Android handsets. Most average $100 and were out of beta in 08'.
    - necrotic_comp 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

reginold 5y ago

Similar experience with a new PinePhone last week but different conclusion. PinePhone is our only hope. It's still in Beta, months or years from being consumer ready. And that's just where it needs to be from a development standpoint. Don't rush. That said, reading your comment I also wonder about having too many distros of Linux going after PinePhone. I had an SD card with I believe 14 distros. Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? It seems like combining together strengths would be beneficial.

officeplant 5y ago
>Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? Honestly I don't think personally that it hurts things as much as one might expect. There is a lot of work from each distro that benefits all of the others. For example the Mobian dev was one of the first to really tackle the issue of battery life and their work benefited all the other teams. That being said it might be better to have a few larger dev teams, but as long as their works contribute back to the community there is always benefit to the whole.
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  I'd second your assumption. Geary, MegaPixels (the camera app), Phosh (one of the few window managers), the modem firmware, and more are mostly shared between all the distros. Doubly so for upstreamed SoC firmware, battery efficiency improvements, and more that I'm sure I'm overlooking. Frankly, it makes me question anyone who says desktop Linux is divided because we have options - at this point, it's more like there's no large corporate backer with a vested interest in making the desktop experience mainstream.
  - abacadaba 5y ago
    SteamOS?
    - 29083011397778 5y ago
      Good catch, thank you. While Steam currently prints money AFAIK, they're simultaneously 30 years behind Apple and Microsoft (as far as being the driving force of a desktop) and the reason Steam (and gaming on Linux) has come so far, so fast recently.

29083011397778 5y ago

I wouldn't want to say you must try again, but if you're interested in playing more with the toy for nerds, the Mobian wiki [0] is full of helpful tips. You're right, lots of things don't fit the screen. Running scale-to-fit firefox on [1] would fix your issues with Firefox not scaling correctly, for the most part. The other person that replied to you is right - it's currently a toy for nerds more than a drop-in replacement. With compromise and some effort (such as running your own Matrix server to replace Signal / Whatsapp / Discord), it can be done. But I'd hope to inspire you to try again, while tempering expectations for just how ready mobile Linux currently is :) [0] https://wiki.mobian-project.org/ https://wiki.mobian-project.org/ [1] https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=tweaks&s[]=scale&s[]=fit#automatic-app-scaling https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=tweaks&s[]=scale...

linmob 5y ago
From reading OP I it sounds more like mobile-config-firefox is not installed and thus Firefox does not work properly.

_joel 5y ago

For me, the deal breaker is not being able to run any banking apps. That's not a fault of the PinePhone, but a sad reflection of the state of affairs.

MerelyMortal 5y ago
Can you open banking websites? The only downside of not using an Android/iOS app (in my case at least) would be "mobile deposits" (depositing a check by taking a picture of it).
- eptcyka 5y ago
  A lot of banks in the UK offer better IX through their apps when compared to websites, some don't offer a fully featured web client at all (Monzo and friends).
  - HeckFeck 5y ago
    With this 'mobile app' duoply, it feels like we're back in the days of IE6 and ActiveX controls.
- _joel 5y ago
  In addition to the UX they also lack the functionality and some use the mobile app as a 2FA mechanism for the website site, so to use that I'd have to carry around another android/iphone just to 2FA.

casept 5y ago

Why do you want to move off Android? Depending on the reason, your needs would probably be better met with an alternative Android distribution on Android hardware.

abacadaba 5y ago
Unfortunately I think AOSP distributions are a long-term dead-end. Unless maybe if there was a hard fork. Or else it's just a scramble to keep up with whatever changes google is making, dealing with unsupported hardware and hoping that whoever maintains the build for you device knows what they're doing, and re-implementing gapps to try to get some mostly broken compatibility.
29083011397778 5y ago
Not OP, but I'd assume everyone with the goal of dropping iOS and Android is doing so for philosophical reasons. I still have my BlackBerry KeyOne. Battery life is still measured in days, but GApps bloat has pushed me to Open Street Maps. Literally every single aspect of the KeyOne is better, from battery life to performance to app availability and polish - but opting out of all tracking may be more meaningful to some.
prox 5y ago
I never liked Android, having owned a few. The hardware is quickly obsolete, interface has this clunky feeling, apps don’t work properly, often because devs don’t see the same rewards as their iOS brethren. And however you spin it, it’s all proprietary sponsored. A linux phone might have the same problems, but at least its far more closer to the Open Source side of things.

jjmellon 5y ago

I am a software developer. I would honestly not have the nerve to release a product with software in the state the Pinephone is in today. But of course, pine64.org takes no responsibility for the software on their phone, it's a "community project". Until there's somebody who is willing to be embarrassed by the state of this software, and able to do something about it, there is no hope here. It does not get better.

jjulius 5y ago
>I would honestly not have the nerve to release a product with software in the state the Pinephone is in today. To be fair, they're clearly marked as "Beta" on their store. https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e66 https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...
megous 5y ago
People are improving the SW constantly. And it does steadily get better ever since the release (and before, because A64 is older than the pinephone, and was also implemented in mainline Linux by someone other than the SoC vendor).
Shared404 5y ago
What Pine has done is break the chicken/egg cycle of "there's no hardware -> there's no software" I disagree with your assessment. There are plenty of competent programmers who are working on pushing forward this software, and even following from the outside I've watched massive improvements over time. We needed (more) open hardware before the software could get properly started, and that's what Pine provided.
idle_zealot 5y ago
I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the progression of development, but every few months I get the itch to play around with my PinePhone and flash the latest version of one of the OSes. The experience is consistently greatly improved over the last time. I’m at the point now where the greatest usability issue I run into is performance, though I’m sure if I were to daily-drive I’d bump into more.

dbeley 5y ago

What OS did you use? I use mine with Phosh (tested Mobian and Archlinux) and I don't have the same experience at all. The device is still severely underpowered though so the Pro version with a much better CPU is a welcome change.

horsawlarway 5y ago
Can confirm that the Arch build for my pinephone performed significantly better than the default KDE rom that shipped with my device. Vibration, lights, volume & volume rockers, responsiveness, calls, keyboard etc - all mostly working on the arch release. But I 100% agree - the device is just too slow for me. Would love the increased RAM and extra CPU power.
3np 5y ago
Plasma Mobile does not have autoscaling of windows like Phosh does.

131012 5y ago

A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably? Smartphones are so bloated with functionalities, it seems nobody ever talks about that. I don't see the answer on the website.

blueblob 5y ago
I saw an article that touched on this for the pinephone (not the pro) and they said that it made and received calls fine but did not originally have dtmf support. If you need to check your voicemail and enter a passcode or use an automated system to pick up your prescription, you could not use it for that. It seems that has been ironed out depending on which OS you put on it.
Klasiaster 5y ago
Not reliably, the modem can crash at any time and until you restart it manually from the terminal you can't send/receive text/calls.
- josteink 5y ago
  I send and receive texts all the time on my PP. What are you talking about?
  - Klasiaster 5y ago
    Normally happens during suspend and when you wake the phone up again, the modem is gone until you do `sudo systemctl restart eg25-manager` (using the FLOSS firmware on the latest release). When it happened once, it will happen more often, until the phone is rebooted, than you get it working for longer time again.
hutzlibu 5y ago
"A basic but very important question: can it phone and send/receive text message reliably" Half a year ago, when I looked into it, the answer was a clear: no. And there were not many things that did work reliable, without frequent freezes and crashes. I doubt that fundamentally changed, so if you are looking for stability and reliability right now, than better look somewhere else. This project is about to get to such a state.

jjulius 5y ago

>There are far too many out-of-the-box bugs and glitches to consider this a usable product. Their phones are clearly marked as "Beta" on their store[1]. Forgive me for being so blunt, but what did you expect? [1]https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e66 https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...

mixmastamyk 5y ago
Beta traditionally means it works in the common case, with some glitches and bugs around obscure uses that wider testing will identify. The PP I received was crashy and couldn't even update the OS because a file or library was broken. :-( I had to start it up ten times, run a terminal with a mobile keyboard in a 4pt font to fix the updater before it crashed at the one minute mark. I'd call it pre-alpha.

Groxx 5y ago

tbh I think Pine has been extremely, excessively clear about this being the expected state of their phones. It's stated over and over on almost every page that the software is incomplete and not suitable for most people, it's primarily a developer target to try to achieve that over the span of years.

pengaru 5y ago

> For example, the convergence dock will not display on a monitor. I recently watched a presentation [0] that focused on the pinephone state-of-affairs, and it did not leave me with the impression the dock couldn't display on a monitor. Are you sure you're not just experiencing some pathological incompatibility problem? Or am I going senile and need to re-watch the video? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEL_GJ1Y2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEL_GJ1Y2s

megous 5y ago
He's experiencing a known HW issue, most likely. There's a manual workaround for now: https://xnux.eu/log/#045 https://xnux.eu/log/#045 I'll implement a SW workaround eventually, but I'm still recuperating a bit from the work on the Pinephopne keyboard. Once it's released, donations will hopefully increase a bit again, and I'll be able to do more development other than a kernel maintenance. Now there's also Pinephone Pro and Quartz64 based router sitting on my table which I'm mostly playing with these days, so I'm a bit torn on where to focus my energy next. :)