are you still using pinephone as a daily driver?

[zetabeta]

are you still using pinephone (either regular and pro) as a daily driver (primary device) (more than half of time is counted)?

it doesn't need to be same device and could be either pro or regular. but i post this on regular side.

i have a feeling that there was lot of enthusiasm in the early days. now there seems to be few hardcore users left. i know pre-emptively that results will be skewed.

we probably know the main reasons already why people left pinephone usage but if it is unusual reason, we like to know. if you left the pinephone, what was your next device. leaving additional info is voluntary.

[dante404]

-> "I daily drived before (2021 and before) and now (2022 and 2023)."
..."before" because I liked it and wanted to use it, "now" (with obviously dying PP hardware) only because currently I don't have any other option at hand.

And yes, sadly the enthusiasm in the community seems gone for months now, the forum (talking about PinePhone sub forum) also seems very quiet these days (in comparison to the time of the community editions for example).

[user641]

I am using it less now and more my degoogled phone, mostly because xmpp doesn't work well yet and I need signal to talk to some people. Besides that everything is fine, things are getting slowly better with time.

[Samurai_Crow]

My LG Android phone with the non-removable battery has a failing battery. My only other phone is the PinePhone beta. The current Linux offerings look unimpressive. If some non-desktop operating system wanted to step up, I'd be more likely to try it. I mainly bought it to try Sculpt under the Genode framework in the interest of security. Wish me luck!

[bosi564]

i daily drived before (2021 and before) and not anymore (2022 and 2023).*

I voted for the second option, which more closely resembles my case.

At the end of 2022 I stopped using it because phone calls weren't stable anymore (well, it was my fault for upgrading the distro when I already knew there were some user interface problems and possibly even more). I'm waiting for Debian Bookworm to stabilize and I'll try it again, before I decide if I'll switch to an android phone.

I'm using it as a tablet/ultra small laptop/ for now to write some notes (mainly lists of tasks) and download stuff. But I'm reluctant to use the physical keyboard, because somehow I always ended recharging the phone and keyboard batteries every day (with little to no usage sometimes). Just the phone keeps its charge better and if I remember correctly, megi did mention in his blog that the keyboard battery management could see some improvement.

tldr: not a daily driver phone (at least for now), but I'm still using it a few times a week for other general tasks.

[PineFone]

"sadly the enthusiasm in the community seems gone for months now,"

I have a few suggestions for how PP can pivot for the better.

The main one is to address the two big problems of PP which is 1) actually working as a phone, and 2) Battery Life.

So why not create a "MID-PHONE" distro - Somewhere between a flip phone and a smart phone.

Given that Mobian and Arch are seen as the best performing from a phone perspective, can one or both of these Distros be stripped down to the main components of Call, Text, Camera, and Calculator to save on battery and make it like your standard flip phone that can go about a week without charging?

There's a small segment of the population that just wants a basic phone without the internet, maps, gps, social media, etc. and while that's a small market to go after, it's still larger than the current PP audience from what I've seen and given the end of 3G, there are people out there looking for something similar to switch to. There's also the kid phone/teen phone market for parents weary of their child getting lost in the internet, but still want to be able for them to keep in contact with their parents.

I say "market" because at some point PP needs to perfect some type of PP to start selling commercially to help support the development/foundation goals. If this is done by a separate entity, so be it, but it seems like this is the kind of milestone to get things back on track and attract more interest and developers since there are more competitors (Volta, Above, and Libre5) in this market than when PP first hit the scene.

[zetabeta]

i forgot to put my version.

i still daily drive but i had my issues, and now i start to have some concerns. this flipping frames bug and with some hw differences, someone reported constant modem disappearings and other one reported pinephone total jams. because of those, i think there is something of second class quality going on hardware, maybe it's mainboard or chips on mainboard.

[dante404]

The main one is to address the two big problems of PP which is 1) actually working as a phone, and 2) Battery Life.

So why not create a "MID-PHONE" distro - Somewhere between a flip phone and a smart phone.

Given that Mobian and Arch are seen as the best performing from a phone perspective, can one or both of these Distros be stripped down to the main components of Call, Text, Camera, and Calculator to save on battery and make it like your standard flip phone that can go about a week without charging?

You're right about the two big problems (but I would add "hardware quality" as another point - the most important one), and your suggestion seems interesting at first... but I don't think this would make sense in the end. I think people who are interested in Pine64 products want a real Linux on their phone, without limitations. And AFAIK there are still some "feature phones"/dumb-phones/non-smartphones available to buy (or not?) - If you don't use internet services on your phone, "freedom and privacy" is no longer really an argument here - So why use a Linux phone/Pine64 product at all if it only should behave like an old Nokia? I don't really see the point. But perhaps I get you wrong somehow?

i still daily drive but i had my issues, and now i start to have some concerns. this flipping frames bug and with some hw differences, someone reported constant modem disappearings and other one reported pinephone total jams. because of those, i think there is something of second class quality going on hardware, maybe it's mainboard or chips on mainboard.

Yeah, I'm afraid you're right. Mobian has matured to a point where daily driving is no problem for me, the problem are hardware bugs and issues with production quality it seems. If only THIS could be solved somehow...!!!
(Is there still any develepoment about the original PinePhone going on at Pine64? Or will the hardware (mainboard for example) never be changed/reworked anymore? I don't know.)
I could live with the rather short battery life and all this, but not with a freeze in a mistime/bad moment...

[zetabeta]

"sadly the enthusiasm in the community seems gone for months now,"

I have a few suggestions for how PP can pivot for the better.

The main one is to address the two big problems of PP which is 1) actually working as a phone, and 2) Battery Life.

So why not create a "MID-PHONE" distro - Somewhere between a flip phone and a smart phone.

Given that Mobian and Arch are seen as the best performing from a phone perspective, can one or both of these Distros be stripped down to the main components of Call, Text, Camera, and Calculator to save on battery and make it like your standard flip phone that can go about a week without charging?

There's a small segment of the population that just wants a basic phone without the internet, maps, gps, social media, etc. and while that's a small market to go after, it's still larger than the current PP audience from what I've seen and given the end of 3G, there are people out there looking for something similar to switch to. There's also the kid phone/teen phone market for parents weary of their child getting lost in the internet, but still want to be able for them to keep in contact with their parents.

I say "market" because at some point PP needs to perfect some type of PP to start selling commercially to help support the development/foundation goals. If this is done by a separate entity, so be it, but it seems like this is the kind of milestone to get things back on track and attract more interest and developers since there are more competitors (Volta, Above, and Libre5) in this market than when PP first hit the scene.

The main one is to address the two big problems of PP which is 1) actually working as a phone, and 2) Battery Life.

So why not create a "MID-PHONE" distro - Somewhere between a flip phone and a smart phone.

Given that Mobian and Arch are seen as the best performing from a phone perspective, can one or both of these Distros be stripped down to the main components of Call, Text, Camera, and Calculator to save on battery and make it like your standard flip phone that can go about a week without charging?

You're right about the two big problems (but I would add "hardware quality" as another point - the most important one), and your suggestion seems interesting at first... but I don't think this would make sense in the end. I think people who are interested in Pine64 products want a real Linux on their phone, without limitations. And AFAIK there are still some "feature phones"/dumb-phones/non-smartphones available to buy (or not?) - If you don't use internet services on your phone, "freedom and privacy" is no longer really an argument here - So why use a Linux phone/Pine64 product at all if it only should behave like an old Nokia? I don't really see the point. But perhaps I get you wrong somehow?

i might be interested about basic phone software, however it needs to be updateable, so it might chew mobiledata or other internet. user just inserts sdcard and there is el dumbo phone. following might be interesting if it hits stable, https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=14780 .

what i know inner workings of most linux distros, i don't think stripping down goes very far for battery life, maybe gpsd. usually if program is installed but does not run, it does not consume resources. although, exceptions occur. better approach is to use micro-kernel or half-rtos or similar with limited background services.

[dante404]

what i know inner workings of most linux distros, i don't think stripping down goes very far for battery life, maybe gpsd. usually if program is installed but does not run, it does not consume resources. although, exceptions occur. better approach is to use micro-kernel or half-rtos or similar with limited background services.

The main reason for short battery life is again the hardware: A 40nm(!) cpu designed 2015 which was never meant to be used in a smartphone. A few more percent battery time of the current PinePhones (Non-Pro) may be possible with further software optimizations I guess, but not 50% or even more. I think that's physically impossible. A bigger/better battery of course would be possible without changing the whole PinePhone platform (and software compatibility)... I don't really understand why Pine64 made a more powerful phone (the Pro), but did not adress the battery life problem (AFAIK).

Because I may sound very negative here: I LOVED my phone for many months, even with it's flaws (like rather short battery life), but the constant freezes and crashes I suffer since January are a no-go. Everything else I could accept!