+- PINE64 (https://forum.pine64.org)
+-- Forum: PinePhone (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=120)
+--- Forum: General Discussion on PinePhone (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=127)
+--- Thread: How it works. (/showthread.php?tid=13433)
How it works. - tknvkng - 03-18-2021
Greetings to you.
I want to write here my thoughts on the topic of your product. I mean a smartphone.
I think that your decision to release a smartphone completely on your own is a rather bold decision in the modern conditions of the capitalist market. I mean Samsung and Apple. They invest tens of billions of US dollars in their production every year. This allows them to make smartphones that are pleasant to hold in their hands.
You cannot compete with them at the device level. This is not an insult, but an objective fact. Therefore, I suggest you choose a different path of your development. You can use well-known and popular smartphone models as blanks. For example, recently released a good smartphone Samsung A52. Its price is not high, and there are already videos on YouTube showing how easy it is to assemble or disassemble. You can install pure Linux on these smartphones, and it will be a really successful business model for many years to come.
For example, you offer a list of smartphones that you can install Linux on on your website. A person chooses a smartphone that he likes and places an order with prepayment. You purchase such a smartphone, perform all the work related to the installation and configuration of Linux on it. And then you ship the finished product to the customer.
I think that making smartphones on your own, these days, is too expensive and not necessary at all.
You should focus on trading off-the-shelf Linux devices, and testing the devices in your labs. It will bring you respect among the high-tech professionals, and popularity in the market among buyers.
P.S.
I am not an employee of any organization or brand. I'm a regular customer. It's my personal opinion.
RE: How it works. - neil_swann80 - 03-18-2021
(03-18-2021, 04:18 PM)tknvkng Wrote: Greetings to you.
I want to write here my thoughts on the topic of your product. I mean a smartphone.
I think that your decision to release a smartphone completely on your own is a rather bold decision in the modern conditions of the capitalist market. I mean Samsung and Apple. They invest tens of billions of US dollars in their production every year. This allows them to make smartphones that are pleasant to hold in their hands.
You cannot compete with them at the device level. This is not an insult, but an objective fact. Therefore, I suggest you choose a different path of your development. You can use well-known and popular smartphone models as blanks. For example, recently released a good smartphone Samsung A52. Its price is not high, and there are already videos on YouTube showing how easy it is to assemble or disassemble. You can install pure Linux on these smartphones, and it will be a really successful business model for many years to come.
For example, you offer a list of smartphones that you can install Linux on on your website. A person chooses a smartphone that he likes and places an order with prepayment. You purchase such a smartphone, perform all the work related to the installation and configuration of Linux on it. And then you ship the finished product to the customer.
I think that making smartphones on your own, these days, is too expensive and not necessary at all.
You should focus on trading off-the-shelf Linux devices, and testing the devices in your labs. It will bring you respect among the high-tech professionals, and popularity in the market among buyers.
P.S.
I am not an employee of any organization or brand. I'm a regular customer. It's my personal opinion.
Pine64 specializes in producing hardware, not software, so your argument makes little sense. There are already plenty of developers producing Linux distros for existing smartphones; check out the UBPorts project for example.
Clearly there is a market for people that want greater control and transparency over the hardware in the device they carry everywhere with them. The PinePhone seems to be quickly out of stock with every manufacture run which demonstrates the validity and business case for this project. Anyone with even vague concerns about privacy can see the value in products like the PinePhone and Librem 5; when it comes to security and privacy you have to begin at the hardware level.
What is Pine64? - "The PINE64 community is large, vibrant and diverse. Independent and partner-project developers, hackers and hardware enthusiasts, privacy advocates and FOSS geeks - you name it, we’ve got 'em all. They all contribute to the project thereby shaping it and determining its course."
I for one love that we're seeing (and participating in) a very healthy change to the direction of the smartphone ecosystem.
RE: How it works. - moodroid - 03-19-2021
Well it's a very strange opinion you have, and a very strange place to post it. Neil has already explained very eloquently why your opinion makes no sense at all. But for what it's worth, I couldn't be happier with my Pinphone, and find it very 'pleasant to hold'. The phone that you've mentioned appears to cost significantly more than the Pinephone and doesn't offer many of the unique features that the Pinephone does, so would be of no interest to me.
RE: How it works. - TRS-80 - 03-19-2021
I actually think Pine64 have a quite well thought out business model. As many others, I also find many of their devices (certainly the PinePhone) very compelling.
Of course, you (or whoever else) are free to embark upon a different course of action, as laid out in your OP. Which would only IMO strengthen the overall GNU/Linux phone scene even further. Which is all that I (personally) really care about at the end of the day.
RE: How it works. - gracefullyparanoid - 03-23-2021
(03-18-2021, 04:18 PM)tknvkng Wrote: Greetings to you.
I want to write here my thoughts on the topic of your product. I mean a smartphone.
I think that your decision to release a smartphone completely on your own is a rather bold decision in the modern conditions of the capitalist market. I mean Samsung and Apple. They invest tens of billions of US dollars in their production every year. This allows them to make smartphones that are pleasant to hold in their hands.
You cannot compete with them at the device level. This is not an insult, but an objective fact. Therefore, I suggest you choose a different path of your development. You can use well-known and popular smartphone models as blanks. For example, recently released a good smartphone Samsung A52. Its price is not high, and there are already videos on YouTube showing how easy it is to assemble or disassemble. You can install pure Linux on these smartphones, and it will be a really successful business model for many years to come.
For example, you offer a list of smartphones that you can install Linux on on your website. A person chooses a smartphone that he likes and places an order with prepayment. You purchase such a smartphone, perform all the work related to the installation and configuration of Linux on it. And then you ship the finished product to the customer.
I think that making smartphones on your own, these days, is too expensive and not necessary at all.
You should focus on trading off-the-shelf Linux devices, and testing the devices in your labs. It will bring you respect among the high-tech professionals, and popularity in the market among buyers.
P.S.
I am not an employee of any organization or brand. I'm a regular customer. It's my personal opinion.
I used to spend lots of time tinkering with Android root and roms, and have tried UB ports on existing androids. While there are some alternate android roms and UB Ports, they are not without problems. Additionally, there are few phones actually supported and they are generally older. That is not meant as a slam or being derogatory to the amazing work of the developers out there but there are limits to what can be done with existing hardware and a lot has to be reverse engineered to get it to work. Using an existing samsung device would not be without significant problems because a lot of what is there is proprietary and I suspect that would not be readily released.
It seems to me there has been a chicken and egg problem with linux builds for the phones. There are no builds because there are no phones to put them on and there are no phones to put them on because there are no builds.
Pine did something amazing, they put a device out there for people to dev on so that there would be distro builds to go on devices. The significance is unbelievable. I am overjoyed at this. It may not be perfect, but it is accessible and things only get better from here.
I also am just a regular customer and just my opinion