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Constructive criticism, open debate, grown up behaviour, and the dreaded FEL mode. |
Posted by: step - 11-21-2021, 12:59 AM - Forum: General Discussion on PinePhone
- Replies (7)
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There is something I find rather ugly about the PinePhone - a huge effort has been made (and tremendous progress) by the open-source community, the software for PinePhone is developing at a genuinely impressive pace. The device itself, however (to the untrained eye) feels like something that's been thrown together in a rush and with a spec more concerned with margin and minimising the effort required to get *something* to market as soon as possible than producing the best product they can, or even just one that lives up to what I think the community that's worked and working so hard actually developing for it, or simply supporting deserves.
The PinePhone community is genuinely wonderful and seriously active. This one product receives such huge huge support from open source devs who have done a phenomenal job of adapting existing window managers in an attempt to retrospectively find a "one-size-fits-all" way to take stuff designed for a desktop and make it usable on a smartphone. When you get down to the gory details this is fucking hard - if somebody told me they were working on such a thing I would assume they were insane and possibly dangerous - the amazing thing is the OSs I've managed to try are seriously impressive and look legitimately like they're onto something.
It's captured the imagination and received die-hard faith and support in a way I've never seen before actually, and miraculously this is all for a phone that when it comes down to it *everybody* agrees is unusable as a mobile phone in any meaningful sense. And not because you can't get Spotify, because it cannot fulfil the extremely basic set of functions that we would expect of an Android (also Linux) phone that costs 1/4 the price and arrives in <1 week all year round, also from HK. The blame is consistently shifted to "the software has a long way to come" but I can't be the only one who just when trying to use the phone, feels this might not be the case.
If you look at the PinePhone and compare it with one of the million phones out there, and before people say "apples and oranges" - just try having a look for yourself, use a little common sense but try to get a feel for what sort of hardware goes into a budget mobile phone. Here's an example - excuse the ugly site but it's comprehensive (doesn't list the PinePhone itself sadly, but we can compare CPUs for example), here is the PinePhone (Pro) vs a £50 Alcatel 1's Mediatek https://gadgetversus.com/processor/allwi...ek-mt6739/ - this is a trend you'll find repeated - perhaps somebody can find me a smartphone with a slower CPU than the PinePhone? I didn't.
When you look at it, the PinePhone isn't a smartphone in any traditional sense, and it's not that there aren't generic, well worn, off the peg, cheap ways to build smartphones - there are - but I think a calculated decision was made to forgo the risk and to simply produce what is, in effect, a very cheap RasperryPI with the most bog-standard, ubiquitous, old (call it a feature: compatible) components that would when put in a case would do most of the things a phone does, draw as little power as possible (at the expense of just about anything) so the thing can pass as a Phone and Pine64 can make a nice amount of money.
While I find this sad, and short-sighted, it's not what gets me - in the end, you're a company and your responsibility is to make money, far be it from me to suggest you shouldn't make this your goal, and capitalise on opportunities when they present themselves.
No, it may seem silly, but what I find unforgivable can be perfectly illustrated by what appears at first to be a banal, routine, question:
https://forum.pine64.org/newreply.php?tid=13108
FEL mode is an insanely useful mode, it is built into the SoC and is effectively recovery mode, if no media is bootable this is the mode the device enters so we can fix it. The Pinebook Pro interestingly has taken the time to do what is 100% standard and provided a way to enter FEL mode by holding a combination of buttons. The PinePhone has, in a way that if you ask me sums the whole thing up, not bothered to do this simple thing, and this means they have produced a device with a VERY unusual design choice: if your OS is unbootable on the eMMC, to do anything about it we have to boot a diff OS from the SD card, and then sort it out ourselves. The natural (and 100% standard on every device that uses this SoC) way to deal with is it have a straightforward way (hold a button, some combo, like the PBP, so this is not news to the team) to enter FEL mode which among many other useful things, allows us to expose the eMMC as a block device via USB and fix things. The fact that Jumpdrive had to be developed to do the same thing as a bog-standard, mature, essential mode built into the SoC (and is still fundamentally flawed because it assumes the Phone is working) speaks for itself. Seems a bit of a needless effort for the author all because Pine couldn't be bothered to copy+paste from the PBP.
So if you break your install on the eMMC to fix it you are going to need: an unmodified fully-functional working PinePhone with a working SD reader, an SD card with a copy of Jumpdrive on it or (and it's not talked about, probably because people would start to ask for it like I am) the img to tell BootROM to enter FEL. Doesn't sound so onerous, but this is making assumptions I don't expect of a phone touting itself as one designed for hackers and people likely to want a sensibly designed kit that doesn't add real limitations out of laziness and a desire to make a buck.
it's silly and even arbitrary, but to me, it says that the PinePhone (and I think this is not representative of how Pine used to do business) is exploiting the community as much as it's fostering it (which it undoubtedly is). They're a good company who captured people's imagination and finally brought one of the most serious issues mobile's have today into the public eye. This is admirable, and the fact that they've stood on the shoulders of giants and reap the rewards of unsung heroes like librem is what open source is all about, but I think it's sad that the people who have benefitted the most from the amazing work done by the community have felt okay about producing a device that sells their work short, and now another... I wasn't going to post this but they were fed up with me in the chat and when I read the PinePhone Pro was coming out, and then I read the specs... I felt might as well make the post, at the very least somebody might tell me how to enter the now mythical FEL mode
It would not kill you to write proper documentation and ship your products in the way that every other company manages (getting them to people inside of 6 months).
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How to import contacts with a .vcf file? |
Posted by: LNXGUY - 11-20-2021, 02:59 PM - Forum: PostmarketOS on PinePhone
- Replies (2)
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Howdy,
When I first ran Phosh and began setting things up, the Contacts app had me chose a contacts list and gave me the option to import a contacts list from a file.
Now that I has restarted and finished setting things up, I can't find a menu option to import a contact list from a file.
I have a list downloaded on the phone, but if there is a help file or a how-to, I can't find it.
How about doing it from the command line?
Thanks for any help!
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Web Skype, Vivaldi and built in cameras |
Posted by: grump_fiddle_reinstall - 11-20-2021, 07:39 AM - Forum: Mobian on PinePhone
- Replies (7)
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OK so I have managed to get Web Skype (https://web.skype.com) to work with a PinePhone. The PinePhone appears to be fast enough to work with video chat with a Trust 640x480 resolution webcam for outgoing video and HD video incoming from a low end Android smartphone. This is over a slow 4G internet connection.
To get it to work with video and sound I had to install the Vivaldi browser and connect an external keyboard with trackpad and an external USB webcam via the PinePhone USB-C dongle.
After connecting up the required hardware and installing Vivaldi, open Vivialdi on the PinePhone and go to web.skype.com. Log in with Skype account A. On another device log into Skype (web or client) using account B.
Call the PinePhone from the other device (account B) using the video chat button. When the call is picked up by the PinePhone (it can take a while before it responds to the incoming Skype call and it takes a while pick up the call after you have clicked on the video chat icon) you have to click on a tiny icon in the address field of Vivaldi to allow access to the microphone. If you are lucky then the icon allowing you to grant access to the external USB webcam will appear at the same time. When both are clicked then you should end up in a video chat with the other device.
I was unable to get these icons to respond to clicks on the touchscreen on the PinePhone hence use of the external keyboard/trackpad. A USB mouse would probably be sufficient for the two clicks. Vivaldi appears to remember the settings if the USB webcam remains connected and the phone or browser are restarted.
If you cannot get the external USB webcam recognised at first and the mic is working, stay in the call and click on the three dots menu at the bottom right hand side of the video chat window. You should be able to go to the Video and Sound settings and if you are lucky then you can select the external USB webcam there. Rinse and repeat if it doesn't work first time.
So, as the PinePhone is fast enough for video chat it is worth trying to solve the next problem. Can I get this working with either of the built in cameras on the PinePhone, preferably the on that faces you when you are looking at the screen?
According to "Settings --> Privacy --> Camera" on the PinePhone nothing has asked to use the onboard cameras. Same for the onboard microphone. Is this a driver issue? Config issue? Any known workarounds?
The version of Mobian I am using is a build from about two weeks ago, running off an SD card.
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Best Messaging client for pinephone? (arch-phosh) |
Posted by: pineuser0 - 11-20-2021, 06:03 AM - Forum: Arch Linux on PinePhone
- Replies (20)
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I've looked into using signal in anbox, but I feel that going through an android environment, 'simulated' or not, has its dangers and non-GNU/linux aspects.
What are the most private and secure messaging clients for pinephone?
I'm currently mostly using the phone without a sim card, so the messages would be mostly through wifi rather that cell data.
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Can't install arch-phosh with dd, only with etcher. |
Posted by: pineuser0 - 11-20-2021, 02:42 AM - Forum: Arch Linux on PinePhone
- Replies (5)
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When I run
Code: dd if=archlinux-pinephone-phosh-20211022.img of=/dev/sda2 status=progress
the phone, when the uSD card containing jumpdrive is taken out, takes a forever loading screen with the arch penguin.
when I run ./balenaEtcher-1.5.115-x64.AppImage, I write archlinux-pinephone-phosh-20212022.img to /dev/sda2. Once I take jumpdrive out and restart the phone, the boot process begins with regular text moving through the screen. I now have the phone set up as I had before with everything being accessible and working after I go through the lock screen.
What could be the problem here? Could this be a sign of future problems with the phone's installation with balena etcher as well as other installation methods on my pinephone?
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No incoming SMS. Outgoing SMS, calls and data working. |
Posted by: HardwarePunk - 11-19-2021, 08:34 PM - Forum: Manjaro on PinePhone
- Replies (3)
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As of Thursday I've suddenly not been receiving any SMS, and I can't find any errors or changed settings and I did not update anything to cause this to happen.
I am running Manjaro with Phosh, using Chatty for SMS.
From some research, I've come across a couple of similar threads.
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...&pid=92256 is recent and describes the same issue, the solution they describe is turning off the setting that allows data while roaming. I do not have that setting turned on, and the issue persists.
I've also followed the troubleshooting steps as outlined here:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_F...eceive_SMS
sudo mmcli -m 0 --messaging-list-sms returns "No sms messages were found". My modem is also on 0 though the documentation says it should be 3 for Manjaro. Either way, that fix does not work and does not appear to be relevant.
I've adjusted to multiple configurations of the Verizon APN, all have the exact same issue with the same behavior.
I'm able to connect to the internet, send SMS, and make and receive phone calls but incoming SMS does not seem to work and there appear to be no errors logged, so I'm unsure where the issue lies.
When I use an iOS device I receive messages just fine even without iMessage so there's not an issue with the carrier.
This all happened overnight, I'm not sure what changed or what's causing this and I've tried just about everything I can think of - does anyone have any additional troubleshooting ideas that I could try? Any similar issues?
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