4 ms·

> To install an OS, you flash an image to an SD card, put it in the PinePhone and turn it on. That's it. You can swap OSes by changing SD cards That's really c

by Aachen 3y ago

> To install an OS, you flash an image to an SD card, put it in the PinePhone and turn it on. That's it. You can swap OSes by changing SD cards That's really cool actually! Also think of making backups: just plug the sdcard into your laptop and copy the data. But then also this.. > [...] repeated, unpredictable problems both placing and receiving calls [...] > Notifications TLDR: Only calls and SMS notifications are truly real-time. So the only way someone can reliably reach you is via SMS, which basically means sending an explicit money-costing notification to me whenever I'm not already online and hoping I hear the single ping. That suits a pocket computer, but not for a phone :( The keyboard descriptions are also interesting: no suggestions makes it basically unusable unless it comes with a physical keyboard or you want to have typos in every sentence. I've got a "hacker keyboard" enabled on my android as well, but only turn it on when doing terminal things. I tried typing normally on that and I don't think it would reasonably work after a lot of practice either

jsheard 3y ago
> That's really cool actually! Cool on paper but SD cards have abysmal write endurance, as any Raspberry Pi user will attest to. Unless you trust the entire software stack to keep writes to a minimum I wouldn't trust the SD card to last.
- Aachen 3y ago
  I had this issue, presumably because I ran a Debian userspace below Android with a file on the sdcard as filesystem. Every ~3 years, the sdcard would just drop dead. (Other people seemed to upgrade faster than every 3y or don't use sdcards at all, so idk if it was just me.) It hasn't happened anymore recently, and I feel like there's more awareness/support for this type of usage pattern with the higher-end sdcards that are somewhat recent (like, introduced in the last ~8 years, so after the lifespan of an old cheap sdcard, I'm still on my first new-style one and I'm not yet sure it's not randomness that keeps it alive)
  - jsheard 3y ago
    If you must use an SD card then there are industrial-grade ones which use pSLC NAND and are meant to endure a ton of abuse, but they're very expensive compared to an equivalent amount of reliable eMMC/USB/NVMe storage. IME commodity SD cards are still a crapshoot.
    - Aachen 3y ago
      So far, one of these sdcards that claim to be optimised for applications accessing random files (such as on a Pi) works fine in my phone
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Not so bad, SD cards can be robust. It depends on the file-system and how much work the controller does to catch errors, mark bad cells, etc. I have a few portable handy recorders, a Zoom, a Tascam and a Sound Devices, and all of them handle the same SD cards for years, rarely complaining about format errors or losing files.
- dannyw 3y ago
  Get an endurance SD card and those have decent lifespans.
squarefoot 3y ago
> That's really cool actually! It's cool but it's wrong: SD cards are unreliable.
- Aachen 3y ago
  From my point of view, you're wrong. They work fine for me for this purpose I don't think you can put a binary label on this (right or wrong): reliability is a number, such as MTBF or write cycles, not a boolean
  - squarefoot 3y ago
    I've experienced a number of file corruptions in various ones, including those inserted in SBCs and not carried around; they all were from reliable brands and never bought online. This wasn't systematic, that is, I cannot say all SD cards will fail, but I certainly saw a very noticeable increase in reliability when using as system disk eMMC/SSD instead of plain SD cards.
- dannyw 3y ago
  The cheap ones yeah. Get endurance SD cards.
zilti 3y ago
Is there really any carrier that still charges for SMS?
- Aachen 3y ago
  I doubt it's free literally anywhere, you'd pay it through taxes if not more directly, but you probably mean that, where you live, it's included (with a fair use policy) with every subscription you can possibly get? That's not the case in any country I've been to, especially if you want a flat EU rate you pay a crapton of money (probably this is easier if you don't have friends and family 20 minutes driving over a border, but also within NL and DE I know many people that pay per minute because they hardly ever call or SMS anyway; probably a majority in fact)
  - zilti 3y ago
    Show me one, just one. I used to have two different Swiss carriers where SMS were free, and now I have the German WINsim, a cheap carrier, where I pay 10€/month and get 15gb, flat phone calls and flat sms. I haven't paid for sms in at least a decade.
    - Aachen 3y ago
      Germany: my partner's current subscription from O2 is pay per minute/SMS. Checking the site now, that doesn't seem to be offered anymore, but the price also doubled so renewing would be stupid Netherlands (the market I'm actually familiar with): https://www.youfone.nl https://www.youfone.nl (virtual provider, cheapest in recent years) Homepage shows 200 minutes/SMS are now forced with every subscription, that's new since I last renewed about two years ago. You used to pay something like 1.5€/month extra if you chose these 200 https://www.odido.nl/mobiel-abonnement/sim-only https://www.odido.nl/mobiel-abonnement/sim-only (budget network, most popular mobile carrier in NL, about 1/3rd of the market) forces to include 120 minutes/SMS KPN.nl (the K stands for royal; historically state-owned and had the best coverage, now the premium "I want to pay more for nothing" provider) includes unlimited call/SMS with every available subscription apparently. Prepaid would be pay per use, but those offers are even less attractive (I used to have prepaid as an adult because it used to be cheaper and they'd just automatically book a data bundle off the balance and automatically top up the balance from my bank account; but then KPN bought the virtual provider and it became expensive) https://www.simyo.nl/sim-only/bestellen https://www.simyo.nl/sim-only/bestellen forces to include 200. They also offer prepaid but not for an attractive price either (which is weird to me: no credit risk, no minutes or SMSes included, but those internet bundles alone cost more than a monthly cancellable subscription that includes a few hundred minutes/SMSes?) https://www.ben.nl/sim-only https://www.ben.nl/sim-only forces to include 200 Besides premium KPN, a provider called Simpel (means in Dutch what it sounds like in English) seems to be the only one that includes flat rate minutes/SMS with every possible subscription. There's a few more niche providers but I think these are the well-known ones (besides one that gave me a CAPTCHA to view the website so I closed the tab) and should be comprehensive So the market changed since I last renewed: more than a hundred SMSes are always required now. TIL
0x1ceb00da 3y ago
It's scary. Sounds like anyone can replace the os in your phone in 10s and read your browser cookies.
- megous 3y ago
  Solved by storage encryption.

by Aachen 3y ago

jsheard 3y ago

> That's really cool actually! Cool on paper but SD cards have abysmal write endurance, as any Raspberry Pi user will attest to. Unless you trust the entire software stack to keep writes to a minimum I wouldn't trust the SD card to last.

Aachen 3y ago
I had this issue, presumably because I ran a Debian userspace below Android with a file on the sdcard as filesystem. Every ~3 years, the sdcard would just drop dead. (Other people seemed to upgrade faster than every 3y or don't use sdcards at all, so idk if it was just me.) It hasn't happened anymore recently, and I feel like there's more awareness/support for this type of usage pattern with the higher-end sdcards that are somewhat recent (like, introduced in the last ~8 years, so after the lifespan of an old cheap sdcard, I'm still on my first new-style one and I'm not yet sure it's not randomness that keeps it alive)
- jsheard 3y ago
  If you must use an SD card then there are industrial-grade ones which use pSLC NAND and are meant to endure a ton of abuse, but they're very expensive compared to an equivalent amount of reliable eMMC/USB/NVMe storage. IME commodity SD cards are still a crapshoot.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    So far, one of these sdcards that claim to be optimised for applications accessing random files (such as on a Pi) works fine in my phone
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Not so bad, SD cards can be robust. It depends on the file-system and how much work the controller does to catch errors, mark bad cells, etc. I have a few portable handy recorders, a Zoom, a Tascam and a Sound Devices, and all of them handle the same SD cards for years, rarely complaining about format errors or losing files.
dannyw 3y ago
Get an endurance SD card and those have decent lifespans.

squarefoot 3y ago

> That's really cool actually! It's cool but it's wrong: SD cards are unreliable.

Aachen 3y ago
From my point of view, you're wrong. They work fine for me for this purpose I don't think you can put a binary label on this (right or wrong): reliability is a number, such as MTBF or write cycles, not a boolean
- squarefoot 3y ago
  I've experienced a number of file corruptions in various ones, including those inserted in SBCs and not carried around; they all were from reliable brands and never bought online. This wasn't systematic, that is, I cannot say all SD cards will fail, but I certainly saw a very noticeable increase in reliability when using as system disk eMMC/SSD instead of plain SD cards.
dannyw 3y ago
The cheap ones yeah. Get endurance SD cards.

zilti 3y ago

Is there really any carrier that still charges for SMS?

Aachen 3y ago
I doubt it's free literally anywhere, you'd pay it through taxes if not more directly, but you probably mean that, where you live, it's included (with a fair use policy) with every subscription you can possibly get? That's not the case in any country I've been to, especially if you want a flat EU rate you pay a crapton of money (probably this is easier if you don't have friends and family 20 minutes driving over a border, but also within NL and DE I know many people that pay per minute because they hardly ever call or SMS anyway; probably a majority in fact)
- zilti 3y ago
  Show me one, just one. I used to have two different Swiss carriers where SMS were free, and now I have the German WINsim, a cheap carrier, where I pay 10€/month and get 15gb, flat phone calls and flat sms. I haven't paid for sms in at least a decade.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Germany: my partner's current subscription from O2 is pay per minute/SMS. Checking the site now, that doesn't seem to be offered anymore, but the price also doubled so renewing would be stupid Netherlands (the market I'm actually familiar with): https://www.youfone.nl https://www.youfone.nl (virtual provider, cheapest in recent years) Homepage shows 200 minutes/SMS are now forced with every subscription, that's new since I last renewed about two years ago. You used to pay something like 1.5€/month extra if you chose these 200 https://www.odido.nl/mobiel-abonnement/sim-only https://www.odido.nl/mobiel-abonnement/sim-only (budget network, most popular mobile carrier in NL, about 1/3rd of the market) forces to include 120 minutes/SMS KPN.nl (the K stands for royal; historically state-owned and had the best coverage, now the premium "I want to pay more for nothing" provider) includes unlimited call/SMS with every available subscription apparently. Prepaid would be pay per use, but those offers are even less attractive (I used to have prepaid as an adult because it used to be cheaper and they'd just automatically book a data bundle off the balance and automatically top up the balance from my bank account; but then KPN bought the virtual provider and it became expensive) https://www.simyo.nl/sim-only/bestellen https://www.simyo.nl/sim-only/bestellen forces to include 200. They also offer prepaid but not for an attractive price either (which is weird to me: no credit risk, no minutes or SMSes included, but those internet bundles alone cost more than a monthly cancellable subscription that includes a few hundred minutes/SMSes?) https://www.ben.nl/sim-only https://www.ben.nl/sim-only forces to include 200 Besides premium KPN, a provider called Simpel (means in Dutch what it sounds like in English) seems to be the only one that includes flat rate minutes/SMS with every possible subscription. There's a few more niche providers but I think these are the well-known ones (besides one that gave me a CAPTCHA to view the website so I closed the tab) and should be comprehensive So the market changed since I last renewed: more than a hundred SMSes are always required now. TIL

0x1ceb00da 3y ago

It's scary. Sounds like anyone can replace the os in your phone in 10s and read your browser cookies.

megous 3y ago
Solved by storage encryption.