Looking for a BQ E4.5
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Hello,
I‘m looking to buy for my son, 10 years old, a BQ E4.5. Any offers or pointers as PM pls. to guru@unixarea.de
Thx
Matthias
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@guru Does that phone work well with UT? Works in the USA?
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@guru said in Looking for a BQ E4.5:
for my son, 10 years old
If you find one, don't you think the bq 4.5 'very collector' goes straight to the sacrifice even if your son is very handy ? if your son breaks a Nexus 5, it'll be easier to replace !
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domubpkm said in Looking for a BQ E4.5:
guru said in Looking for a BQ E4.5:
for my son, 10 years old
If you find one, don't you think the bq 4.5 'very collector' goes straight to the sacrifice even if your son is very handy ? if your son breaks a Nexus 5, it'll be easier to replace !
Me and my family, we all run a BQ E4.5 for years now (my wife, my 14 yo son and I). Why I should look now for some other device?
Well, the only reason would be to have a real Linux phone w/o any Android container inside. I'm waiting for my L5 which is now postponed until August due to the Corona virus
matthias
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@guru I agree with you. bq phones are good and very stable phones and I don't mind that they evolve a lot after OTA 12 as long as they remain functional (patches needed).
I sincerely hope you find another one. -
domubpkm said in Looking for a BQ E4.5:
@guru I agree with you. bq phones are good and very stable phones and I don't mind that they evolve a lot after OTA 12 as long as they remain functional (patches needed).
Hello domubpkm, I don't understand what you mean with that phrasing "envolve a lot after OTA 12...". Please be so kind and clarify.
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@guru I'm not enough qualified to go into technical details. I'm not even totally sure that such bq's have had Mir implanted like the Nexus 5 and the OPO. But, unless I'm mistaken, I seem to have heard that bq phones won't be able to go any further in their evolution. @Flohack and @dobey will surely be able to clarify the future of bq phones.
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Any older devices will have a limit to the length of time they can be supported, especially when stuck on old Android kernels. Nexus 5, OnePlus 1, and others aren't an exception to this, though there are efforts going on elsewhere to get them working with upstream kernels and open source drivers.
Device support requires people to maintain the device support. If the number of users of a device keeps decreasing, and nobody is interested in maintaining it, then eventually that device will have to become unsupported. The best way to keep a device supported, is to start getting involved with keeping it working at the kernel level, backporting security fixes, and new kernel features when they become a requirement.
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@dobey said in Looking for a BQ E4.5:
there are efforts going on elsewhere to get them working with upstream kernels and open source drivers.
Just to add all existing core devices run on ridiculously old kernels already, so for example getting Bluetooth support on them as we need it requires a ton of driver backports, and in the same time they miss all security patches that were made in the last 3 years or so. And we don't talk about issues in the old drivers. We are a small team, and we cannot handle that very well. So getting devices to end of line at a certain point in time will be a painful but necessary process.
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Hi Flohack, what is the recommendation for new device for an UBports device. Or should we consider to look for some Nokia 3310 devices?
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The 'problem' with new phones is that for a while, NONE will be fully functional, and ported with more or less difficulty. Choosing a new phone is therefore a bit of a gamble: my choices would go towards the PINEPHONE and OP3 which attract interest.
In any case, at this point, the transition can only be made smoothly since no new phone is yet able to assume, at the very least, its role as a telephone... -
@domubpkm Give it few months...
It seems a long time right now, but developer kit were sent in November, BraveHeart are just reaching their new homes.Except if your current phone is completely useless, there is no rush and my advise will be to postpone until the port of the PinePhone is complete.
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@AppLee My phones are not useless at all ! And you are right, that was what i said : the transition can only be made smoothly...
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@guru I try to filter out your sarcasm and turn it into that question: How does UBports think that it can survive when its a project depending on available hardware so that people can actually use it?
And the answer is: It depends. For Android-based devices we are pushing hard (but slow) towards compatibility with Android 9 and 10. Though this will probably take the rest of this year. And what next? Google has plans that might eventually kill off all efforts we made. Google project Fuchsia, they might want to get rid of the Linux kernel (and with that also get rid of us ;)). So Android-based devices might be a dead-end road in a few years.
For Non-Android devices we are pushing equally hard to get the Pinephone a first-class citizen for UT. And eventually also Librem5. And maybe the one form Volla. And maybe anything else that will show up on the market.
So the future is bright. New devices upcoming. The hope is that one day we do not need Android porting any more, with all the issues it brings, since we can rely on Non-Android hardware that gives us the same comfort and features we are used to now. That also will take years, but we will jump on this train for sure.So yes no rush, but instead steady but slow progress. And with more developers we could speed up. Sadly we are looking for skilled people for a few years now, but its not easy. Everybody has to earn for a living, and some issues we face cannot be solved in a few hours free time each day on the eve.
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@Flohack said in Looking for a BQ E4.5:
And maybe the one form Volla
This is an Android device though.
@Flohack said in Looking for a BQ E4.5:
Google project Fuchsia, they might want to get rid of the Linux kernel (and with that also get rid of us ;)). So Android-based devices might be a dead-end road in a few years.
This is pure wild speculation and doesn't help anyone. There's also no reason that eventually Mir and friends couldn't work on top of Fuchsia kernel, if the effort was made to write a backend for it.
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Are you still looking? I saw a very acceptable offer BQ 4.5 ubuntu somewhere.
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@domubpkm said in Looking for a BQ E4.5:
Are you still looking? I saw a very acceptable offer BQ 4.5 ubuntu somewhere.
Thanks, please point me to that offer.
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@guru See the link on your mailbox
