I personally think that the effort to create open source phones is the single most important technology project going on out there. We have open source browsers, we have open source social apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones. Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of complaining and legal coercion, to one of choices and markets.
(edit: caveat: they might not be able to actually ship the firmware since laws on this are very strict basically everywhere)
The app store(s) is a bit of a problem, but in time it might be solved. Not a big problem for me....
But I'd also like to see android compatibility. Multiple banks now basically require you to have an android app. Unfortunately that might also require better specs, since sideloading an entire android might take significant RAM :(
Still, kudos to pine64 devs for the openness of all of their projects! IMHO even the raspy is not as open, even if it might have better benchs
> Last month they even managed to fully open parts of the modem, and do calls without the closed blob for the firmware!
That's not true - what's freed is the GNU/Linux part of the modem that comes from Quectel, which is just an interface on top of Qualcomm's proprietary firmware which does the real work. This is similar to unlocking a proprietary Android phone with an integrated modem and replacing its UI, while the firmware stays as closed as it was.
This is a great development nevertheless, but such mischaracterization doesn't do anyone any good.
To clarify, 4G modem modules (like the one in PinePhone) are usually based on stripped down smartphone SoCs, running Linux on ARM + a huge multi-milion lines FW blobs running on some DSP, that's actually implementing most of the functionality you expect from the modem.
So what this means is that PinePhone is basically a smartphone withing smartphone, and what's opensourced is the Linux kernel running on the modem's SoC. It's very nice, and allows you some more control (now you get two Linux capable SoCs in one phone that you can fully use for whatever you want, which is quite interesting!), but the actual modem part is as blobby and impenetrable as ever.
Yes, but with the Quectel EC25 modem used the blobs are isolated on the modem itself, your device does not need to load any binary blobs to bring up a usable cellular connection.
The point is that you can't tinker with the modem, fix issues, implement new features, or remove misfeatures introduced by Quectel, if you have to use the blob.
Where the blob is running is maybe only relevant to how much control it has over the rest of the system.
I hope the pinephone never has app stores. The "work with the community to merge your software into the repo" model is much better for things that actually help people. Apple's AppStore is best for extracting money from people while siloing their data.
This is so divorced from reality I don't know where to start. There is effectively no difference between "apt install widget-a" and installing it from a "App Store" other than the App Store option lets the dev feed his family if he needs to to. at least from a user stand point.
Money has a huge affect, up to the point that your needs are met. Yes, if your needs are met, and you have time to pursue things you enjoy, you do that, but first, your needs must be met.
If I didn't require an income to cover a family of five, I would be retired, and doing whatever it is that I love at any moment. But instead, I work for a living, for money, to meet our needs.
Since much of monetary value is related to scarcity, labor is directed to reduce scarcity, not to actions that produce social value.
The pool of people who are capable of collecting garbage is non-scarce, so the price for labor is relatively small compared to the social value it produces.
Advertising is so well rewarded because the attention of consumers is a very scarce resource, so companies put massive amounts of money into capturing some of that.
I think this comes down to whether you agree that money == value, and that value == utility (i.e. that people will pay for things that they find useful)
...and, since many (not all) profitable activities turn out to be useful, financial incentives still end up incentivizing useful activities. For instance: [IDE company] employees are incentivized to develop [IDE], I buy [IDE], [company] makes a profit, and the value that I get out of [IDE] means that their activities were useful. Good stuff.
Sure. But others are entirely useless or even harmful. If you want people to implement dark patterns, tracking, advertising, or walled gardens, you have to pay them.
I do not see OP stating that "useful" and "profitable" are mutually exclusive. I think it is widely understood that there is "usefulness" that is not satisfied by profit driven organisations, that is why we have non-profits and public institutions.
Call me cynical, but most non-profits seem to be more interested in paying salaries and fundraising than in the actual thing they're supposed to be "about".
And public institutions may serve a useful function, but again seem to be mostly about civil service powerbroking and providing extremely safe employment.
There are certainly (often larger) nonprofits with a tendency of overpaying their leadership and/or pushing policies favored by their corporate funders. I would in this context however not conflate "most visible" (ie largest advertising budgets) with "most". Most nonprofits I have worked with are ran and operated by hardworking people on minimal budgets.
Note that he didn't say overpaying, just paying. It is true that in all organisations (including those associations), as time passes, professionalisation progresses, headcount raises, administrative and secondary tasks develop; and self-preservation, self-replication become a goal of its own. There is a whole range of people (I don't mean leaders or managers, but bottom/middle people) who make a career in all those non-profits, para-public and semi-public associations (all of them living mostly from subsidies), hoping from one to another. At least it goes like that in my country, it has developed a lot in the last 30 years.
-_- I just wanna point out the homeless rate in China is higher than the United States, and you still have to pay rent in China too. So it's not really a capitalism problem its a being alive problem.
People are downvoting you because it looks like you think China is a communist society and western countries are capitalist societies.
There is not much difference between China and western countries. Sure, China is a bit more oppressive (understatement of the year), but they both have element of capitalism and a huge set of coercitive and authoritarian laws which err on socialism.
I'm beginning to think the whole "capitalist"/"communist" dialectic is meant to make people think there's a "capitalist" economic system or a "communist" economic system, whereas when the communists get control they make a "state capitalist" or "party capitalist" system that looks much like "capitalism" except it has a severely authoritarian political system (which everyone is told is a symptom of "capitalism.")
In other words, "communism" is an authoritarian/dictatorial political system that masquerades as an economic system until it doesn't have to put up with any dissent, at which point it goes back to "capitalism." (State or Party or whatever. I think they call their version "with chinese characteristics" in the west.)
The root problem is that redistributive systems are inherently coercive. If your system has money and commerce of any kind, more money will end up in some hands than others.
I'm not making a fundamental judgement on this, all laws are coercive in some sense, capitalist systems often have redistributive features, taxes and such.
However redistribution in the extreme and complete sense in communism is often characterised in utopian terms. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. That's a fine sentiment, but it entails an awful lot of systematic and thorough coercion, and the virtual elimination of freedom in the distribution and use of capital, or in fact property or resources of any kind. This is why we keep getting the "no true scotsman" complaint that criticisms of communism are invalid because they are never 'real' communism. That doesn't account for the coercive and prescriptive nature of a thoroughgoing redistributive system run by a bureaucratic elite. Since they need the authority to redistribute all resources, they need effectively unlimited power. That's why they keep ending up becoming so corrupt.
To the extent that socialist systems retain any freedom in the use, exchange and accumulation of money, they become correspondingly capitalist. Hence communism with 'Chinese' (read capitalist) characteristics.
While I agree with the sentiment of your post, you seem to be conflating capitalism with what countries you believe to be capitalist implement.
Most countries I can think of implement a mix of capitalism and socialism. Some features are capitalism, some are features of socialism.
Coercion and taxation are not capitalism, taxation is just theft operated by the state.
I consider the "no true scotsman" argument for communism to be valid: we never arrived to real communism and that's because it's impossible.
Communism can be achieved only if all the individuals of society are perfect; without that perfection the best you can achieve is a socialist dictatorship.
On the opposite (anarcho-capitalist) side, I think we should try to get rid of all our society socialist features and see if the free market can support us entirely. In my opinion, capitalism is not bad, we just don't have enough.
I mostly agree with you, every country employs some mix of different economic systems.
I agree communism is impossible, that's why I think no true scotsman is an invalid criticism. My post was largely an attempt to explain why I think it's impossible and also actually undesirable. That's all just semantics though, I think we agree on the actual issue.
I disagree with your last paragraph. I oppose socialism as an ideology, as it is pursued by dyed in the wool socialists, but don't necessarily oppose all policies implemented in the name of socialism. I oppose ideologies generally, politically I support policies that have turned out to work, whatever the reasons might be.
For example I do believe in the power of free markets and that capitalism is essentially based on individual liberty. However for example here in the UK we have a very effective and beloved national health service. It's not perfect and might not be the system I would choose from scratch, with unlimited power to make it as I wished, but it works and I would oppose any attempts to radically reform it. There's just too much that's good about it that we could break. Maggie, one of my political heroes, tried to reform it along market lines in the 80s and it was disastrous.
But then there are historical reasons why Britain has some of it's economic and political settlements. Social consensus is important and what works for us might not work for others with different traditions, institutions and expectations.
Anarcho-capitalism will fail for the same reasons you stated communism will fail. 5% of people have psychopathic personality traits. For society that is like someone shitting in the bath water. We’ll end up looking like a narco-state.
If you read Das Kapital the only logical conclusion to draw is that this will eventually happen. Marx said something along the lines of capitalism will eat everything including itself. Communism cannot survive in a world where capitalism is active.
People use iOS/iPhones BECAUSE of how tightly controlled the App Store is. It's like Atari vs Nintendo. If I wanted pure "freedom" I would have gotten an android, since they have at least fixed their performance issues now.
The best of both worlds is possible. I can install $StrictGNULinuxDistro with very strict policies about software freedom and quality and so on; and then if I want to, I can add Flathub, $OtherFlatpakRepo and/or $ThirdPartyDebOrRpmOrWhateverRepo as well.
Gatekeeping may be a feature or a bug depending on your opinion, but we don't all have to have the same priorities for our software repos, because we can each choose which repos we use.
Yeah because flatpacks are a joy to use. /sarc
The older I get, the less time I have to fumble around with crappy user interfaces on half assed software. I’m far more willing to pay, or even used closed source software because it gets the job done, and sparks joy.
No, people buy iPhones because they’re perceived as cool phones. And they are; the hardware is amazing, the software is ok, the freedoms... don’t concern a lot of users.
No. I used an iPhone for years because it was the only way to participate in iMessage group chats and Android had the same issues iOS had. Most people are using the iPhone because they have no other real choice, giving them freedom would be a good thing put I've personally given up all hope for both the platform and the company that created it.
Someone could make a super-strict android app store where developers must pay $X per year to be listed and every app update is closely vetted. Nobody can make an F-droid for non-jailbroken iPhones.
I think it’s worth making a distinction between App Stores and other kinds of software package catalogs. They might have similar user interfaces in certain ways, but they aren’t the same.
> The "work with the community to merge your software into the repo" model is much better for things that actually help people.
So you ratchet up the friction for entry, that helps devs?
Say what you want about the app store, but across all the devs for iOS, how many would go through the trouble of self distributing their product? Marketing, infrastructure, payment system etc... ? The app store is a tremendously low friction way for market penetration.
Sure, we may need to calibrate the revenue sharing arrangement. However the "merge your software into the repo" as an either/or alternative is laughable.
The benefits go both ways: the community also reaches out to the developers. A lot of software is added to repos without any input from the devs.
The plain truth of the matter is that commercial app stores are malware distributors, and community repositories are not. The commercial app store model does not work, at least not for the user.
Also: not all software is commercial, and not everyone wants their phones commercialized. Your business model is often simply not welcome on the platform. You're not entitled to make money. If we want a platform without commercial software incentives, that's our business, not yours.
> The plain truth of the matter is that commercial app stores are malware distributors, and community repositories are not.
Citation needed.
> The commercial app store model does not work, at least not for the user.
The hundred of millions of Google Play users would like to have a word with you. (rampant ad-tech and freeware model are a function of the "race to the bottom" in app pricing, conditioning users to trade privacy for free apps, and Google's existence as an advertiser, not the fact that the Google Play store is commercial)
> Also: not all software is commercial, and not everyone wants their phones commercialized.
You can, uh, have an app store that distributes both commercial and non-commercial apps. In particular, there's a lot of open-source stuff on Google Play (and probably on the Apple App Store too).
> Your business model is often simply not welcome on the platform.
What platform? Who's not "welcoming"? The Pinephone runs open-source software.
> If we want a platform without commercial software incentives, that's our business, not yours.
Again, what platform? Who's "we"? The users? I'm a user, and I want commercial incentives - what makes your desires more important than mine?
Only a authoritarian, selfish mindset rejects a feature (commercial software) that is desired by some fraction of the user population, is useful, and is compatible with alternative features (open-source software) for a poor, vague reason like "commercialization".
Or does your definition of "software freedom" sound like "you can run anything you want on your computer...except for "proprietary" programs (which we get to define), or those that "enable" proprietary programs"?
Click through some of these and see what permissions they ask for. Full network access, run at startup, view network connections, GPS ___location, read contacts, read the SD card, ads, microtransactions, the list of offenses goes on and on. All to do exactly one thing: call this function:
This is malware, and the services which distribute it are malware distributors.
>Only a authoritarian, selfish mindset rejects a feature (commercial software) that is desired by some fraction of the user population
Only a shmuck or an abuser thinks that it's okay to exploit user's ignorance of the alternatives to monetize their every waking breath and steal as much information about them as possible through deceit and propaganda. Prohibiting the exploitation of the public is not authoritarian, even if it means you don't make as much money.
> This is malware, and the services which distribute it are malware distributors.
Malware has been distributed through open-source repositories multiple times before, so by your convoluted definition of "malware distributors", open-source repositories are those, too.
> Only a shmuck or an abuser thinks that it's okay to exploit user's ignorance of the alternatives
As stated elsewhere in this thread[1], not all users use these commercial stores out of ignorance of alternatives. In addition to being a logically poor argument, it's empirically false. Moreover, the word "exploit" is divorced from reality and not applicable to the situation - giving users the choice to have commercial app stores available is clearly not exploitation from any sane viewpoint. I'm calling you out - you're using logical fallacies and emotionally-laden weasel words to try to sneak a bad argument in.
> to monetize their every waking breath and steal as much information about them as possible through deceit and propaganda.
Snuck premise: "commercial app stores all monetize and surveil their users to the maximum extent possible". There's absolutely nothing intrinsic to a commercial app store that causes any of that to happen. But go ahead, prove me wrong - show me that every commercial app store has to do this. I suggest starting with Steam, and showing me the massive amount of data-collection that you clearly think they do on their users.
> Prohibiting the exploitation of the public is not authoritarian, even if it means you don't make as much money.
Same snuck premise - show me exactly how the nature of a proprietary app store makes "exploitation" necessary - after defining "exploitation". And independent of that, your argument is still false. Trying to claim that you're "prohibiting the exploitation of the public" attempts to cover over the fact that your proposed "solution" is authoritarian (the motive has absolutely nothing to do with that categorization).
While your statement is technically correct, the number of users falling into that category, and would go the extra effort to ensure a non-commercialized day to day phone is usable, is infinitesimally small. Most users embrace the convenience associated with the commercial solution.
If I buy a phone from you, and then download an app that bricks it, I want my money back from you.
Yes, you can argue that I'm responsible for that, but consumer protection laws will apply, and there's going to be a court case, possibly even a class action suit. Too many uneducated users who refuse to take personal responsibility for their actions. Yes, it's not ideal, but this is how people are.
Your response has at some point got to include vetting the software that your users can download onto their phone, for purely financial reasons.
If I buy a laptop, and then install Linux on it, and download a malicious package and install it, then that's on me. If someone buys a Dell laptop and downloads a malicious application and installs it, then Dell support gets to deal with that problem. After a while, Dell is going to install some software by default to help with this, and spy on what users have been doing purely so that if they mess up then Dell can help. Eventually this happens enough and Windows gets an app store, and fairly soon after a version of Windows that can only install apps via the app store.
This is not about control for control's sake, or revenue (except saving support costs). This is about protecting people from themselves.
But sure, if Pine can put a big sticker on the phone saying "do not install anything on this phone" and make that legally binding, then they won't need an app store.
That... is not what's happening here. That narrative is bordering on delusional.
App distributiors are distributing malware. The vendors and the app developers are spying on you because it's profitable to sell your data. They keep walled gardens so that they get their 30% cut of every transaction. They are doing it in the service of their financial interests, which also motivates everything else they do.
The idea that they're doing it out of some kind of charitable desire to keep the user's phone working is ridiculous.
In their defense, just because a platform has a large number of users doesn't mean that it's "working" (for some definitions of working). I use Android, but not because I like it, but because I have to. There are apps that I need access to that are only available for iOS and Android - and Android is the slightly less-terrible of the two.
Now, the more general argument about the "commercial app store model not working" is utterly ridiculous - you can't make any useful generalizations with a sample size of 2. (actually, Steam seems to be doing pretty well - I rarely hear people complaining about it, and it's a commercial app store)
> Not only are you wrong. You’re wrong on a scale so large, 100 years ago the average person had never thought of numbers that high.
I am a user, and programmer, informed about both the commercial app store models and package repositories. I am perfectly fine with commercial app stores - there's absolutely nothing wrong with the concept.
Are Google and Apple's implementations of the concept bad? Yes. But it's not very difficult to separate out the traits of the implementations with the traits of the idea. Steam seems to be doing very well, and as a user of that platform, they are executing it pretty well.
I am an informed user who is cool with commercial app stores. The response above, which you replied to, is pretty toxic and I don’t agree with the level of vitriol they seem to have, but please don’t paint with such a broad brush. Being cool with commercial ecosystems is not only a product of ignorance.
"They might be "cool with it", but only out of ignorance that there are better models."
Way to speak for everyone bud. Including me, I never said "might makes right" or anything like it.
Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension before trying to speak for others.
My argument boils down to "Perfect is the enemy of good"
There are so many issues I see blocked by banks for reason or another. This is another one I never thought of. The other big one is existing loans preventing cryptocurrency adoption.
Except that it won't break the app-store duopoly. At what point will WhatsApp or even Signal consider providing a web-app, or even an open API for others to built clients against? Not doing this is a policy choice, not a technical one.
Will banks offer something that doesn't require authentication via an app? Governments? App here meaning: Android or IOS.
One solution might be to provide a sandbox for Android apps, but you would still be locked into Google's app-store and require accepting their terms of use. And while your OS might be open and not user-hostile, all the apps everyone uses will still be the same.
I want a phone like this, but I don't see it changing the duopoly.
If banks and governments keep writing apps only for the duopoly, then there is the argument that the duopoly becomes a public utility and should be opened up.
This view would also protect FOSS projects that emulate the iOS environment (e.g. Wine but for iOS)
IMHO, it does not have to change the duopoly, as long as it creates sustainable options for those who want to escape that duopoly. In that way it‘s already a success.
The point was: if it doesn't change the duopoly then who will write apps for the open platform? Not banks. Not governments. They will keep on developing only for Android and iOS.
And people with a pinephone will have a great phone with a great OS, but with a shitty selection of apps.
I already use Linux with my bank and when I'm interacting with my government. And unlike on Android, the barrier of entry for me to write apps and set up quick solutions to problems is much lower. I don't need to run my code on a completely separate environment with no overlap. Emulation is going to be easier. I don't need to install Eclipse or whatever the heck Android devs tolerate now.
That's part of the point of using Linux -- not creating an ecosystem from scratch.
Virtually all of my computing outside of my phone is already done on Linux devices, and the setup works for day-to-day computing. Support is good enough for me. What makes you think Pinephone going to have worse support than my current Linux desktop?
My hope with Pinephone is that a decent influx of Linux phone users will improve the quality of desktop software on Linux as well, since it forces devs to stop ignoring touch screens and to start thinking about responsive design. Ideally, the desktop versions of many apps should scale on interfaces like this without needing to be rewritten. But regardless, I'm still not particularly worried that my bank website is going to stop working.
> I already use Linux with my bank and when I'm interacting with my government.
I also use Linux with my bank. All banks I know of in my country require you to install an invasive "security software" (warsaw), even when you're using the web browser; some also require the phone app to be used as a second factor (for instance, one bank generates a dynamically changing QR code after you enter your password; you have to open its phone app and scan that QR code, which the phone app uses to generate a number to be typed below the QR code).
For the government, it's easier, you just have to install the ICP-Brasil root certificates (since they haven't been accepted yet by Mozilla).
That's terrifying, and I deeply sympathize, but it seems like a government problem more than an app ecosystem or market problem?
It's not just that Linux isn't going to break the app store duopoly in your case, nobody is going to, because your government is effectively reinforcing that behavior. Forcing people to install root certificates on their devices is a problem on a whole 'nother level over just commercial incentives.
I just don't see how any technology or market-based solution will solve that problem. What happens when the government starts deciding that its authentication software won't work on rooted devices? What happens when the bank decides they need contact/GPS/camera permissions on your phone for "security"? I mean, that's not an app ecosystem problem at that point, it's just full-fledged required malware from your bank.
In the US (for all of the many, many faults with our trash-dump of a banking/federal ecosystem) at most I've only ever been asked to do 2FA using completely open standards, and the worst problem I've run into is that my bank's website won't load over some VPNs. I can even disable analytics on my bank's website and it'll still work.
But getting support on a Linux phone OS for what sounds to me at first blush like malware and spyware isn't really the best solution to what you're describing. The problem isn't that the malware isn't available on Linux, it's that you're forced to install malware on any of your computers, including iOS/Android.
I think you mixed two different things; what requires the authentication software is the banks, not the government.
The government isn't forcing anyone to install the ICP-Brasil root certificates; if you don't, the government websites will just show as untrusted in the browser (since they're signed by one of the CAs which chain to the ICP-Brasil root), but other than that they should work the same. Things might be different if you are authenticating your identity to the government with a certificate stored on a smartcard or USB key, since these certificates are also signed by a CA which chains to the ICP-Brasil root; I don't know if adding the ICP-Brasil root to the browser is necessary to make that work.
As for the banks, AFAIK the government doesn't mandate how they approach their online banking security; their use of that invasive "security software" is probably mostly path dependence at this point. It was very common to see computers infected with malware designed to steal online banking credentials from the browser, and that "security software" was supposed to block that kind of malware (for instance, by blocking the browser accessibility APIs whenever the user goes to an online banking site). Things are already better than in the past (that "security software" used to be Windows-only, for instance, so Linux users couldn't use online banking).
And yeah, all the bank apps I have on my phone require contact/___location/camera permissions (the camera permission is unavoidable since they have to be able to read the QR code for PIX payments, and boleto bancário barcodes), and for at least one of these apps, I strongly suspect it's using the ___location permission for security purposes (the ___location indicator always lights up whenever I log into that app). It wouldn't surprise me at all if it also rejected rooted devices.
It's a good point, but still not something that I think that can be solved by opening up app stores.
My issue isn't that those apps aren't available for Linux. Even if they were available for Linux I wouldn't install a bank app with those permissions. I wouldn't install that on my primary Android phone (I guess there's a good likelyhood I couldn't, since I run rooted Android).
I'm not sure what I would do in that position. Maybe get a separate phone just for banking? I don't know, it's really tough. I sympathize.
But yeah, the Pinephone is not going to solve that problem, banks would need to move over to open standards for authentication through apps that are trustworthy. Just releasing their apps for a smartphone wouldn't be enough. At least any "security software" that can run on desktop Linux can also be run on your phone, assuming it doesn't freak out over the hardware, and assuming you're willing to tolerate it.
Here in the Netherlands I can use the website of my bank even if I don't have a smartphone. I get some QR-camera reader which I can point at the computer screen and it generates a TAN code, which I can enter at login and at transactions.. I do believe the government and banks in my country somewhat think in line with the user needs. Not in every country will this mentality exist.
Sure, if you want an app for an open source platform like Linux, that may take a lot longer. I think there is already a common platform for this, but not many banks offer it.
> All banks I know of in my country require you to install an invasive "security software"
Is this meant to be taken literally? I would be surprised if e.g. mBank didn't work with SMS as the sole enabled 2FA.
Personally, I would rather have an extra Android phone for cases like this, as well as for the times when one has to make an actual phone call, though. I wouldn't expect the call quality on the pinephone to be anything to write home about, even if the software was all mature already.
To take one example: the interaction with your bank goes through a web-browser, I suppose? You probably need a special device for 2FA? In most bank apps, you can simply log in using a PIN-code and do things like check your balance, make small wire transfers, and make payments in stores through NFC. Doing these things in a web-browser on a mobile phone with a separate 2FA device is much more cumbersome.
(I use Linux exclusively on the desktop so I know what you are talking about, but it just isn't going to work on a phone in the same way).
:shrug: I don't have a bank app installed on my phone right now. And there are absolutely going to be Open Source 2FA apps being built for Pinephone, so I'm good there.
Currently, I don't use a banking app because I don't trust my bank to have that level of access to my phone with a proprietary app, and because my bank's app isn't particularly good in the first place. So I'm not really losing out by using Pinephone. In fact, I might have more functionality after switching, since Android development is a mess and on a Linux platform I might be tempted to build something quickly for myself that periodically pulls down the CSV data from my bank and does a few things with it.
I'm not saying that proprietary devs are going to start mass-building apps for this, I'm just saying that for a segment of the population, this may turn out not to be the problem you think it is.
----
Apps on my phone that I need replacements for:
- NewPipe
- Podcast app/music app
- Maps
- AndOTP
- Signal (and/or Matrix)
- Orgzly
- Email
- Good browser support
- Maybe a few misc utilities, probably something I'm forgetting
Do I have confidence that those apps or equivalents will be ported? Honestly, yes, I do. It would not take an insurmountable amount of work to build a Linux ecosystem that was more functional than my current phone setup.
- NewPipe -> for audio online there is AudioTube and for video there is Plasmatube
- Podcast -> Alligator (an RSS reader) is gaining support for podcast soon (there is an open MR)
- AndOTP -> Keysmith, but it still missing some features like scaning a Qr code
- Signal (and/or Matrix): I develop a matrix client called NeoChat
- Maps: there is PureMaps powered by OSM
- Orgzly: still missing
- Email: there are some poc that are able to read mails but this will still require a lot of time
- Good browser support: Angelfish is great
You can find a bigger list of apps in https://www.plasma-mobile.org/. There is a few still missing that I will try to add later.
- Signal (and/or Matrix) > Axolotl / various, Nheko feels most complete currently
- Orgzly > Emacs maybe?
- Email > Geary (I still use Evolution though)
- Good browser support > Angelfish, desktop Firefox has been adapted nicely, once Chromiums Wayland supports matures it will also be a viable option (it’s very fast, but has annoying issues with text input currently)
It should be pointed out, however, that the mapping apps available on the PinePhone are little more than tech demos. Their feature set is vastly smaller than e.g. OSMAnd on Android. For me, even if the PinePhone took over my phone calls, Signal messenging, etc., I would still need to carry around an Android phone for decent maps.
The PinePhone is just like an ordinary desktop Linux computer in the sense that there is a terminal right there, and you can run any shell-based apps you want. That means that instead of waiting for NewPipe to be ported, you could just use youtube-dl.
To develop apps for Android I have to set up an emulator, dev environment, learn a bunch of extra ropes, package everything. But I can throw together some bash scripts in a day, it really opens up the possibilities to solve a lot of my own problems.
Compare that with something like Windows Phone. Not having apps there is a serious problem, because I don't necessarily want to pull out C# and build an entire app to fix every issue I have.
If could be done for the guy in your linked example, he was lucky and you shouldn’t be giving people false hopes. More and more bank apps are requiring phones that can pass Safety Net, and Anbox won't.
It's not even the lack of apps directly but the effect of not having one of the two supported OSes.
For example, the Dutch government is slowly pushing everyone to either use their authentication app (for DigiD, the national digital government authentication service), or just stop using digital government services all together and just digitally mandate friends or family to handle your digital affairs. This latter option is of course targetted at the infirm and elderly. People who are able, literate, and have computers with modern OSes on them at the ready, but not one of the two smartphone OSes are considered to be such a minority that they can be safely ignored until they fold and get a cheap Android device.
I don't have a smartphone with Android or IOS, and I get nudged constantly when using DigiD (on a laptop or desktop computer) to get the app for authentication. My bank also nudges me at every transaction (which I do on a desktop computer with a stand-alone card-reader they provide). I can't turn off the nudging or make the services remember my choice, and always have to perform an extra click to authenticate. The upcoming digital government law goes a step further and mandates a level of assurance that can currently only be met by the app for accessing your healthcare records. This is of course not required: you are also welcome to go to the healthcare provider in person and ask for you dossier on paper. And when you do so, you will be nudged at every step of the way to consider using their app.
If this is a pattern that occurs worldwide, then smartphones that do not offer these apps have a very limited audience, and will remain curiosities for tinkerers and privacy conscious folk willing to make the trade-off (or even have a separate Android phone for the stuff mentioned above, for each adult member of their household).
We somehow managed to get through the phase where Microsoft Windows was a hard requirement on your computer for compatibility reasons (remember how South Korea was stuck with ActiveX way beyond its sell-by-date?), but now we're stuck here.
> For example, the Dutch government is slowly pushing everyone to either use their authentication app (for DigiD, the national digital government authentication service),
Could not you use identity service from different EU country (based on eIDAS regulation)? Here in Czechia there is eIDAS-compatible identity provider that uses U2F tokens.
Eventually — and specifically for healthcare — yes! But I'm not sure if a citizen from one country can easily obtain credentials from another. It seems mostly meant for cases where you might need to sign on to a Dutch government website and you can then just use those Czech U2F tokens. It is a way forward though, but currently mostly hypothetical.
Unfortunately, while there is a migration going on from offering only DigiD to offering the whole eIDAS suite (in the Netherlands this is done via a government service called ToegangsVerleningsService, so vendors only have to implement a SAML connection to that which will eventually support eIDAS), it is by no means sure that every government function will allow eIDAS instead of just DigiD. It's honestly a very opaque process.
Great to hear that the Czech Republic chose U2F (now part of WebAuthn) though!
That really doesn’t follow. The web is already open, and banks are already regulated. Just mandate that banks provide access to their services via the web.
They often do; it's two-factor authentication that's the problem. If they'd support some open standard like WebAuthn this problem wouldn't exist, but they all insist on using home-grown solutions.
How so? Safety Net is about things like locking the bootloader on one's phone, and preventing the user from having root access. Desktop computers don't have the same restrictions, and most of the people on this thread supporting the PinePhone would chafe at the notion that their desktop computers need to be locked down.
It’s not about requiring that exact solution. It’s about providing security. There are other ways. If banks require a controlled endpoint, they can supply a hardware key.
As mentioned elsewhere here, separate hardware keys are on the way out. Banks no longer wish to offer them because the vast, vast majority of customers have a phone that, if it passes Safety Net, already is a hardware key.
This means there is no reason they can’t support the web if required to do so.
The argument that App stores must be regarded as public utilities because banks don’t support the web makes no sense. Banks can easily support the web.
> We somehow managed to get through the phase where Microsoft Windows was a hard requirement on your computer for compatibility reasons
This almost made me spill my drink ))
Is it so much better in the Netherlands, or do you just not get to interact with government bureaucracy much? Trying to e.g. get a building permit over here without using MS Office and Windows is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy...
You can still get updated software for CP/M, BeOS, DOS and OS/2 for crying out loud. Maybe not a lot, but people write / maintain that stuff. A relatively modern phone, running Linux? If it gains any adoption, I expect that the availability of apps won't be a problem. Maybe the ecosystem won't be quite as rich as Android or IOS, but it may well be "pretty good" which will be good enough for a lot of people.
You definitely have a point, and it‘s a pity that (desktop) Firefox recently dropped its haphazard support for Progressive Web Apps making that alternative even more unlikely to happen.
Actually, it has happened in the past. Windows Phone, a decent platform from the developer perspective failed to attract any significant interest. And that’s with all the resources of Microsoft and the recognition of Nokia.
It clearly isn’t going to do so overnight or in a year or two.
But it easily could over the 5-10 year timeline. A distributed App Store plus an experience that is more attuned to the needs of users than iOS or Android can accomplish that.
To solve the ‘bank’ problem all it needs to do is provide a really solid PWA story.
What it shouldn’t do is provide Android compatibility.
> plus an experience that is more attuned to the needs of users than iOS or Android can accomplish that.
Why would this project be more effective at doing this than iOS or Android?
I don’t see why people other than ideological technologists would want to use this phone.
To be clear, I think it’d be great if they did, but I think you’re massively understating the difficulty of challenging iOS and Android. Many companies have tried before - Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, and failed.
> Why would this project be more effective at doing this than iOS or Android?
This is an excellent question. The basic answer is that the incentive structures are different. Apple’s platforms are primarily designed to efficiently deliver commercial software. The app-store, the apis and everything else about their OS ecosystem is designed around the idea that packaged Apps, immutable to the user and remotely maintained by a commercial developer, are the answer to solving end-user problems using computers. They implement this model better than anyone else, but it’s not the only model.
Two other models are GNU Linux and it’s open source ecosystem, and the Smalltalk model as exemplified by pharo. In both of these models, the user isn’t just a consumer of Apps or the system, but is an active participant in creating it.
I’m not suggesting that either of these are the solution as they stand. I’m just pointing out that the iOS / Apple model is not the only possibility. You are right that just competing with it directly would fail. Even Android is failing at that.
> I don’t see why people other than ideological technologists would want to use this phone.
This is perjorative sounding, but a reasonable concern. If the answer was ‘people would use smalltalk instead of buying apps’, or ‘with Linux people can build whatever phone they like’, then I’d agree with you.
Of course we need something that end-users can plausibly use without being a technologist.
My argument is that we can actually build such a thing, and that it can be much better as a ‘bicycle for the mind’ than iOS.
> Many companies have tried before - Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, and failed.
This is to be expected. A company trying to compete with Apple on their terms, even if they have the resources of Microsoft, is going to fail.
The answer will be a low-end disruption - something that is good enough, but also capable of things that iOS is not because of the commercial model. It won’t come from one company trying to take on Apple directly.
>You are right that just competing with it directly would fail. Even Android is failing at that.
...What? Citation needed. Android by far accounts for the majority (85%) of smartphones not just worldwide but even in nearly all wealthy countries other than the US, Canada and Japan.
In terms of raw profits, sure, Apple makes more off of its app ecosystem than Google does off of Android, but in terms of health of the app ecosystem itself, the Google Play app store accounted for 20 billion out of the combined total of 28.4 billion app downloads in 2018 ( https://www.techaheadcorp.com/blog/android-vs-ios/ ). I'd hardly call that failing, more like 'utterly dominating'
So, in your mind, the world's most active software ecosystem is failing because it doesn't extract as much capital as a system set up as a premium product ecosystem targeted at the world's elites? Interesting take.
By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.
> So, in your mind, the world's most active software ecosystem
It’s not the world’s most active software ecosystem. The web is.
> is failing because it doesn't extract as much capital
It is failing as a business.
> as a system set up as a premium product ecosystem targeted at the world's elites?
If you consider most American teenagers to be ‘the world’s elites’, then ok.
> By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.
I agree that if the “active participant” model somehow became a better fit for most people than the Apple/Google model, it seems like disruption would be possible.
That’s a big “if” though. Curious if you think there are larger trends that would suggest that the current standard of the “walled garden”/closed software model will become less effective than the “active participant” model in meeting the computing needs of everyday people.
Yes, it’s a big if, however the number of people who can code and the general sophistication level of even amateur programmers is rising over time.
Actual computer literacy in the sense of being about to both read and write programs is only going to increase over time.
My sense is that Apple is underserving the needs of software creators in general, by shoehorning everything into Apps.
They could respond to this, and I have been expecting them to for years. My sense now is that they may be too are too blinded by the store model to realize what is happening.
This is one of the trends that I think Jobs would have understood, but that a post Jobs Apple may miss.
Another trend is the rise of crypto. I am not a Bitcoin bull or anything like that, but now that there is so much creativity in the crypto space, I think it’s entirely feasible that we could solve the problem of distributing trust, so that we can provide something for end users with the safety of the App Store but without the central gatekeeper.
This is not even close to being a solved problem yet, which is why I oppose the breakup of app stores.
However the basic tools seem to exist for us to solve it, as does the pressure.
Sure, they start there but they eventually expand beyond that initial core group to the wider population. I’m saying that in this case, I don’t think it will expand beyond that initial group.
Why would non-idealists use this phone when the alternative they already have in their pocket and know how to use can do everything the PinePhone can do?
Some reasons why non-technical folks might be interested in the Pinephone:
1) avoid the privacy issues of Android & iOS
2) have the confidence that as long as their hardware work, they will have updates
3) buy from a brand that will allow you (or a third party) to fix your hardware (Pine64 sells you spare parts, and at reasonable prices!)
4) have an user-replaceable battery
5) have an affordable smartphone (I know, there are 30$ android phones but they tick none of the above points)
The points 2 to 4 will interest an increasing number of people this century, imo
> Why would non-idealists use this phone when the alternative they already have in their pocket and know how to use can do everything the PinePhone can do?
Nobody expects them to.
People will use it when it does something the alternative they already have cannot do.
Using the term ‘idealists’ is perjorative but more importantly, it implies confusion about why people buy this phone.
The people who buy the phone today do so because it allows them to do things which the alternatives cannot. I.e. the purchase is pragmatic. This is the precise opposite of idealism.
Microsoft was even trying to pay people to target apps to Windows Mobile and still couldn't succeed. And it's not like their OS was bad; I remember seeing quite a lot of praise for it.
They don't have to provide stories, just a working website, and most already do. The problem lies with authentication. Banks used to do authentication by providing a stand-alone card-reader for your debit card that basically generated OTP challenge responses using the private key on the chip.
But banks see this is an expense that can be cut if everyone would just use the Android or IOS smartphone they already own (conveniently making the customer pay for the hardware), and when you have that support in place, you would want to be able to do the actual banking on your smartphone too — not just authenticating. So now banks have two apps and a PWA they must maintain, along with the infrastructure for the dedicated card-readers.
So at this point your bank is asking all the people still using card-readers to please consider using the app, so they can kill off that feature. Dutch bank ING tried this when their old authentication method needed replacing (they where one of the last banks still using SMS tokens). Their approach was to nudge/annoy/scare customers into using their app for a year, but in the end they folded and grudgingly had to provide stand-alone card-readers as well.
Some of the newer small digital only banks in the Netherlands are 100% app only though, and the bigger banks are quite jealous, but can't just drop support for their existing customer base.
Sure. I use Whisperfish on Sailfish OS for Signal conversations. I hear the developer is quite positive about the support he gets from Signal about getting it up to speed. There was that famous blog post, I think in 2016, where they said they won't support third-party clients, but they got so much flac over it, they might have reconsidered.
I'll agree, and add that it's not clear that people really want privacy. Not that we've been given a choice, but the very first thing that the major players are going to say is that people want the all knowing experience that Google and FB provide.
This is not a stab at you or your comment. I think your message is valid and I agree with it. However, I do believe there's a commonmisconception in here that needs to be highlighted if hoped to be fixed.
> We have open source browsers, we have open source social
> apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones.
> Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users
> will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of
> complaining and >legal coercion, to one of choices and
> markets.
What you are talking about in the text above is not delivered by Open Source, which is just a practical advantage. The values you mentioned are fought for by the Free/Libre Software community [0].
I recommend to anyone interested in this topic (e.g. the differences between Libre and Open Source software), read more about the GNU project as a starter [1].
As a disclaimer, I'm by no means an expert on this topic which is another reason to follow the links below.
I'm not 100% sure I'd rank this as #1 on my list, but if not, it'd probably be at least #2 or #3. Open source phones (and tablets) are something I've been dreaming about and looking forward to for a very long time, and I'm happy this is finally starting to come to fruition.
Not from a personal point of view but from a global humanitarian point of view, mobile phones are how most people interact with the internet, technology, and the rest of the world. That should make it #1 on everybody's list. Right now 99.9999% of smartphones are closed source and closed hardware that is controlled by mega corps that don't have your best interests at heart.
You really put this well. I want this for convenience and to flip the bird to "the man" but globally smartphones are so much more important as a way for people to be connected. It's the only choice they have for doing it.
The point is that it's not Android, so you can run whatever you can make run on mainline Linux on PinePhone, with fully supported kernel always available in uptodate state, and without any Android abstractions that may or may not limit what you can do.
Even AOSP hardcodes some reliance on Google servers. It is open source, but not independent of this dominant corporation as many privacy advocates would like.
I must really like down votes because "single most important technology project going on out there" is quite the stretch. Hell, I would argue that over the last year during a pandemic doordash was more important(feeding people while letting them be socially distanced). People on this site like overestimate the avg. persons concern with privacy. the hardware toggles are cool tho.
You commit same error you accuse others off. DoorDash mostly solved problems for a small part of reasonably wealthy people, mostly without families, living in big cities, that don’t cook.
You overestimate how your lifestyle isn’t representative of the world.
The only point was that DoorDash probably affected more lives in more positive ways than PinePhone ever will, however little that might be. That's probably accurate.
I disagree. DoorDash maybe affected 15 million lives? I dunno. And sure it made life more convenient for them and kept them from having to put on an oven mitt. An open phone that frees you from the largest surveillance network in human history? Might have a larger overall effect.
The world absolutely doesn't begin and end with middle class in the USA. But you're just wrong to say "DoorDash mostly solved problems for a small part of reasonably wealthy people, mostly without families, living in big cities". There were times it or a competitor were a godsend for my not-quite-middle-class sister, with five children to feed, who lives in a small city a half hour from Cincinnati.
It’s not exclusively for middle class, sure, but that’s their main target market. It has other users, and it’s great if it’s solving their problems as well.
I’m not diminishing their impact (although I question lots of their business practices). But it’s not the most important tech, by a huge huge margin.
'single most important' is maybe a bit much, but..
Privacy is not the only concern, phones are massively used (about a 50% of population) and we all use them for all kinds of purposes - and that part is also growing.
Not to have an open-source option for someting this widespread is not a good idea by my opinion.
> People on this site like overestimate the avg. persons concern with ....
The "average person" concerns come from "average" understanding of the subject. Average person didn't even need a smartphone 20 or 30 years ago - SF toys :)
But you're wrong tho. most lower income people in the states don't have cars and eat fast food a lot because well food deserts. Then the pandemic happens, well fast food stayed open. Opps one huge problem, only the drive-thrus are open. I can take hours to ride the bus to a grocery store and lug 50+ pounds of groceries, or I can just spend $1.99 to have food delivered.
EDIT: subjective yea, but come on dude people being able to eat is more important than google not knowing what type of porn I like.
I'm not sure what demographic you're talking about that can afford a $2-5 premium on every meal but cannot otherwise access or afford means to safely access a grocery store or restaurant. It would be much more economical for me to take advantage of one of my local grocery stores' free scheduled pickup options and just pay for an Uber driver to take me there and back.
I'm also not sure how Doordash is supposed to help at all for people who were already eating significant amounts of fast food.
Either way, all you're really doing with Doordash is passing the risk of transmission off to someone else. Ideally the delivery person has a better immune system than you (and refrains from making contacting those with weaker immune systems), but that whittles down the demographic of those who seriously benefit from Doordash even further.
Also, the PinePhone project is poised to bring serious repairability, privacy, and security options to a device category many now consider to be essential. It's not so trivial as preventing Google from accessing up your search results.
Regardless, we're comparing potential mortality to potential rights violations. If anyone can figure out how to objectively compare the value of human lives to human rights, give me a call.
It's definitely got competition for the title of "most important" but think about how ubiquitous, increasingly closed off and intrusive modern smart phones are. I think there's some merit to the statement.
Hm, I'd say the mRNA COVID vaccines are probably a more important technology project at the moment. Realistically, most people don't actually care about the ideological purity of their phone, and the ones who do certainly don't have the time to personally audit the source of every dependency they install. So it's not exactly solving any practical problems, even more so since any internet connected device is at the mercy of our shared BGP systems and to a lesser extent DNS. Like it or not, you're part of a community and you can't solve every social problem with technology (or markets, for that matter)!
The fact that they made these vaccines so quickly and (apparently) so well is a testament to what humans can do when we put a ton of try-hard into something. That said, if we didn't have vaccines and people just kept on dying, it would definitely suck, but we would still have surveillance capitalism monitoring the most intimate aspects of our lives. Once we finally came out of the other side of Covid, even without a vaccine, we would still have google and apple and microsoft and facebook monitoring our every choice and monetizing it. Maybe there'd be a billion fewer people (and maybe that's not so bad) but we'd still have all the ills that these closed systems have brought on us.
The website makes the following very clear (not in fine print but right at the beginning of the description).
> Beta Limited Edition PinePhones are aimed solely at early adopters. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience.
If you mistake this for a finished phone, I hope regulators will see that Pine64 did due diligence to warn you that this is a half-finished prototype of a phone. At the end of the day, if malicious customers do complain to regulators because their "early-adopter" phone wasn't production ready, it seems that legally Pine64 can simply refund those purchases.
Agreed, they make this very clear in multiple different ways:
> core functionality of the PinePhone still an ongoing effort. Thus, the device cannot considered a consumer-ready product.
> DISCLAIMER [...] If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute, DO NOT purchase the PinePhone. When fulfilling your purchase, please bear in mind that we are offering the PinePhone at this price as a community service to PINE64 community. Thank you.
This type of device feels just like an extension of what people do in the open source hardware community when a small group gets some custom PCBs made: Someone releases it on a forum, enough people show interest, they decide how many to get made and then one person makes and pays the order and distributes them without really making any money (considering the time they put in you might say they are losing money). That's what this is, just more pieces without you having to do surface mount soldiering.
I mean what do people expect for $150, it's something to buy to hack on.
Be aware that you are legally bound by any public statements you make about your products, especially through advertisements or on labels.
If you are a retailer, your customers can ask for redress under the legal guarantee provided by EU law - if an item:
- doesn't match the product description
- has different qualities from the model advertised or shown to the client
- is not fit for purpose - either its standard purpose or a specific purpose ordered by the customer which you accepted
- doesn't show the quality and performance normal in products of the same type
- wasn't installed correctly - either by you, or by the customer, due to shortcomings in the instructions
IF YOU INFORM your customer that the product you are going to sell has quality problems, they cannot then claim redress from you about this particular defect."<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
You are right and you are wrong. They must provide a 2 year warranty on the functionality of a "Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone" with the following disclaimer "Beta Limited Edition PinePhones are aimed solely at early adopters. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience". A beta is not expected to function correctly. Hence, there is no justification for return under eu law. People writing these laws aren't idiots.
Additionally, that warranty state works well in other jurisdictions and is fine.
I see this comment every time something about the PinePhone is announced, but considering that this is more of a tinkering project and not so much an actual product I just don't see how relevant this is.
You are not buying a Pixel 4, you are buying something that still needs a lot of work.
It's not about the volume. There were issues shipping into particular countries that may actually check items on the border for more than just price matching the product so customs/VAT is not gamed, and the state gets their proper cut. Things like manual in the language of the country, certifications, etc.
My country is more on the "we just want the cut" side, but some people in Germany had trouble getting individual shipments into the country, for example.
These laws were made to protect regular consumers when they buy a washing machine to ensure that the manufacturer could not screw them over.
This is Pine64, which is about as close to community driven hardware development as you can get. They give you the open-source design and source code. If you think you might need a two year guarantee just don't buy their product, it's probably not a good fit for you anyway.
> These laws were made to protect regular consumers when they buy a washing machine to ensure that the manufacturer could not screw them over over the last few decades:
That didn't work out very well. They just found different, more insidious ways of screwing people over.
Its a phone you can purchase from their website that they will send to you. The purchasing process is exactly the same as buying a galaxy s21. If companies could just say "this is an unfinished product" to get around mandatory warranties, everyone would do it. PinePhone should not be exempt because they are selling what they call a beta product.
This would effectively kill devices like PinePhone, because they wouldn't be able to test the product in development with the community. Is that really the desirable outcome?
It's not like we're talking about some kind of small print in the EULA here, either. It's prominently plastered all across the website, and during the ordering process.
Warranty and guarantee ("Gewährleistung") are different things, at least in germany. Warranty is something provided freely by the manufacturer/supplier under whatever terms they want. Guarantee on the other hand is mandatory, and even though it's two years, after 6 months you have to prove the defect was there from the beginning, which is somewhat complicated for electronics...
If you do it on your own sure, but I usually offload such issues to Verbraucherzentrale and let them do the talk if there is no collaboration, usually it has an higher success rate when they come into play.
Just (pre)-ordered mine. And I have to say, this has me feeling that I'm on the cusp of fulfilling a dream that I've had for around a decade (or more?) now.
Every since the days of the OpenMoko[1] I've wanted a real "open source mobile device" - something that runs Linux (or a BSD, or FreeDOS, or ReactOS or something open), that can make/receive calls, get on the net, and that I can carry in my pocket. Not being ludicrously expensive is also a desirable feature. And now between this PinePhone, and the Purism phone, it looks like what I've been wanting finally exists. I can't overstate how happy this makes me.
Edit: and yes, I know that an "Android Phone" running F-Droid is close to the same thing, and I am glad F-droid is out there. But this still feels like a step further in the right direction.
I know. But I get the impression these are closer to valid "daily drivers" than something like the OpenMoko Freerunner was; and buying one now is a way to show support for the project.
Does it allow to call phones and send SMS? This seems like a silly question, but I know that some version of Librem didn't and nobody mentioned it in their reviews.
Yes, it does. Although, caveat: Not every one of the distributions listed under [0]
does. MMS is difficult though, it still has to be properly implemented in the GNOME-ish software stack that bases on ModemManager instead of Ofono.
Regarding the Librem 5: The final hardware (Evergreen) supports calls and SMS reliably. Unfortunately its battery life is still a bit lackluster.
Librem 5 didn't have working call audio for something around two weeks since the shipment of the first early batch almost 1.5 years ago. It was enabled with a software update.
VAO and maybe more things that I don't even know about... I might be able to reimplement those in OpenGL ES 2 but I think OpenGL (ES) 3 is a good middle way between old stuff and over-engineered Vulkan, DX12 and Metal for dense but still ok performance and cross platform (mobile/PC) support.
Not yet with the open driver though. But yeah, its GPU is much more performant and capable of GLES 3, which the etnaviv driver aims to support at some point.
I guess you cannot expect from such a niche phone to compete with mass market products on price. That said, it's obviously a very individual decision if there's even a practical need for it.
I will try to get my Linux on DeX working first, S9 has OpenGL ES 3 and I managed to scrounge a dock and the app + linux image before it was lost...
How Samsung was thinking when they removed that project is impossible for me to grasp. They should have extended it to make linux run on the standalone S9 and they would have kicked Apple/Google in the nuts big time!
And a Sony Xperia with Sailfish OS? Or is it not FOSS enough? That might be. I bought mine second hand and spent the same amount as a Pinephone would be.
I bought the postmarketOS edition phone last year. The software is improving although there is an annoying bug specifically with postmarketos where the app repo doesnt list anything you dont already have downloaded, You have to search for software by name.
The build quality is on par with some early android phones before glass screens became standard. performance is kind of what you would expect. Not great but it works. I definitely wouldn't consider this daily driver ready yet. I still think its worth supporting. With RISCV gaining steam perhaps the next version will use a mobile optimised RISCV SOC instead of the weird janky embedded ARM unit they have now.
I'm disappointed that they don't support LTE Band 48.
Band 48 (CBRS) provides a relatively easy way to run your own LTE network for testing or whatever.
Commercial eNBs are sub $1k, and you can spin up an open source EPC in an evening, config your own SIM cards, etc.
CBRS is a 3.5 GHz band that's specifically designated for shared use. Priority licensing is available, but in places where there are no licensees or other priority users for a particular channel, it is available for general use on a first-come-first-serve basis, with explicit reservation (over the internet). This does not require a license for the operator.
but you do need the certified installer flag/license, which ISTR is $700 on Coursera and access to a SAS to check out spectrum (like checking out a book from library).
Harder than setting up a WiFi AP, but much easier than winning spectrum at auction and less work than getting a traditional cellco eNB running (IMO).
The Ruckus and Airspan eNBs I have feel pretty similar to a enterprise-class WiFi AP (Aruba/Cisco).
I've had the pinephone from the start and while I've seen great progress in general in getting this closer to being a daily driver, I feel a lot of effort has been made getting various orthogonal distributions/stacks ported to this platform which I feel is fracturing the ecosystem.
I'm by no means a mobile app developer but if I wanted to dabble in making a small app, I'd be confused which stack to use and which distributions it would be compatible with.
This is especially true of Pine's other interesting product, the PineWatch. There isn't a very clear path which of the many distributions that are available, is the right one to follow - Pine themselves don't seem to have any interest in setting up a canonical release asset that customers can follow, and I agree with you - this is fracturing the ecosystem.
This project is awesome. I wont be buying this particular model, but I envision myself picking up a PinePhone once it's a couple generations out of beta.
Depends on the stack you are using. I maintain an App List [0] that lists existing apps, which might help with getting an idea of the dominant frameworks. That said, popular technologies like Flutter are also coming to Linux Phones.
I just run X11 on mine so all the normal open source apps from my desktop work. Most of the mobile DEs don't seem to meed anything special other than your app handling a small screen well.
I'd much prefer a list of phones where people have been able to crack the bootloader open completely and then I can just install Linux on top of it.
Not a big fan of extremely old hardware which would never be able to keep up with what I can get out of a Raspberry Pi.
In fact, how feasible is it to create a hat for the Raspberry Pi compute module which operates effectively as a mobile phone. Like you would an obviously need a screen as well as some buttons, I've seen several game boy looking cases but nothing shaped like a phone
Awesome response, it looks like most of these phones are still rather old though. I know that some cheaper Chinese phones have bootloader as you can completely unlock without going through the OEM process.
Different magnetometer. Previous revisions also had minor changes, for example a resistor removal to prevent the backlight intensity changing when USB switches VBUS from sink to source mode, etc. Ever since pmOS the changes are very minor.
The only real difference is that this one doesn't contribute money towards a specific project. All the previous versions contributed $10 per purchase to their respective projects. Hardware wise it's been the same revision since the postmarketOS edition.
Nope, the hardware has not changed since the Manjaro Community Edition, Rev 1.2b. This one has a different magnetometer, part nr AF8133L instead of LIS3MDL which was not available; I am not sure if that warrants calling this one v1.2c or not.
Offhand, does anyone have a list of closed source drivers this device? It’s not a dealbreaker to me (I use many raspberry pis in my home), but it’s nice to have an inventory.
Like I wrote in my recent update [0], LTT did not even bother to get the specs right. There was another review [1] this week that did a much better job imho.
They did something similar when testing gaming on linux -- used an unusual distro rather than just use the latest Ubuntu, and then complains about issues that only exist in their chosen distro... no shit.
I have no idea how they got so popular, they always make mistakes like these in their content.
What does the optional proprietary firmware on the type-c Controller get you? Just wondering.. I have the convergence mobian edition from ~January that seems to work well out of the box with the included usb-c hub. Does the convergence edition possibly come with that proprietary firmware?
The phone marketplace rewards performance, and there are only two ways to compete: either tightly integrate the OS and processing hardware (like Apple does) or throw processing hardware specs at an unintegrated OS (like Samsung, Google, et.al. does with Android).
At this point, given the existing application ecosystem, the best (only) option for a new phone maker is to tightly integrate inexpensive processing hardware with Android, and enter the market with a surprisingly performant phone at a low price point.
It certainly does need to become mainstream, just like Linux did. The PinePhone, like its various alternatives, will have to find footing in the marketplace in the same way Linux did: with superior performance for the price. No mobile phone will sell enough to survive by offering low-performance hardware and off-the-shelf software no matter how open it is.
1. The market for technology is driven by price/performance. It is why there is a 4K Vizio TV at $400 sitting next to a 4K Samsung at 10x the price, and both of them sell. Buyers purchase technology based on price and performance. Low performance, low price. High performance, high price.
2. The high end of the mobile phone is coveredeither tightly integrating the OS with the hardware (like Apple), or by building very powerful (and expensive) hardware for an off-the-shelf OS. The low end of the mobile phone market is covered by midrange performance Android phones. A low performance phone on an unsupported OS just will not cut it.
Performance is not the only value consumers consider. System76 has already demonstrated there is a market for computing devices which charge a premium for better repairability, security, and privacy. Even in the smartphone market, Apple has demonstrated many times that you can sell phones with slower hardware if you provide a more appealing software experience.
Low-end Android phones still sell and I don't see any reason why PinePhone couldn't come out with a more high-performance model in the future. But releasing a $1k+ phone with beta hardware and software doesn't sound like a successful way to enter a market. The platform is still maturing and, for now, I'd still consider it a dev kit or an rpi-esque tinkering device.
I'm not quite sure what the destination is with this phone. This particular model seems to be for hobbiests who will use it as a second device for development, or purists who value privacy over all else.
I would prefer to pay double or triple for a phone that has all the opensource and privacy goals but also competes in performance and build so it can be my daily driver. I realize that we also want open standards and privacy for the masses but they will be the last group to adopt not the first.
If this is the secondary 'dev device' now because the platform isn't complete enough to be a primary, the price point makes sense. Can't wait for when it can be a daily driver. How far can you get with a good phone+contacts (voice calls), sms, and excellent web browser? Pretty far. Other apps are nice but they can be the add-ons.
I guess with the current state of even simple static website/apps we seem to often need performance. I hadn't even thought about compatibility of the web browser. Might any WebKit based browser (with user-agent overrides) be close enough?
I've read conflicting reports on how much more powerful it is in practice. I've seen only one direct review that said the Librem is clearly much faster, but I've also seen a few comparisons that show little to no difference in daily use tasks.
The problem might be that we don't have a quality comparison yet (or I haven't found it), but I wonder if there is a performance bottle neck in the hardware. Maybe the software is still better optimized for the pine and the Librem will start to pull ahead as more developers get a chance to work on it.
In term of CPU, the hardware is similarly shitty. For the GPU, the Librem 5 has a better GPU. In plasma mobile, the current bottleneck is on the GPU side, so maybe the Librem 5 can offer better performance but I'm not sure the improvements are worth $600 more.
In practice, the biggest difference comes from RAM speed, which Librem 5 has almost three times as fast as PinePhone. Then, the CPU is clocked at 1.3x the speed and it has twice the L2 cache. eMMC is faster too. The difference in every day usage is easily noticeable even just by how fast applications start and, indeed, the GPU performance difference is drastic: https://social.librem.one/@dos/104767475144787918
Recently I've compiled GTK4 on both phones and it took my PinePhone almost twice as long as my Librem 5.
Disclaimer: I work for Purism on the Librem 5, although I'm very excited with the PinePhone as well - I'd say it's good for its price.
This is still 4 times more expensive than the biggest Pinephone, which of course is a lot more limited in computing power, memory, storage and other areas, but sometimes people just want the bare minimum to enter the world of open phones. I wonder what's the reason behind Purism ignoring the low end market completely.
In my experience, battery life of the Librem 5 is currently in about 10-16h range depending on usage. Could be better, but it's not as bad as it used to be (and actually easily beats the PinePhone when it comes to active usage time).
I mean, it's not out-of-line compared to other prestige smartphones. This one's just a different kind of prestige. And you're paying for a different kind of organization and effort behind it.
Either way, there are enormous numbers of people happy to drop $1000 on a phone, maybe more. It's a lot of money in that my first car was cheaper, sure..
you're just lying yourself that you are middle class I see, nothing to be ashamed of to be lower class. I am also lower class. politicians made us this way.
I have the community edition and I asked myself the same question. A performance boost would have been nice. I would love and pay to have a better performance some day.
It took 2 or 3 years for the Pinebook Pro to appear after the original Pinebook. I can imagine a phone is a lot harder to manufacture and support in software. I would be open to buying a Pinebook Pro, if I needed a laptop now. I will just wait patiently what happens with the next Pinephone :)
Interestingly, it seems they're charging more for the "convergence package" at 199.99 than its components separately (PinePhone 149.99 + Docking bar 24.99). Is this a simple oversight or is there something different about a "convergence" PinePhone versus a regular one, other than the presence of the dock?
This is great, and I plan on getting one to support the project. I do however wish there was a smaller screen one (perhaps EInk) with more 4G bands like band 71, and with Anbox/microG support to run apps like Signal.
I would like to know what apps people are using for video chat, if they aren't using Signal.
PinePhone can play FullHD video at 60FPS on an external 1440p monitor (incl. the up-scaling to 1440p) smoothly, without breaking a sweat. So as long as the codec is something supported, like H.264, video is no issue at all.
If you want to play with some of the UIs and apps, check out the devices postmarketOS supports [0]. Especially Snapdragon 410 (MSM8916) support is looking pretty good, and the devices are quite affordable used (low to middle double figures, or you may even have one already!).
Generally, postmarketOS is just awesome, the abilities of their pmbootstrap tool alone are amazing.
SW would probably need a bit tinkering. Make sure the in-call audio profile is set up correctly for recording, and some way to start/stop recording during a call.
