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Words cannot express how frustrating it is to have the phone of my dreams just sit on the shelf collecting dust because the operating system is virtually unusable. I realize that the UBports team is working hard and that the UBports edition was released with the assumption that it's a work in progress, but it's been a year since it was shipped out and virtually no progress has been made regarding it's development. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to see more than 50 other phones on the 'supported devices list' that are leagues ahead of the Pinephone, especially when you consider the fact that the Pinephone was made specifically to support the Linux community and it feels like it's being ignored by the developers. I don't mean to sound so rude, but how long are we expected to wait to see some progress? Judging by the work that's been done since the Pinephone's release I can't help thinking that this thing isn't going to be a daily driver for another ten years ... and I don't think that's an exaggeration.
I realize that it's difficult to develop software for so many devices, but could the team please spend some time working on the Pinephone? At the very least it would be great to see some kind of update on the progress that's being made because I watch the weekly update on YouTube and the team rarely talks about the state of the Pinephone.
I'm sure this post will upset quite a few people, but I just had to vent my thoughts on the subject.
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@joelandsonja I have moved your topic to the Pinephone subcategory.
About your thoughts. I can only say that Ubuntu Touch is not a product you consume, but a project you contribute to.
And all help is welcomed and needed.
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@joelandsonja I think everyone involved thought this would go a bit different. To my understanding it went something like this:
- Lots of goodwill in the UT community and heavy efforts to get the Ubports edition out (to the detriment of the Halium devices progress), with the idea that it would attract developers interested in further improving UT on the PP. Note that it was always stated as a device for developers, not end users.
- Actual developers on the PP deciding that they prefer more bare metal GNU/Linux OS like Pmos, Mobian, Plasma Mobile etc. to the more end-user geared UT. Thus very little outside contributions happening.
- Ubports developers readjusting focus to where its actual users and developers are: Halium based devices.
I can understand the frustration, but this is what it is and you are probably better off trying one of the other OS for the PinePhone for the time being.
Fairphone 5 (waiting for port)
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I can understand your frustration, but the problem is also not only we have limited resources for hardware adaption but overall limited resources.
As Ubuntu 16.04 is end of life now, we have to rush to support 20.04 LTS and that takes up all the resources. Minor steps are done still for Pinephone, but you wont notice so much. Like we fixed the speakerphone obviously these days.
And yes, we hoped to finally attract more developers to help us expanding and pushing forward but it simply did not happen. Linux devs got frustrated with UT concepts, especially confinement and isolation of apps, readonly filesystems etc. What works well for the end users does not work well with devs it seems.
We hope to bring a few more improvements for Pinephone later this year. But for the moment all our 3 or 4 fulltime devs are fully employed with upgrading the whole distribution, involving up to 400 repositories and deb packages to be rebuilt and fixed. It takes months, unfortunately.
My languages: 🇦🇹 🇩🇪 🇬🇧 🇺🇸
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@povoq said in Pinephone Rant:
Ubports developers readjusting focus to where its actual users and developers are: Halium based devices.
I don't think this is so accurate, and instead, halium devices are, for lot people, the only solution for the daily usable device they need, but, if Pinephone was fully supported by now (and, why not, Librem 5), it'd get lot more user to buy it as they could use it daily.
We choose uTouch as it's a GNU/Linux based OS, not because it's a halium based OS.
I chose it in 2015 on MX4 and i even didn't know at that time it is halium device and running on android parts, i only chose it because it's GNU/Linux and i wanted to get ride of android.
@flohack said in Pinephone Rant:
What works well for the end users does not work well with devs it seems.
It's so sad that those devs don't understand that end user is the goal to target if they want GNU/Linux to spread...
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@keneda said in Pinephone Rant:
We choose uTouch as it's a GNU/Linux based OS, not because it's a halium based OS.
Sure, but most choose UT because they have an existing device (or can get a used one cheaply) that is supported by UT, which in 99% of the cases means a Halium using device.
PP buyers are a bit of a different demographic.
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@povoq
Most of daily driver supported device (not the old one like N5 or OPO) are 120/150€ used (i just looked for a XperiaX for my mum for instance)
Quite same price as a Pinephone (ok, not same hardware power).I'm not saying that halium device should not be supported, but that Pinephone maybe should be, a little more at least, supported.
I hope it will be the case after 20.04 update.
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The main thing about the Pinephone (and mainline devices) is that it needs bigger and complicated things to make it work well. Giving time and effort won't be enough. Careful planning, designing and thinking are necessary. And as Florian said, 20.04 is the more immediate big thing then maybe wayland would be next.
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@kugiigi waylandify will halp the pinephone a lot!
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@phoenixlandpirat I think all UT devices would benefit. We'll get toolkits/backends that only support wayland and together with the newer ubuntu base, we may get the apps that other distro users are so proud of
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I can understand the nature of this comment, but for me it was never about having a daily driver, at least not in the short run, but in supporting an excellent community of individuals. Pre Ubuntu days, I used Suse and probably paid more in fees by each new addition than if I had purchased a windows license, but it was not about the money as such, but the open source community and helping them as I could. I have never been a developer, though have tried a few times, and the only way I can help out is by purchasing stuff and promoting the community at every opportunity. I have both a Braveheart and UB Ports PP and neither are usable, though the BH currently have Mobian on it to see how it is going. My DD is a Nexus 5 which works perfectly. Before that I used a BQ 4.5 for a number of years. For the money I have spent on these I could have bought a proprietary phone and had done with it, but what would be the point?
As was said, part of this process is to help out as it is a small but growing community. My next phase (hopefully my students are reading this) is for my FE computing students to get involved. We have a PP on order and they are keen to solve (with community assistance) some of the outstanding problems on the PP and gain useful experience in the process.
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Given how few the core team at UB Ports are in number it will be impossible to develop every phone to everybody's satisfaction, so our expectations must be reduced accordingly. The only way to change that would be for more technically minded individuals to get involved in development. For those us incapable of that, the best we can do is cough up some money and be grateful for what we have.
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As far as I know no distribution for the Pinephone is still ready for a daily usable phone, and there are a lot of people involved in developing them. The hope for UT was also to get more spillovers from the other distributions, and even if some spillovers have been received and given, no distribution has arrived to the status of usability of hallium and original UT phones.
Some distributions in the Pinephone offer a Linux pocket PC with a tiny screen and keyboard and some hope of exporting them to a larger screen and normal keyboard, but that is not a cell phone in my opinion.
I for one bought a UBports Edition Pinephone with no hopes of getting a usable phone, but to support a great project and be able to follow it directly.
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@joelandsonja said in Pinephone Rant:
I can't tell you how frustrating it is to see more than 50 other phones on the 'supported devices list' that are leagues ahead of the Pinephone, especially when you consider the fact that the Pinephone was made specifically to support the Linux community and it feels like it's being ignored by the developers.
The problem is that the PinePhone is very different from the other devices we support, so even though it is in many ways the best device we could work on, in practice we have much more experience working on Android-based devices, whereas for the PP we have to redo many things from scratch.
I don't mean to sound so rude, but how long are we expected to wait to see some progress?
Speaking for myself, I can tell you that in the next OTA, if everything goes as planned, two PP-specific bugs will be fixed:
- https://github.com/ubports/media-hub/issues/29
- https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-system-settings-online-accounts/issues/11
It's a drop in the ocean, I know, but this is just to let you know that we haven't forgotten about it - and I don't even have a PP myself.
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I see the latest version available to buy is the Pine Phone Beta. Does this mean they are getting closer to a daily driver release? Also, is there any difference between that model and my UBPorts or Mobian edition?
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@lt-dillinger The currently sold Pinephones run Plasma Mobile, not UT by default, but you can install UT on them if you want.
There are some minor hardware fixes compared to the original UBports edition AFAIK.
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@lt-dillinger The original UB Ports release, I think, had motherboard v1.1 which was 2GB RAM and 16GB storage. The Beta version and Mobian is v1.2 with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. There are a few other minor hardware fixes too I think.
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@negations
No, that's the "convergence package" that has a PInephone with 3/32, the Pinephone alone, without the dock that comes with this package, is 2/16.The Braveheart edition/uTouch edition (that are same as braveheart) are Pinephones that came with a hardware issue, that you can fix by hardware de/soldering components (and can be fixed in some places for you), or, you can buy a motherboard replacement with a discout price if you have this faulty hardware and don't have skill to fix or don't have place to fix it for you near.
You can even replace a 2/16 PP motherboard with a 3/32 one.
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-2gb-16gb-mainboard/?v=0446c16e2e66
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-community-edition-3gb-32gb-mainboard/?v=0446c16e2e66If you previously owns BraveHeart or UBPort Community Edition PinePhone, please check out the specials offer posting. -
I can fully understand the frustration. I felt the same way at times.
As many here have already written, the Pinephone will still take time and you should rather be happy about every improvement.
For me, I have solved this by having a Nexus 5 as a daily driver. Since I unfortunately have no programming skills, I just donate money and watch the development on the Pinephone.
Even if this takes longer from time to time.
Since I am dependent on SMS, it can unfortunately not yet be used as a daily driver.
with all other "bugs" I could live.
So it remains to be seen whether the open source firmware of the modem will prevail. -
I appreciate all the responses. Many of them were helpful to understand what's happening behind the scenes, so I appreciate the information. I should emphasize the fact that I am not a developer, but rather a consumer. I realize that it's easy to complain about something when you're not contributing to the development, but there's a reason for that. I'm 38 years old and I've never owned a smartphone in my entire life. I've never actually trusted a company to handle my private information, but when I saw the PinePhone hit the market (UBPorts edition), It was a dream come true. I honestly don't mean to take it out on the devs, because I know you're all working hard, but this was literally the first phone I've ever purchased and I can't even use it. That being said, I hope we'll get to see some progress before the years finished.
