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I like my pinephone and thought I’d upgrade to the pro at some point but the software has taken a long time to get stable. So now it’s been years. When does n

I like my pinephone and thought I’d upgrade to the pro at some point but the software has taken a long time to get stable. So now it’s been years. When does new hardware come out? Is there a competent well-known group implementing things like Asahi for Mac? I'd like to support one of them.

Syonyk 3y ago
> Is there a competent well-known group implementing things like Asahi for Mac? Not that I'm aware of. Pine's model seems to be "Lob hardware over the fence with some limited but reasonable documentation and hope everyone else takes care of it" - which has worked surprisingly well for things like the PineBook Pro. But phones are a lot more complex, as there are more moving parts, and a lot of those moving parts are almost entirely black boxes to people who hack on them. Cell modems, audio pipelines, all of that is rather different on a phone, and those seem to be the main problem points on the PinePhones. They're a usable enough wifi pocket computer with poor battery life, but working in the way one expects a phone to work is a challenge. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what's going on with Pine right now. All their information wikis and communities are offline and have been offline for over a week now: https://pine64.org/2024/01/21/outage_january_21/ https://pine64.org/2024/01/21/outage_january_21/ It doesn't give me great hope in their long term viability right now that they've lost all their community facing infrastructure, which is literally the only thing that makes their products workable.
seba_dos1 3y ago
I think what you're asking for is pretty much Librem 5. It had a team of developers (including myself) working on developing things like Phosh and polishing hardware support up. Some of that work has spilled over to PinePhones, but anything that's device specific did not. PinePhones have always relied entirely on community engagement, and I can tell you from experience that some of the issues I've been solving for L5 I would never been able to solve if I had to do it on my spare time alone. I may be biased, but my impression is that Librem 5 is commonly regarded as more mature than any of the PinePhones, and that's the only reason IMO. The community is doing great things, but I don't think it's anywhere big enough to sustain itself on its own at a reasonable pace yet (any kind of help is welcome:)) (whether you'll consider Librem 5 as already mature enough when switching from, say, Android is another matter - I personally do, but people have varying expectations and the L5 team is just a handful of people after all, which contrasts hard with what resources have been poured into Android and iOS)
- fsflover 3y ago
  For more details, see this review of Librem 5 daily driving: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-daily-driven-in-professional-use-success/22303/40 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-daily-driven-in-profession...
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  I have an iPhone 6s, just looking for something in the ballpark to replace it. I've seen this Librem before but thought the company's approach was impractical. As in perfect is the enemy of the good. They seem to be focusing on things like secure supply chains and local manufacturing—resulting in one/two thousand dollar+ devices. Don't get me wrong, sounds nice... five to ten years from now? I need a mostly working mobile today at a reasonable price. Something like an updated Pinephone Pro at $400 and I'm willing to throw in an extra ~$200 for R&D. Believe they would be much better served by the common mobile strategy of, get a shitty phone out, sell them, reinvest profit, and improve every year. That probably means hardware built in Asia first. But on their site I see a four year old phone at $999 with lower specs than the Pinephone Pro. Maybe someone would like to start a company reselling Pinephone Pros with various value add, and capture that two or three extra hundred dollars per device? Might get a discount in bulk.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    > But on their site I see a four year old phone at $999 with lower specs than the Pinephone Pro. Software optimization are much more important than the specs, unless you're going to run some heavy applications.
    - mixmastamyk 3y ago
      One of my use cases is to have my music on device. 32GB is not enough. And the PPP hardware is already a ~decade behind, not a high bar at all.
      - seba_dos1 3y ago
        I keep music on my Librem 5 on a 512GB microSD card.

Syonyk 3y ago

> Is there a competent well-known group implementing things like Asahi for Mac? Not that I'm aware of. Pine's model seems to be "Lob hardware over the fence with some limited but reasonable documentation and hope everyone else takes care of it" - which has worked surprisingly well for things like the PineBook Pro. But phones are a lot more complex, as there are more moving parts, and a lot of those moving parts are almost entirely black boxes to people who hack on them. Cell modems, audio pipelines, all of that is rather different on a phone, and those seem to be the main problem points on the PinePhones. They're a usable enough wifi pocket computer with poor battery life, but working in the way one expects a phone to work is a challenge. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what's going on with Pine right now. All their information wikis and communities are offline and have been offline for over a week now: https://pine64.org/2024/01/21/outage_january_21/ https://pine64.org/2024/01/21/outage_january_21/ It doesn't give me great hope in their long term viability right now that they've lost all their community facing infrastructure, which is literally the only thing that makes their products workable.

seba_dos1 3y ago

I think what you're asking for is pretty much Librem 5. It had a team of developers (including myself) working on developing things like Phosh and polishing hardware support up. Some of that work has spilled over to PinePhones, but anything that's device specific did not. PinePhones have always relied entirely on community engagement, and I can tell you from experience that some of the issues I've been solving for L5 I would never been able to solve if I had to do it on my spare time alone. I may be biased, but my impression is that Librem 5 is commonly regarded as more mature than any of the PinePhones, and that's the only reason IMO. The community is doing great things, but I don't think it's anywhere big enough to sustain itself on its own at a reasonable pace yet (any kind of help is welcome:)) (whether you'll consider Librem 5 as already mature enough when switching from, say, Android is another matter - I personally do, but people have varying expectations and the L5 team is just a handful of people after all, which contrasts hard with what resources have been poured into Android and iOS)

fsflover 3y ago
For more details, see this review of Librem 5 daily driving: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-daily-driven-in-professional-use-success/22303/40 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-daily-driven-in-profession...
mixmastamyk 3y ago
I have an iPhone 6s, just looking for something in the ballpark to replace it. I've seen this Librem before but thought the company's approach was impractical. As in perfect is the enemy of the good. They seem to be focusing on things like secure supply chains and local manufacturing—resulting in one/two thousand dollar+ devices. Don't get me wrong, sounds nice... five to ten years from now? I need a mostly working mobile today at a reasonable price. Something like an updated Pinephone Pro at $400 and I'm willing to throw in an extra ~$200 for R&D. Believe they would be much better served by the common mobile strategy of, get a shitty phone out, sell them, reinvest profit, and improve every year. That probably means hardware built in Asia first. But on their site I see a four year old phone at $999 with lower specs than the Pinephone Pro. Maybe someone would like to start a company reselling Pinephone Pros with various value add, and capture that two or three extra hundred dollars per device? Might get a discount in bulk.
- fsflover 3y ago
  > But on their site I see a four year old phone at $999 with lower specs than the Pinephone Pro. Software optimization are much more important than the specs, unless you're going to run some heavy applications.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    One of my use cases is to have my music on device. 32GB is not enough. And the PPP hardware is already a ~decade behind, not a high bar at all.
    - seba_dos1 3y ago
      I keep music on my Librem 5 on a 512GB microSD card.