6 ms·

PinePhone multi-distro demo image

74 points by capableweb 5y ago

tpoacher 5y ago
i found out the hard way this does not work on the pinephone pro :(
gundamdoubleO 5y ago
Can anyone who has extensively tried out most of the available distros for PinePhone comment on how close any of them are to a "daily driver" state? I suspect they're all still far from it but it'd be interesting to know which are worth keeping an eye on.
- increscent 5y ago
  I use Arch on my Pinephone (https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch) and I have used it for the last year. Call audio quality (outgoing) is very poor for me (I think I need to configure ALSA or something). SMS and MMS now work well. Web browsing works. Everything is quite slow (2-10 second delay to open calls/messages/web browser). Previously I used SXMO and Mobian. SXMO is fun to script. I got tired of having to script everything after a while. Mobian works out of the box. But they don't have the newest software, so I switched to Arch.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  It depends on what applications you need, but Mobian is very stable and usable.
- capableweb 5y ago
  I just received my PinePhone (not the pro one), and buying the SD card later today to try out this demo image (hence I posted it here as I came across it :) ). Can leave a status report once I've tried them out. Even from before trying it out, seems I'll try at least the updated images of the Majaro Phosh as I've heard it's the most stable and responsive one of the bunch, together with the Arch Linux Arm edition. Then we'll see what comes next. The phone ships with Manjaro Plasma, and it's definitely not ready as a daily driver. Maybe it's the hardware, we'll see when I can try out the other OSes, but it's very laggy and very buggy (which to be fair, is exactly what I expect from a phone labeled "beta"), would not trust it as a daily driver.
  - cevn 5y ago
    Try Danctnix w/ sxmo or the other sxmo one, it works a lot better for me. Everything works predictably, just takes a little time to get used to.
- generic-husky 5y ago
  Honestly none of them will be daily driver ready, given how broken the Quectel EG25 modem is. I would never want to, have to call emergency services with my Pinephone while the modem is down
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - capableweb 5y ago
    What exactly went wrong in your experience when you tried out the PinePhone? Did the modem randomly die without you doing anything? Or under high load it gave out sometimes? Some more details would be wonderful. Maybe you could share if you tried it with the normal PinePhone or the PinePhone Pro as well.
    - generic-husky 5y ago
      I have only tried the regular PinePhone (since I only own that version) they both share the same modem (iirc), so there shouldn't be much of a difference. > "Did the modem randomly die without you doing anything" Yep > "Or under high load it gave out sometimes?" No, it would be just idling/sleeping and it would crash on me. It's not like it would automatically restart itself either. It was just dead until I rebooted the phone (which is slooowwww), restarting the modem manager and the modem it self, didn't fix it reliably for me either, only sometimes that would actually work, that whole process of restarting the modem and reentering your PIN could easily take multiple minutes. Under load (e.g. Firefox) it would just have the same (crashing) behavior. I have had more missed phone calls because of it, than I'd like to count.
  - blendergeek 5y ago
    Have you tried replacing the modem firmware? The community firmware is supposed to be much more stable.
    - generic-husky 5y ago
      I no longer use the Pinephone because of the aforementioned issues, however at that time, I'm pretty sure I was at the latest and greatest firmware version available (which one that specifically was opensource or proprietary, I can't remember). The experience was so horrid, I just quit using it all together and never looked back. But maybe if things have improved, I should give it a shot again.
- kop316 5y ago
  I have personally used Mobian and PostmarketOS as a daily driver. The "Phone" aspect works pretty well (Calls, SMS/MMS, voicemail, VoLTE, no Wifi Calling). The base model Pinephone works fine for very basic tasks, but is very slow for anything else. I would assume that most of the other "mainstream" Phone distros have a similar/the same feature parity. I personally have moved to a Librem 5 with PureOS, mainly since it is much faster, and I like the user accessible HW kill switches. I use it for "Phone" tasks, email, web browsing, 2FA, Telegram, Signal, the occasional camera picture, and Matrix.
- fsflover 5y ago
  https://teddit.net/r/pinephone/comments/u6zzyc/how_pinephone_sucks_at_daily_use/ https://teddit.net/r/pinephone/comments/u6zzyc/how_pinephone...
- Arnavion 5y ago
  Every time this topic comes up I have to remind people that the definition of "daily driver" is different for everyone. I've been daily-driving the phone for a year without problems because it does everything I need it to do. That doesn't mean you'd have no problems with it. Instead, please ask what it is you want the phone to do, and then people can give you a clear answer.
  - jancsika 5y ago
    I feel like your comment should be locked until the following "beginner's quest" is finished: + phone call audio quality is as good as some cheapo Android phone I can buy at Walmart, across all the distros in this multi-distro image I mean, you have a report above that the Pinephone can't even achieve that. (And worse, the user is considering diving into ALSA configuration to fix this!) If it's true that a phone device cannot be depended on to achieve bog standard audio quality for a phone call, then the player isn't ready to fight in the "daily driver" quest. I'm willing to write a command line prog that plays the Legend of Zelda secret discovery melody and prints your comment when the the Pinephone achieves bog standard "phone-ness."
    - necovek 5y ago
      This is akin to saying that an Android phone is not a candidate for a daily driver as long as all the Android mods on XDA are not of a sufficient base quality. An open phone will inevitably have incomplete distributions for it: that's the entire goal of an open phone. The problem is if there is not a single option that covers the basics well, or if that option is non-obvious (i.e. you don't know which is it). I've personally used Meizu MX4 with Ubuntu for years as a daily driver, but I was happy to give up on Android apps. That was slightly more powerful hardware but also 5-8 years ago.
    - Arnavion 5y ago
      I have no problem with the phone call quality for the year that I've owned my PinePhone. I can hear people fine and they can hear me fine. Next question? Although it looks like you're not interested in asking questions, just insulting people who actually know what they're talking about. BTW not everyone who gets the PinePhone uses it for calls; the number of people who brought the keyboard case in order to use it as a PDA or laptop should be proof of that. So I say again that "daily driver" is not a well-defined term with a single globally-recognized meaning, and people should ask precisely what they want from the phone.
- nekomorphism 5y ago
jlkuester7 5y ago
Question for any US-based PinePhone aficionados: what carrier are you using (where/how did you get a SIM card)? I recently got an ATT pre-paid SIM (that I was planning on putting in an Android phone eventually). I thought I would give it a try in the PinePhone just to see what happens and found that it would not activate... (Note that this was just a normal pre-paid SIM direct from ATT and not from some 3rd-party MNVO that might require an app to activate. When I eventually installed the SIM in the Android phone it was able to activate as expected without installing any apps).
- unpixer 5y ago
  Stock AT&T SIM. Been using it for over a year, has never not worked, but based on what I see online YMMV.
- increscent 5y ago
  I use US Mobile (https://www.usmobile.com https://www.usmobile.com). They're an MVNO on the T-Mobile and Verizon networks. I use their T-Mobile offering because I couldn't get MMS to work on Verizon. To fetch MMS, I use the T-Mobile APN (fast.t-mobile.com) instead of US Mobile's APN.
- therein 5y ago
  Not sure if there is anything against changing your IMEI to the IMEI of another device you own and purposefully break to avoid any future network collusion. Either way, since they have a Queltec modem, just write AT+EGMR=1,7,“NEWIMEI” over tty to the modem and your IMEI is permanently changed. This means your carrier will provision your device on their network.
- hcal 5y ago
  I use t-mobile. The SIM they sent me worked out of the box.
  - Arnavion 5y ago
    Same, but through an MVNO (Ting). This way I don't have my details leaked in T-Mobile's annual data breach. General info is documented at https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Carrier_Support https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Carrier_Support

74 points by capableweb 5y ago

i found out the hard way this does not work on the pinephone pro :(

Can anyone who has extensively tried out most of the available distros for PinePhone comment on how close any of them are to a "daily driver" state? I suspect they're all still far from it but it'd be interesting to know which are worth keeping an eye on.

increscent 5y ago
I use Arch on my Pinephone (https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch) and I have used it for the last year. Call audio quality (outgoing) is very poor for me (I think I need to configure ALSA or something). SMS and MMS now work well. Web browsing works. Everything is quite slow (2-10 second delay to open calls/messages/web browser). Previously I used SXMO and Mobian. SXMO is fun to script. I got tired of having to script everything after a while. Mobian works out of the box. But they don't have the newest software, so I switched to Arch.
goodpoint 5y ago
It depends on what applications you need, but Mobian is very stable and usable.
capableweb 5y ago
I just received my PinePhone (not the pro one), and buying the SD card later today to try out this demo image (hence I posted it here as I came across it :) ). Can leave a status report once I've tried them out. Even from before trying it out, seems I'll try at least the updated images of the Majaro Phosh as I've heard it's the most stable and responsive one of the bunch, together with the Arch Linux Arm edition. Then we'll see what comes next. The phone ships with Manjaro Plasma, and it's definitely not ready as a daily driver. Maybe it's the hardware, we'll see when I can try out the other OSes, but it's very laggy and very buggy (which to be fair, is exactly what I expect from a phone labeled "beta"), would not trust it as a daily driver.
- cevn 5y ago
  Try Danctnix w/ sxmo or the other sxmo one, it works a lot better for me. Everything works predictably, just takes a little time to get used to.
generic-husky 5y ago
Honestly none of them will be daily driver ready, given how broken the Quectel EG25 modem is. I would never want to, have to call emergency services with my Pinephone while the modem is down
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- capableweb 5y ago
  What exactly went wrong in your experience when you tried out the PinePhone? Did the modem randomly die without you doing anything? Or under high load it gave out sometimes? Some more details would be wonderful. Maybe you could share if you tried it with the normal PinePhone or the PinePhone Pro as well.
  - generic-husky 5y ago
    I have only tried the regular PinePhone (since I only own that version) they both share the same modem (iirc), so there shouldn't be much of a difference. > "Did the modem randomly die without you doing anything" Yep > "Or under high load it gave out sometimes?" No, it would be just idling/sleeping and it would crash on me. It's not like it would automatically restart itself either. It was just dead until I rebooted the phone (which is slooowwww), restarting the modem manager and the modem it self, didn't fix it reliably for me either, only sometimes that would actually work, that whole process of restarting the modem and reentering your PIN could easily take multiple minutes. Under load (e.g. Firefox) it would just have the same (crashing) behavior. I have had more missed phone calls because of it, than I'd like to count.
- blendergeek 5y ago
  Have you tried replacing the modem firmware? The community firmware is supposed to be much more stable.
  - generic-husky 5y ago
    I no longer use the Pinephone because of the aforementioned issues, however at that time, I'm pretty sure I was at the latest and greatest firmware version available (which one that specifically was opensource or proprietary, I can't remember). The experience was so horrid, I just quit using it all together and never looked back. But maybe if things have improved, I should give it a shot again.
kop316 5y ago
I have personally used Mobian and PostmarketOS as a daily driver. The "Phone" aspect works pretty well (Calls, SMS/MMS, voicemail, VoLTE, no Wifi Calling). The base model Pinephone works fine for very basic tasks, but is very slow for anything else. I would assume that most of the other "mainstream" Phone distros have a similar/the same feature parity. I personally have moved to a Librem 5 with PureOS, mainly since it is much faster, and I like the user accessible HW kill switches. I use it for "Phone" tasks, email, web browsing, 2FA, Telegram, Signal, the occasional camera picture, and Matrix.
fsflover 5y ago
https://teddit.net/r/pinephone/comments/u6zzyc/how_pinephone_sucks_at_daily_use/ https://teddit.net/r/pinephone/comments/u6zzyc/how_pinephone...
Arnavion 5y ago
Every time this topic comes up I have to remind people that the definition of "daily driver" is different for everyone. I've been daily-driving the phone for a year without problems because it does everything I need it to do. That doesn't mean you'd have no problems with it. Instead, please ask what it is you want the phone to do, and then people can give you a clear answer.
- jancsika 5y ago
  I feel like your comment should be locked until the following "beginner's quest" is finished: + phone call audio quality is as good as some cheapo Android phone I can buy at Walmart, across all the distros in this multi-distro image I mean, you have a report above that the Pinephone can't even achieve that. (And worse, the user is considering diving into ALSA configuration to fix this!) If it's true that a phone device cannot be depended on to achieve bog standard audio quality for a phone call, then the player isn't ready to fight in the "daily driver" quest. I'm willing to write a command line prog that plays the Legend of Zelda secret discovery melody and prints your comment when the the Pinephone achieves bog standard "phone-ness."
  - necovek 5y ago
    This is akin to saying that an Android phone is not a candidate for a daily driver as long as all the Android mods on XDA are not of a sufficient base quality. An open phone will inevitably have incomplete distributions for it: that's the entire goal of an open phone. The problem is if there is not a single option that covers the basics well, or if that option is non-obvious (i.e. you don't know which is it). I've personally used Meizu MX4 with Ubuntu for years as a daily driver, but I was happy to give up on Android apps. That was slightly more powerful hardware but also 5-8 years ago.
  - Arnavion 5y ago
    I have no problem with the phone call quality for the year that I've owned my PinePhone. I can hear people fine and they can hear me fine. Next question? Although it looks like you're not interested in asking questions, just insulting people who actually know what they're talking about. BTW not everyone who gets the PinePhone uses it for calls; the number of people who brought the keyboard case in order to use it as a PDA or laptop should be proof of that. So I say again that "daily driver" is not a well-defined term with a single globally-recognized meaning, and people should ask precisely what they want from the phone.
nekomorphism 5y ago

jlkuester7 5y ago

Question for any US-based PinePhone aficionados: what carrier are you using (where/how did you get a SIM card)? I recently got an ATT pre-paid SIM (that I was planning on putting in an Android phone eventually). I thought I would give it a try in the PinePhone just to see what happens and found that it would not activate... (Note that this was just a normal pre-paid SIM direct from ATT and not from some 3rd-party MNVO that might require an app to activate. When I eventually installed the SIM in the Android phone it was able to activate as expected without installing any apps).

unpixer 5y ago
Stock AT&T SIM. Been using it for over a year, has never not worked, but based on what I see online YMMV.
increscent 5y ago
I use US Mobile (https://www.usmobile.com https://www.usmobile.com). They're an MVNO on the T-Mobile and Verizon networks. I use their T-Mobile offering because I couldn't get MMS to work on Verizon. To fetch MMS, I use the T-Mobile APN (fast.t-mobile.com) instead of US Mobile's APN.
therein 5y ago
Not sure if there is anything against changing your IMEI to the IMEI of another device you own and purposefully break to avoid any future network collusion. Either way, since they have a Queltec modem, just write AT+EGMR=1,7,“NEWIMEI” over tty to the modem and your IMEI is permanently changed. This means your carrier will provision your device on their network.
hcal 5y ago
I use t-mobile. The SIM they sent me worked out of the box.
- Arnavion 5y ago
  Same, but through an MVNO (Ting). This way I don't have my details leaked in T-Mobile's annual data breach. General info is documented at https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Carrier_Support https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Carrier_Support