I believe you, but the hard part about “It was good enough for me” is that an old Nokia brick phone is “good enough” for some people. I have no idea what your standards are.
Maybe there’s a way to get it to that state. But the lock screen on my pinephone pro stutters, much less “making apps work”. I was able to do all the things I wanted to do, it just was a horrible experience.
I bought two pinephones. I REALLY want this to work out. I’m not some sort of anti-linux phone antagonist. I’ve tried to make it work personally. I would love to know what the setup (what OS, phosh, etc?) I need to make my devices work great, if they are truly that usable.
The “official” state of the software from pine64.org itself states the modem crashes often and results in missed calls, camera still a WIP, and no push notifications when the phone sleeps (so the phone just never sleeps, thus the terrible battery, i presume).
“Good enough” feels like it’s only true if you’re the kind of person who otherwise argues that smart phones are bad, and not if you’re the kind of person who uses your phone as a multi-tool in your pocket.
I distro-hopped a bit, but if I’m remembering correctly I settled on Mobian with Phosh. I don’t like desktop Gnome but Phosh is nice IMO. It’s also smooth if a bit slow due to the age of the hardware. It’s not a stuttery slowness. Plasma mobile seems a bit further behind in that regard.
This was an original PinePhone, not the Pro, so maybe the community simply had more time to mature the software (there’s not exactly many developers). I still have it but the screen is smashed and I need to replace it.
Note: this was over a year ago, things have most likely changed, maybe Plasma mobile is where Phosh is now.
I believe you, but the hard part about “It was good enough for me” is that an old Nokia brick phone is “good enough” for some people.
The main difference is that the old Nokia phone runs proprietary software. You also can’t run any desktop programs or apps on it. But PinePhone requires GNU/Linux experience and sometimes workarounds are needed.
The “official” state of the software from pine64.org itself states the modem crashes often and results in missed calls
I haven’t noticed any missed calls on my original PinePhone, so this is surprising. I don’t have the Pro version to check, but the cited bug report is a year old, so it might be no longer the case. On the other hand, this recent blog post says there are some issues with the modem and some other strange bugs. That would be a shame, because it’s been 2 years since its release and I was hoping to switch to it at some point.
no push notifications when the phone sleeps (so the phone just never sleeps, thus the terrible battery, i presume).
There are no push notifications. So you won’t be notified when you receive a message in some app, while the phone is suspended. As a workaround you can use a script to wake the phone up periodically. Short battery life is caused by an old and inefficient SoC, not by software, so there is nothing we can do about that other than getting a bigger case and a bigger battery (some people do that).
I believe you, but the hard part about “It was good enough for me” is that an old Nokia brick phone is “good enough” for some people. I have no idea what your standards are.
Maybe there’s a way to get it to that state. But the lock screen on my pinephone pro stutters, much less “making apps work”. I was able to do all the things I wanted to do, it just was a horrible experience.
I bought two pinephones. I REALLY want this to work out. I’m not some sort of anti-linux phone antagonist. I’ve tried to make it work personally. I would love to know what the setup (what OS, phosh, etc?) I need to make my devices work great, if they are truly that usable.
edit: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro#State_of_the_software
The “official” state of the software from pine64.org itself states the modem crashes often and results in missed calls, camera still a WIP, and no push notifications when the phone sleeps (so the phone just never sleeps, thus the terrible battery, i presume).
“Good enough” feels like it’s only true if you’re the kind of person who otherwise argues that smart phones are bad, and not if you’re the kind of person who uses your phone as a multi-tool in your pocket.
I distro-hopped a bit, but if I’m remembering correctly I settled on Mobian with Phosh. I don’t like desktop Gnome but Phosh is nice IMO. It’s also smooth if a bit slow due to the age of the hardware. It’s not a stuttery slowness. Plasma mobile seems a bit further behind in that regard.
This was an original PinePhone, not the Pro, so maybe the community simply had more time to mature the software (there’s not exactly many developers). I still have it but the screen is smashed and I need to replace it.
Note: this was over a year ago, things have most likely changed, maybe Plasma mobile is where Phosh is now.
The main difference is that the old Nokia phone runs proprietary software. You also can’t run any desktop programs or apps on it. But PinePhone requires GNU/Linux experience and sometimes workarounds are needed.
I haven’t noticed any missed calls on my original PinePhone, so this is surprising. I don’t have the Pro version to check, but the cited bug report is a year old, so it might be no longer the case. On the other hand, this recent blog post says there are some issues with the modem and some other strange bugs. That would be a shame, because it’s been 2 years since its release and I was hoping to switch to it at some point.
I think there is only one guy working on the software. Here is his last blog post, if you are curious: https://blog.brixit.nl/fixing-the-megapixels-sensor-linearization/
There are no push notifications. So you won’t be notified when you receive a message in some app, while the phone is suspended. As a workaround you can use a script to wake the phone up periodically. Short battery life is caused by an old and inefficient SoC, not by software, so there is nothing we can do about that other than getting a bigger case and a bigger battery (some people do that).