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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 ba

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.
- mastazi 5y ago
  Those are all ad-hoc hypotheses. I agree with the first part of your post, where you state that there are better distros for PinePhone. But this is still highly problematic because most people don't want to install a distro from a micro SD (I'm a "techie" and even for me it's an inconvenience, I had to go out a purchase one LOL) Regarding the other points: > 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. I strongly disagree with this, it's one of the first things every new user will do with a new phone, it's the very definition of basic considering that our discussion is in the context of usability. Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. > 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. So it's a feature phone, bar the SSH. > 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. Again, Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. I don't live in one of the countries where MMS messages are mainstream, so they don't matter to me, but I know those countries exist, and some of those are among the largest countries by population, so I consider it a priority. Again, Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. > b) Dumbphones can't do three of the five things I listed above as my criteria for a daily driver. they can do everything you mentioned except SSH, and I'm pretty sure there was some Nokia Series 30 app that can do SSH, but of course it's debatable if Series 30 falls under smartphone or feature phone. > 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. At the moment PinePhone is usable by less than what, 2% of the population? So according to your own criteria it's 98% useless? :-P
  - Arnavion 5y ago
    >But this is still highly problematic because most people don't want to install a distro from a micro SD (I'm a "techie" and even for me it's an inconvenience, I had to go out a purchase one LOL) >I strongly disagree with this, it's one of the first things every new user will do with a new phone, it's the very definition of basic considering that our discussion is in the context of usability. >At the moment PinePhone is usable by less than what, 2% of the population? Read the edit in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29310621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29310621 --- >Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. >Again, Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. Sorry, but you don't understand how Linux works. People create things that they want to use themselves, not because they have to satisfy KPIs about number of users to their management. The whole reason MMS support exists now is that one person decided he needed it badly enough to spend time learning a large amount of time reading the spec, learning glib, etc. --- >So it's a feature phone, bar the SSH. Wrong. My feature phone can no longer work for calls or SMS because the carrier decided to block it, since it's shutting down 3G. It also doesn't have an up-to-date browser.

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.

mastazi 5y ago
Those are all ad-hoc hypotheses. I agree with the first part of your post, where you state that there are better distros for PinePhone. But this is still highly problematic because most people don't want to install a distro from a micro SD (I'm a "techie" and even for me it's an inconvenience, I had to go out a purchase one LOL) Regarding the other points: > 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. I strongly disagree with this, it's one of the first things every new user will do with a new phone, it's the very definition of basic considering that our discussion is in the context of usability. Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. > 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. So it's a feature phone, bar the SSH. > 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. Again, Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. I don't live in one of the countries where MMS messages are mainstream, so they don't matter to me, but I know those countries exist, and some of those are among the largest countries by population, so I consider it a priority. Again, Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. > b) Dumbphones can't do three of the five things I listed above as my criteria for a daily driver. they can do everything you mentioned except SSH, and I'm pretty sure there was some Nokia Series 30 app that can do SSH, but of course it's debatable if Series 30 falls under smartphone or feature phone. > 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. At the moment PinePhone is usable by less than what, 2% of the population? So according to your own criteria it's 98% useless? :-P
- Arnavion 5y ago
  >But this is still highly problematic because most people don't want to install a distro from a micro SD (I'm a "techie" and even for me it's an inconvenience, I had to go out a purchase one LOL) >I strongly disagree with this, it's one of the first things every new user will do with a new phone, it's the very definition of basic considering that our discussion is in the context of usability. >At the moment PinePhone is usable by less than what, 2% of the population? Read the edit in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29310621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29310621 --- >Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. >Again, Dev priorities should be based on user needs not on some other obscure technical criterion. Sorry, but you don't understand how Linux works. People create things that they want to use themselves, not because they have to satisfy KPIs about number of users to their management. The whole reason MMS support exists now is that one person decided he needed it badly enough to spend time learning a large amount of time reading the spec, learning glib, etc. --- >So it's a feature phone, bar the SSH. Wrong. My feature phone can no longer work for calls or SMS because the carrier decided to block it, since it's shutting down 3G. It also doesn't have an up-to-date browser.