4 ms·

The PinePhone is fine as a daily driver. If it's not good enough for you, that's fine, but don't generalize it as if it's something obvious and applies to every

The PinePhone is fine as a daily driver. If it's not good enough for you, that's fine, but don't generalize it as if it's something obvious and applies to everyone. Edit: People responding to me as if I said it's suitable as a daily driver for "most people" or "casual users" need to learn how to read. Not only did I not use either of those phrases, the context of the conversation was "those looking for a Linux phone", which neither of those demographics are.

abstract_put 5y ago
While I love the PinePhone, I think "still a ways from being a daily driver" is a more accurate representation than "fine as a daily driver" for most people's experiences. Some people are definitely able to daily drive the PinePhone, but e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/qm1aut/pinephone_as_a_daily_driver_update/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/qm1aut/pine... > Firefox: 8 seconds to open; ... and loads my start page in 21 seconds. It's constantly improving, and the PinePhone Pro seems similarly promising, but I'd be downright shocked if there triple digits of people daily driving it and enjoying the experience (outside the satisfaction of living on the bleeding edge).
kaba0 5y ago
I mean, please be honest and say that the exception is those who find it usable as a daily driver. Compared to the “average” phone of a typical person (which depends on country), the pinephone is slower and less capable than that with worse battery life. I do own one, but this is the unfortunate reality. I could probably use one as a daily driver, but at that point I could probably just as well be without a phone, as taking photos is 2000s category and desktop firefox is not the most usable on a touch interface, let alone on such a weak CPU.
- wink 5y ago
  Someone just mentioned browserbench.org to me and I tested my work iphone 12 mini (score 212) versus my personal moto x4 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 (11.x score). So this benchmark tells me the single-core JS performance of the iphone is 20x that of my just 2 year old phone. And you know what? I didn't notice it was supposed to be "slow". I don't have a comparison to the Pinephone and I'm too lazy to look now but if I, a casual (normal?) phone user don't notice this weak cpu, what else might I not notice?
reginold 5y ago
Agree with the other respondents here. I love the PinePhone project and want them to succeed long term. That said, recommending it to causal users as a daily driver before it's ready causes more harm than good.
mastazi 5y ago
I have a PinePhone, with the distro that was recently selected as the "official" one, so it's supposed to be the most polished[1]. I can't even do things as basic as placing an app icon on the home screen, and expect that it will still be there after the next reboot. So it is not a daily driver by any stretch of the immagination, regardless of what you mean by daily driver. Even if your idea of daily driver is "a feature phone would do", it's still not there yet (MMS not being fully working, most feature phones have that). I love the PinePhone and I want to see it succeed, I don't regret spending the money on it, but it is most certainly not usable as a daily driver. I can see some progress being made with every single update though, so in time it will eventually get there thanks to the community. [1] https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-convergence-package/ https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-conve...
- Arnavion 5y ago
  >I have a PinePhone, with the distro that was recently selected as the "official" one, so it's supposed to be the most polished[1]. It isn't. It's only pre-installed because there's a money deal involved with pre-installing it. Manjaro also did weird things like announcing they have working MMS when they didn't, and even outside of phones are considered to be a weird distro given their relationship with Arch. Going by the IRC channel, a lot of people install a different distro. >I can't even do things as basic as placing an app icon on the home screen, and expect that it will still be there after the next reboot. Known plamo bug that they haven't fixed in forever. I stopped using it for that and other reasons and have no idea why people like it. phosh works fine. Also, "things as basic as" implies that saving the positions of homescreen items is somehow more fundamental than everything else on the phone, and if they can't get this to work then obviously everything else must also be broken. It isn't, and it's not. >So it is not a daily driver by any stretch of the immagination, regardless of what you mean by daily driver. It makes and receives calls, sends and receives SMS, downloads voicemails, runs an up-to-date web brower, takes decent photographs of documents when a scanner isn't available, and allows me to ssh to my other machines. Turns out different people have different criteria for their daily driver phones. Shocking. >Even if your idea of daily driver is "a feature phone would do", it's still not there yet (MMS not being fully working, most feature phones have that). a) MMS matters to a few select countries in the world. But since you assumed everyone else has the same view as you about what a daily driver is, presumably you also assumed that everyone else finds MMS important. b) Dumbphones can't do three of the five things I listed above as my criteria for a daily driver. c) In the US, it's next to impossible to find a dumbphone that will continue to work in the next few years because of carriers shutting down everything that isn't 4G and 5G. Really, all this conversation thread has revealed is that people don't think there's a middle ground between a phone that's 100% usable by all 8 billion people in the world and a phone that's 100% useless.
reginold 5y ago
I'm a causal user looking for a Linux phone. I want a non-proprietary OS and I want to support open source. I'm willing to give up a lot to get that. But Pinephone isn't quite there yet. I know it will be someday!

abstract_put 5y ago

While I love the PinePhone, I think "still a ways from being a daily driver" is a more accurate representation than "fine as a daily driver" for most people's experiences. Some people are definitely able to daily drive the PinePhone, but e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/qm1aut/pinephone_as_a_daily_driver_update/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/qm1aut/pine... > Firefox: 8 seconds to open; ... and loads my start page in 21 seconds. It's constantly improving, and the PinePhone Pro seems similarly promising, but I'd be downright shocked if there triple digits of people daily driving it and enjoying the experience (outside the satisfaction of living on the bleeding edge).

kaba0 5y ago

I mean, please be honest and say that the exception is those who find it usable as a daily driver. Compared to the “average” phone of a typical person (which depends on country), the pinephone is slower and less capable than that with worse battery life. I do own one, but this is the unfortunate reality. I could probably use one as a daily driver, but at that point I could probably just as well be without a phone, as taking photos is 2000s category and desktop firefox is not the most usable on a touch interface, let alone on such a weak CPU.

wink 5y ago
Someone just mentioned browserbench.org to me and I tested my work iphone 12 mini (score 212) versus my personal moto x4 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 (11.x score). So this benchmark tells me the single-core JS performance of the iphone is 20x that of my just 2 year old phone. And you know what? I didn't notice it was supposed to be "slow". I don't have a comparison to the Pinephone and I'm too lazy to look now but if I, a casual (normal?) phone user don't notice this weak cpu, what else might I not notice?

reginold 5y ago

Agree with the other respondents here. I love the PinePhone project and want them to succeed long term. That said, recommending it to causal users as a daily driver before it's ready causes more harm than good.

mastazi 5y ago

I have a PinePhone, with the distro that was recently selected as the "official" one, so it's supposed to be the most polished[1]. I can't even do things as basic as placing an app icon on the home screen, and expect that it will still be there after the next reboot. So it is not a daily driver by any stretch of the immagination, regardless of what you mean by daily driver. Even if your idea of daily driver is "a feature phone would do", it's still not there yet (MMS not being fully working, most feature phones have that). I love the PinePhone and I want to see it succeed, I don't regret spending the money on it, but it is most certainly not usable as a daily driver. I can see some progress being made with every single update though, so in time it will eventually get there thanks to the community. [1] https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-convergence-package/ https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-conve...

Arnavion 5y ago
>I have a PinePhone, with the distro that was recently selected as the "official" one, so it's supposed to be the most polished[1]. It isn't. It's only pre-installed because there's a money deal involved with pre-installing it. Manjaro also did weird things like announcing they have working MMS when they didn't, and even outside of phones are considered to be a weird distro given their relationship with Arch. Going by the IRC channel, a lot of people install a different distro. >I can't even do things as basic as placing an app icon on the home screen, and expect that it will still be there after the next reboot. Known plamo bug that they haven't fixed in forever. I stopped using it for that and other reasons and have no idea why people like it. phosh works fine. Also, "things as basic as" implies that saving the positions of homescreen items is somehow more fundamental than everything else on the phone, and if they can't get this to work then obviously everything else must also be broken. It isn't, and it's not. >So it is not a daily driver by any stretch of the immagination, regardless of what you mean by daily driver. It makes and receives calls, sends and receives SMS, downloads voicemails, runs an up-to-date web brower, takes decent photographs of documents when a scanner isn't available, and allows me to ssh to my other machines. Turns out different people have different criteria for their daily driver phones. Shocking. >Even if your idea of daily driver is "a feature phone would do", it's still not there yet (MMS not being fully working, most feature phones have that). a) MMS matters to a few select countries in the world. But since you assumed everyone else has the same view as you about what a daily driver is, presumably you also assumed that everyone else finds MMS important. b) Dumbphones can't do three of the five things I listed above as my criteria for a daily driver. c) In the US, it's next to impossible to find a dumbphone that will continue to work in the next few years because of carriers shutting down everything that isn't 4G and 5G. Really, all this conversation thread has revealed is that people don't think there's a middle ground between a phone that's 100% usable by all 8 billion people in the world and a phone that's 100% useless.

reginold 5y ago

I'm a causal user looking for a Linux phone. I want a non-proprietary OS and I want to support open source. I'm willing to give up a lot to get that. But Pinephone isn't quite there yet. I know it will be someday!