Pinephone Rant

negations · 29 May 2021, 12:55

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.

cliffcoggin · 29 May 2021, 14:14

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.

wgarcia · 29 May 2021, 15:16

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.

mardy · 29 May 2021, 16:06

@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:

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.

Lt. Dillinger · 30 May 2021, 13:56

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?

poVoq · 30 May 2021, 14:41

@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.

negations · 30 May 2021, 15:51

@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.

Keneda · 30 May 2021, 16:29

@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=0446c16e2e66

If you previously owns BraveHeart or UBPort Community Edition PinePhone, please check out the specials offer posting.

OhneZ · 30 May 2021, 18:55

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.

joelandsonja · 6 Oct 2021, 05:46

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.

C0n57an71n · 10 Jun 2021, 06:15

@flohack Couldn't we start a crowdfunding campaign like the one for the Anbox?

flohack · 10 Jun 2021, 06:31

@c0n57an71n Sure but we also need someone with time and knowledge to work on it Thats maybe better to look for someone first, than to collect money and then noone is there to take it

Equareo · 6 Nov 2021, 21:42

It's a bit weird that the best and most stable ubport experience is hidden away on the kernel upgrade channel. I am very happy with that version, but most people are running "stable" and many are experiencing phone blanking after the power button is pressed (fixed in kernel upgrade). source 1 source 2 source 3

It's also quicker and the modem is more stable.

TotalRando · 11 Jun 2021, 22:26

@equareo why not just declare that one the stable version and work off that one then? Honest question- not really a coder

Equareo · 11 Jun 2021, 22:31

@totalrando yeah, that was my point :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes: I'm just a total rando though

Fuseteam · 11 Jun 2021, 23:57

@totalrando the reason that hasn't been done is, regressions it still has regressions compared to the stable channel so untill those bugs are figured out, it'll be "hidden" away

unrealb2 · 12 Jun 2021, 03:11

Lol 38 common ur a baby i started learning code at 48.

Help out the mobian or arch community with pinephone. If you put in a little effort everyday eventually youll be able to copy other peoples software and put it on ur OS of choice for everyone to enjoy.

I personally think UT is too polished(bloated) for an underpowered device like pinephone. I like UT and use as a daily driver, but just on a quicker device like my nexus 6p.

Equareo · 13 Jun 2021, 11:22

@flohack

One suggestion:

Create a forum post on the ubports subforum on pine64 and ask for help: Here and get it stickied.

Say what you are working on, and that you are looking for people to help out. Add a link to ubports forum for further communication.

I know you guys made a newspost with pine64 earlier, but not everyone reads that, and it's only "valid" for a month.

flohack · 13 Jun 2021, 19:58

@equareo I would love if you can do this for us, because that is what community is all about

Equareo · 13 Jun 2021, 23:03

Sure, i can do that. I just thought that it coming from a developer would carry more weight.