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+--- Forum: General Discussion of PinePhone Pro (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=178)
+--- Thread: What's stopping you from daily driving the PPP? (/showthread.php?tid=19961)
What's stopping you from daily driving the PPP? - teekay - 08-22-2025
For those who have a PPP gathering dust in a drawer somewhere, what's stopping you from daily driving it? When I got mine earlier this year, I tried it out and made a list of things that stopped me from ditching my Android for it, which was:
- Need physical protection (cover). I looked around for other phone covers that could work for the PPP, but eventually got the PPP TPU cover. I wish it had the corner bumpers as well as extending over the front screen for better protection, so I'll keep looking for alternative covers.
- The biggest issue was battery life. Using Mobian, suspend worked, which helped, but I could barely browse the web for 1 hour before the battery meter dropped from 100% to less than 30%. YouTube went from 100% to 5% in under 30 mins! Luckily I discovered this is a software problem rather than hardware, hence my efforts to patch the kernel to fix the battery meter (see other threads), which is now working quite reasonably for me.
- A semi-working camera so I can document things or scan QR codes (not worried too much about quality). This is working now.
- Less of an issue: an offline GPS app for my camping/hiking trips. There are some options now (not all mobile optimized yet) like Organic Maps.
After the battery fix (still WIP), I've been able to daily drive the PPP for more than 2 weeks now without once reaching for my Android. I am surprised at how many things I use that works great:
- Calls and SMS
- Bluetooth audio playback
- Bluetooth keyboard for some terminal usage
- Software updates (and some great apps on Flathub like Foliate, Cozy, Papers, Telegram, Delta Chat)
- Web browsing with Firefox + uBlock Origin
- Media playback (videos, audiobooks, podcasts)
- Reading e-books
- Contacts/Calendar sync with my Nextcloud
- Alarms work even when the phone is suspended
- General reliability, i.e. phone doesn't randomly reboot or heat up in my pocket, etc.
There are still a few bugs I'm logging and hoping to either file an issue or fix myself, but nothing too serious. So the PPP might be discontinued, but I feel like it's just come alive for me! I ordered a USB-C dock so I can try out the convergence feature (there's a YouTube video of a guy doing web dev on this PPP like this and it has me excited!)
So if you've got a PPP and you aren't using it, what's stopping you?
RE: What's stopping you from daily driving the PPP? - biketool - 08-23-2025
re: the cover I have a Otterbox super heavy duty TPU/ABS cover that works great for floor drops to stone tile/concrete and requires trimming about 5mm TPU by the wake switch and filling the camera hole with acetone/ABS plastic filler and drilling out the camera and speaker holes. I dont remember which phone it is for but the info is on this forum somewhere.
what OS are you running?
Pure Maps works pretty good when you point it at your OSM Scout Server for your offline stored area(by country/region) map updates.
Battery still needs work though I recall last week seeing someone who hacked the kernel battery drivers to Mobian getting 300% more battery when awake.
RE: What's stopping you from daily driving the PPP? - teekay - 08-24-2025
(Yesterday, 12:21 PM)biketool Wrote: Battery still needs work though I recall last week seeing someone who hacked the kernel battery drivers to Mobian getting 300% more battery when awake.
Yes that was me, I'm still working on the driver to iron out the battery meter issues related to suspend.