How would you gauge the amount of support that is likely to be available for a particular device?
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I started with the little BQ Aquaris E4.5 and have had a MEIZU PRO 5. I am considering getting my hands on one of the latest Fairphones or a PinePhone or maybe the F(x)tec Pro1 X.
I'd like whatever device I opt for to be likely to be supported for a good while. I'm particularly keen on support for WayDroid/Anbox and running standard X11 applications. I would have been quite happy continuing to use the Aquaris E4.5, but development of Anbox for it kinda ended so I migrated to the MEIZU PRO 5.
How might you guess at the current degree of support for a particular device, or how might you gauge the likely support of a particular device into the future? So, for example, how might you answer the question of whether it is the Fairphone 4 or the F(x)tec Pro1 X that'll likely still be supported with the latest UBports-related developments 5 years from now?
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It often helps to know who the porter is. If it's someone on the core team, then the chance seems good that it will be supported for a decently long time.
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To be honest, it's really hard to gauge. As mentioned, if the porter is one of the core guys like Florian and Alfred, there's a high chance it'll be a good port and be supported for a long time. But to be honest, it's still not a sure thing. It sucks but that's just the reality.
If you have money, I would suggest going for company supported devices like Volla and fxtec. At least you can blame someone if the port sucks or gets unsupported
And I'd also recommend getting the device with RAM as big as possible. UT isn't the most optimized system especially in memory management, so raw power greatly benefits the performance. If you don't want to think about apps especially web views getting killed, get one with at 6-8GB of RAM 
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My personal choice was to back the F(x) Tech Pro1 X
First for the physical keyboard then for the delivery with Ubuntu Touch pre-installed.
I followed the campaign and know that they hired a small team to do the port for them and I guess they will continue maintaining the phone for some time.The Fairphone is a very attractive phone but there are some connector issues that I'm not sure are fixed with the 4.
PinePhone is also a very good choice IMHO but no one knows how better it will be after 20.04.
My guess is that support for the PinePhone will profit from a newer kernel and integration with newer softwares but still a long road ahead. -
@kugiigi said in How would you gauge the amount of support that is likely to be available for a particular device?:
If you don't want to think about apps especially web views getting killed, get one with at 6-8GB of RAM
Having a device with the more ram possible is a good thing, but i never exprienced issues on my MX4 due to its poor 2GB amount.
Maybe because i shut down apps when i don't use them anymore, but i don't see the benefits to let tons of apps running in background anyway. -
@keneda Really, don't you use the browser or webapps much? Those seems to be the biggest memory hoggers. Or maybe memory management is just better in the old Canonical devices.
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@kugiigi
I have from 10 to 12 tabs permanently opened on morph at every launch.@kugiigi said in How would you gauge the amount of support that is likely to be available for a particular device?:
Or maybe memory management is just better in the old Canonical devices.
Maybe
