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I bought a PinePhone. Shipping time was near to a month, shipping costs where 30 USD through DHL, import taxes where another 30 USD. Then I saw the Xiaomi devices with Ubuntu touch. I live in Switzerland. I bought a Xiaomi Redmi 7 onclite in UK for around 100 USD, and a Xiaomi Poco F1 in Switzerland for 50 USD.
The Xiaomi 7 from UK was sent back by Swiss duty because of the lack of an invoice. Then she sent it by UPC, but to the wrong adress. Now she sends the phone by postal service and sent me the tracking number, and I will soon have the device. Still faster than to wait for a PinePhone.
I sold my PinePhone on ebay before I used it, negotiated with two guys from Italy and one from Brazil about the best shipping method for the PinePhone. But no method was really satisfying.
Finally I could sell my PinePhone to a guy in nothern Italy who wants to make a youtube review about the PinePhone. He will have the phone I guess in a view days. Thanks to Swiss post.
But if Ubuntu Touch works for daily use on Xiaomi devices, why then should one buy a PinePhone? Long shipping time, high import taxes, little power. You can get a Xiaomi Poco F1 on ebay for half the price of a PinePhone if you are lucky, and it has an 8 core processor instead of 4 cores of the PinePhone, and it has 6 Giga RAM instead of the 2 of the PinePhone.
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@peter-gamma said in Best recent phone hardware for install ?:
But if Ubuntu Touch works for daily use on Xiaomi devices, why then should one buy a PinePhone?
Because :
- Open source hardware
- Build by open source people
- Run pure uTouch, not any traces of androïd and closed source blobs here
- You don't need an atomic bomb to run uTouch, and my old MX4 thanks this
- Price for a such little "company" is not so high, you can't compare prices from a worldwide capitalist company that product millions of smartphones a year to an open source hardware association that sells its hardware almost the price it costs them...
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@keneda open source hardware and open source people are fine, but when you look on ebay, it is flooded with Xiaomi devices, and they have a new model every now and then. Do not devices with the best price performance ratio win, and will survive on the long term?
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@peter-gamma said in Best recent phone hardware for install ?:
Do not devices with the best price performance ratio win, and will survive on the long term?
You can't compare Xiaomi (Monstruously big Chineese capitalist company, billions device each year, enormous profit, economic model based on software obsolescence) and Pine64 (little association of people that design and product open source hardware on a basis of thousands devices, sold quasi without profit).
We don't need more chineese androïd devices that could make skynet alive with its power.
We need open source hardware, with open source software (drivers), with enough power to run smoothly uTouch and all its apps, and get "lifetime" support (with nothing from shi**y androïd).
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@Keneda The main issue is that after 10 months of availability on the market Pinephone still cannot be used as daily phone with UT. If Xiaomi works smoothly with UT onboard I don't see any reason why not to spread a word about that. If more people give a try to UT (it doesn't matter on which hardware) our community can only benefit from that. Personally i'm also looking for a replacement of my Pinephone and Xiaomi might be a good option.
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I only said PINE64 open source device can't be compared to Multinationals.
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Just getting a little OT for this thread.
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@lakotaubp not me, we can continue discussing.
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Will just say, buying phones with Ubuntu Touch, or at least some varient of linux, such as kde plasma, manjaro, etc, supports our movement more than installing Ubuntu Touch on x, y, z android device.
So Id personally recommend
Pinephone,
Fx(tec) pro x
Or the volla phone.Im saying that from a OnePlus 3, but I have a pinephone, and i plan on continuing down the line of supporting those who support me/my preferences financially.
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There is no miracle UT smartphone. It would be known. There are myriads of issues for every new and old. You have to assume that you don't even know if your own SIM card will be fully compatible : this is my case currently, no internet (like others) with the Volla and Pinephone. So everyone has to make his choice despite all the comments and hope.
Luckily the first smartphones (BQ, OPO, Nexus5..) which are more and very reliable, are still maintained and I hope that they will remain so as long as necessary..
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@domubpkm Absolutely, rather than "Best recent phone hardware" which leads to peoples personal favourites, and then people get upset when someone says "nah this one is the best because its my favourite" , we should talk about what peoples values are, or desires, if someone wants a better camera, will be different from someone who wants a physical keyboard, which might be different from someone who wants a high end cpu, and someone might hit there price limit at £400.
People will fall in different places with all these different questions, and there are a lot more questions than that, if I care about camera, and you dont and you care about a physical keyboard, if we are asked "Whats the best phone" if I say x, and you say y, its possible that we'll get angry and upset at eachother, because we are fighting for a place, rather than being happy with the phone that fits us better.
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@phoenixlandpirat No need to get angry. There is a phone for everyone. Miracles can happen when the cost to power ratio is good, the community for a device is growing, when a company makes a constant effort to have the most recent hardware components. The more people which are using a device, the more interesting it becomes, there are more debuggers and developers, which makes the device more attractive. In my view, chances are best that a Xiaomi device becomes a miracle device.
PETER GAMMA (Physiologist), MEDITATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE SWITZERLAND
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@peter-gamma I wasn't angry in anyway, so don't worry about that
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@peter-gamma
I think Xiaomi is the next Google.
Their products look good, sound good are not expensive (yet). But later scandal after scandal users will discover the truth behind and quality will decrease...
A company is a company, no brand makes only good products, so you still need to compare products.And as for the best hardware to install UT on, the answer is : the more open
Less blobs, more open source drivers/firmwares, mainstream kernel, ...
Those will help our community as @PhoenixLandPirat already said. -
@applee
Totally agree with you, best hardware for open-source software, is open source hardware ^^ -
I bought now three Xiaomi devices for the price of the PinePhone I sold on ebay. Now, I can start doing tests. I prefer to have several devices. It is not a big loss if one is bricked. And it is also possible to have different devices with different distros. There is no perfect distro, as there is no perfect phone.
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@mito77 OnePlus 6T is only 2 1/2 years old and has a whooping 6 or 8GB of RAM! You can still buy a brand new one.
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@ubuntoutou said in Best recent phone hardware for install ?:
@cliffcoggin OnePlus 6T is only 2 1/2 years old and has a whooping 6 or 8GB of RAM! You can still buy a brand new one.
Not sure why you are telling me. I am happy with my 8 year old Nexus 5 that does everything I need.
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For me personally, the winner is the port of Ubuntu Touch from Joel for the Xiaomi Poco F1 :
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/4611/xiaomi-poco-f1-beryllium
Joel, a passionate inter-disciplinary programmer who loves to code all night:
https://github.com/joelselvaraj
thanks, Joel, for your great work.
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Volla phone might be a good choice but this time i'm going to wait few months to verify if it's really stable before buying it
