@ dante404 - Have you tried Arch as your OS to see if the issues continue pointing to hardware?
When I first got a PP with Manjaro as the default, it worked the first day I tried using it and I picked it up a week later and everything was suddenly on the fritz.
Gave up for awhile and came back to it when I saw Arch was one of the best overall OS's and while it's occasionally buggy, it works great overall as a Daily Driver for calls & text with power charging required every other day on average.
I am surprised you are having so different experiences with Manjaro and Arch, considering that most of the packages Manjaro ships come from Arch and are not even recompiled by Manjaro.
02-07-2023, 11:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-07-2023, 11:21 PM by brb78.)
i daily drived before (2021 and before) and not anymore (2022 and 2023)
I daily drove a PP Braveheart from March 2020 until my PPP Explorer came December 2021, then PPP from then until February 2022, when I gave up on the PPPs instability as an actualy phone (missed calls, VZ's desire to make MMS a pain, having to wear a wired earpiece for calls because BT never worked over modem for me). I then went back to PP until June 2022, and while I appreciated the stability compared to the PPP (VZ and BT calling issues aside), hardware-wise it was a disappointment compared to my PPP even if the PPP only reliably performed its functions as a phone 85% of the time. DanctNIX Arch the entire 2+ years. Ultimately the Pixel's built in spam-call screening, android auto functionality, and BT calling lured my back to android.
I never had a battery issue with my PP, no worse than android and with a spare battery even easier to remedy. As for PPP battery... I had the keyboard on 24/7 from the day Pine released it and carried that whole brick around. PPP is a great mini linux tablet, but a disappointing phone. PP was a more than acceptable phone, but the PPP hardware spoiled me and I couldn't go back to evaluating whether I really wanted to wait 30+ seconds every time I thought about opening an app or doing anything outside of the terminal.
I would still buy a PP3 if they ever release one.
02-08-2023, 01:02 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-08-2023, 01:03 AM by tuxcall.)
yes i'm using my pp as a daily (with mobian), and for calling/texting it works pretty well after a couple of tweaks (power mode, not fading the screen when in a call, etc)
biggest issues i've encounted are:
-the alarms not triggering
-calendar reminders not triggering.
-incoming message alarms do not always trigger
-the camera, the photo's are pretty bad and i havn't found out of if megapixels can record videos but it doesn't look like it
-firefox's addon windows are busted and are unusable (wrong scaling flickering or just not showing or slow showing) which kind of makes firefox unusable if you like ublock settings on max. I've worked around it by importing my desktop ublock settings which configure my usual sites
the alarm/calendar is something i really need. so i carry my old windows phone for those. the camera i can work around but thats kind of annoying as well
Development experience so far:
developing for the pp is nice, both in native c/c++ or with java.
Also .net7 is supported. mono also works but the keyboard doesn't play nice with it so i have to port my applications to java because of that. Also multitouch is not supported in java, javafx or mono so that leaves on screen controls for game dev as a no go and you'll have to use c/c++ with gtk opengl etc
squeekboard customizing is great and pretty easy.
(02-07-2023, 04:45 PM)PineFone Wrote: @dante404 - Have you tried Arch as your OS to see if the issues continue pointing to hardware? Not yet, because the crashes/freezes every few minutes have "magicallcy" gone away... oO
The crashes I have now (maximum 2-3 a day, yesterday only 1) are caused by the flipping frames bug I think.
Using encrypted Mobian (bookworm) on pmOS CE Convergence PinePhone (3GB/32GB) as Daily Driver, and Beta Edition Convergence PinePhone (3GB/32GB) with encrypted Mobian (bookworm) as Backup device.
I persevered with my PP since last June (first time owner) and have really enjoyed setting it up as a portable Arch machine... but basic phone call issues have beaten me (for now). If audio does work on a call, then immediately following the call the audio device gets set to "dummy" and requires a reset of PA. And that's if I remember to do it. It's just too much hassle for the most basic of functions.
Yesterday I bought a £29 Nokia 110 4G "dumb phone" and moved my SIM across. This thing is amazing for such a cheap unit. Has basic audio recorder, music player (surprisingly good quality playback), 4G web browser (painful on such a small screen), removable battery, etc. It even takes photos (awful, awful quality but not much worse than the PP!  ) and records video. It's small and light and I'm back to the good old days before "smart" phones. Plugged it into my desktop via USB and selected "U Disk" and the phone's drives appeared in SpaceFM. I expected a fight for connectivity!
Back to PP... It was only with some update a week or two back that the modem hasn't been disappearing in sleep (yes, I did all the udev tweaks etc.). I don't even mind the sluggishness of using the PP, I really enjoy the thing. I'll keep using it for fun and playing my music via Elisa with my bluetooth speaker when I'm cooking. I can't imagine me using it for calls though for a long time yet (if ever again) but I'll keep an eye on this.
Arch Phosh (PP); firmware: 0.7.1; ADSP: 003
02-08-2023, 01:53 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-08-2023, 01:54 PM by BronzeBeard.)
I don't own a Pinephone. First, I was waiting for the keyboard. Then I waited for the keyboard and phone to be "stable and daily drivable." Then PPP came out, and I decided to wait for that. But its progress is so slow. So I'm back waiting for PP's stability to improve.
After the 3G switch off here in the US, I can't use my Blackberry anymore for email. And I need a secure, portable email/forum platform. (Phone and text are a bonus.)
These days, I am lugging around a laptop and using my wife's iPhone for tethering. (My phone doesn't support tethering, and you can't trust Google/ Prepaid shovelware-infested phones with it anyway. Apple isn't much better, but at least her phone is from a DoD contractor. So only the NSA/FBI are snooping.) I have a junker $20 android phone. It does its job. Luckily, I don't leave the house for long enough that I've screwed over any of my customers long enough to cost me big money.
PP's components worry me a little. But open source OSs, open modem firmware, etc. Go a long way toward relieving that concern.
(02-08-2023, 01:11 PM)cone99 Wrote: Yesterday I bought a £29 Nokia 110 4G "dumb phone" and moved my SIM across. This thing is amazing for such a cheap unit. Has basic audio recorder, music player (surprisingly good quality playback), 4G web browser (painful on such a small screen), removable battery, etc. It even takes photos (awful, awful quality but not much worse than the PP! ) and records video. It's small and light and I'm back to the good old days before "smart" phones. Plugged it into my desktop via USB and selected "U Disk" and the phone's drives appeared in SpaceFM. I expected a fight for connectivity!
i call these as technical basic phones. i'm looking for these models if something goes really awry in pinephone. putting simplified version, volte is practically required even for these technical basic phones.
easy to use phones are different and could be based on android, kaios or similar. they might be easy to use but are based on smartphone o.s., which may have some unwanted components.
(02-08-2023, 03:41 PM)zetabeta Wrote: easy to use phones are different and could be based on android, kaios or similar. they might be easy to use but are based on smartphone o.s., which may have some unwanted components.
When AT&T was about to discontinue 3G service and render my old flip phone useless they sent me a 4G Alcatel flip phone, based on KaiOS along with some AT&T customizations. Unfortunately it came with Google "assistant" built in that keeps getting in your face, and although KaiOS is based on the old Firefox OS Google has invested in it. So I used that thing only for activation and put the SIM in the Pinephone, which works well enough for my purposes.
02-09-2023, 11:48 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-09-2023, 11:48 AM by silverwing.)
I received my Pinephone Manjaro Edition in November 2020 and I used it until in summer 2021 I broke the screen. At the same time PPP was announced so I decided to switch to using my old Nokia E5 device while waiting for it. And at some point I switched to using my android tablet as my primary phone due to needing a more modern device, and not wanting to buy anything.
At that time I tried different distributions and environments, but Mobian + Phosh worked best for me: The biggest problem was with modem disappearing sometimes.
On that setup I was successfully doing nearly everything I needed from a phone: calling, smsing, reading email, telegram, listening to music and reading books. The only thing that was missing is navigation(I could not find any good offline map). Battery life was horrible though -- the phone lasted for couple of hours, no more if it was active. But left alone it could stay more than a day(especially if it lost the modem :|). One of the best things was connecting to phone via ssh and performing maintenance tasks and kicking files via scp(still are with PPP).
After I received PPP in October, I ran into issues with calls(mic seemed to not be working), but at some point I found the solution to this. Now of all environments I've chosen Plasma as the one that seem to work best for me. And of all distributions I stopped on PostmarketOS. I have had no issues with SMS whatsoever, but had some issues with call audio(do not have that many "real" calls to test this properly, but of test calls I get about 90% successful). And Plasma keeps true to it's name and crashes a lot(at least once a day I have to reboot my phone due to this).
I am also looking on SXMO, but there I have another issue with call audio -- this time, it seems like both mic and output are sent to peer, causing awful feedback. I did not have time to resolve that yet.
Currently I only use browser(angelfish), telegram, sms and calls on my phone. I also use my password manager on it(keepassxc). For everything else I carry a secondary device(aforementioned android tablet).
I hope to find some time soon and try to resolve some of the issues I have with my PPP now, so that I can avoid the need for a secondary device.
And I hope to get rid of Android entirely soon.It's too limiting for my workflow.
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