what is the point?

[vanja]

Howdy.
I've come across several daily driver users who eventually state things like
Oh, I don't care about buggy wifi, slow X, crashing Y or unstable Z because I use it only for: calls, sms, contacts.
Oh, who cares about battery life, i keep it powered off most of the day etc..

my question is, what is the point of having a linux phone when use case is dumb phone features only? Why not just use some dumb nokia that runs for 7 days on a battery and call it a day? also same privacy level on those devices...

I think the cold truth is, because its too slow and unstable to do anything else then calls and sms with it, but then the loop goes back to the beginning, what is the point..

[biketool]

Howdy.
I've come across several daily driver users who eventually state things like
Oh, I don't care about buggy wifi, slow X, crashing Y or unstable Z because I use it only for: calls, sms, contacts.
Oh, who cares about battery life, i keep it powered off most of the day etc..

my question is, what is the point of having a linux phone when use case is dumb phone features only? Why not just use some dumb nokia that runs for 7 days on a battery and call it a day? also same privacy level on those devices...

I think the cold truth is, because its too slow and unstable to do anything else then calls and sms with it, but then the loop goes back to the beginning, what is the point..

Because we are hopefully reinventing the linux-phone OS wheel for the last time and this time on hardware with our own freedom-centric design.  The Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 was sold with a debian based OS in 2000, from '03 on to 2011 Nokia was selling mini tablets and then phones running a debian based mobian OS.
The problem was they were selling good linux devices with good battery life but with NDA restricted bin blob drivers where a real kernel upgrade was impossible, but they were able to get the features of a flagship, they had a critical mass of users and most commercial online and navigation services i.e. whatsapp, sygic, and skype were available at the time either FOSS or as a closed binary package.  Hacked drivers were developed over the last 15 years to the point that most of the features were available in a nearly full FOSS way for the Nokia and earlier the Sharp devices.
The openMoko phone was similar to the Pine64 line in that it was designed with only components that were available with complete data for FOSS drivers released by the manufacturer, but there was not really critical mass beyond a few radical FOSS devs.
Now we finally, with sideloaded apks going away on android, a reason why more people will be demanding a freer phone.
In my opinion building a private phone like the graphineOS offerings are not enough, libhybris and using android driver blob releases is not enough.  Blob drivers at a minimum hold upgrades to the last binary closed driver package released by a hardware manufacturer.
The pinephone or any device with real FOSS drivers can be kept working for as long as there is dev interest in supporting said hardware.
This says nothing of the uncertainty what the dark secret software and drivers are doing behind our backs.
I have only talked aboutsoftware.
The Pine64 and Librem hardware has a FOSS booted CPU and modularizes the modem, there is no shared memory, and we have mostly hacked the closed blob software from the OS that the modem is running.  In a normal apple or android phone the modem is running a foreign hostile OS that can read the shared memory and do things within the operations of even a fully FOSS system running on the main CPU.
So that is the point of this and related projects, someday with enough critical mass of privacy and freedom seeking users we should be able to boot a FOSS system onto an open hardware(RISC-V?) design user respecting and protecting communicating and computing device and eventually get a flagship experience as good as but different than what you currently can buy in a mobile shop where you are locked into a walled garden ad you must replace hardware and software every three years while sharing your every activity with companies who want to sell that information to all bidders private and police and smother you with bespoke advertising and other infringements on your person.
A nice side benefit of the software and hardware of the Pinephone line at least is it is also immune to Cellbrite USB hacking attempts.

[zetabeta]

Howdy.
I've come across several daily driver users who eventually state things like
Oh, I don't care about buggy wifi, slow X, crashing Y or unstable Z because I use it only for: calls, sms, contacts.
Oh, who cares about battery life, i keep it powered off most of the day etc..

my question is, what is the point of having a linux phone when use case is dumb phone features only? Why not just use some dumb nokia that runs for 7 days on a battery and call it a day? also same privacy level on those devices...

I think the cold truth is, because its too slow and unstable to do anything else then calls and sms with it, but then the loop goes back to the beginning, what is the point..

i have a backup plan to go back to technical basic phones. as a technical basic phone i mean, it is not based on android or other complicated operating system, and it is not necessarily easy to use phone. also kaios end up being bad, because of bundled system components, which are closed and difficult to remove.

even with technical basic phones, volte needs to be operational, because many countries are shutting down 2g and 3g networks or already shut down. there are some models out there and looking to buy one as a backup plan.

pretty much all technical basic phones has some kind of real time operating system, which is usually closed source. although, if usage is simple operator calls and sms, then this is not big issue, but i prefer open source.

i'm mostly dissatisfied with battery life in pinephone, battery definitely needs to be bigger, but it is not only issue.

even i am convinced that these devices need to be open source and not only software, also hardware. pinephone sort of failed because keyboard case is cancelled and pinephone pro is cancelled. pinephone regular has outdated gpu. but now there is two manufacturer developing open device. android based drivers or kernel are not counted. one manufacturer already build a device. after pinephone, i think there is going to be some devices and this main linux mobile is going forward.

disclaimer: there is one linux device with android kernel and drivers, which i skip. and some kind of android based linux has been ported into many android devices, these help to develop apps, still having some android's closed drivers and problems.

Because we are hopefully reinventing the linux-phone OS wheel for the last time and this time on hardware with our own freedom-centric design.  The Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 was sold with a debian based OS in 2000, from '03 on to 2011 Nokia was selling mini tablets and then phones running a debian based mobian OS.
The problem was they were selling good linux devices with good battery life but with NDA restricted bin blob drivers where a real kernel upgrade was impossible, but they were able to get the features of a flagship, they had a critical mass of users and most commercial online and navigation services i.e. whatsapp, sygic, and skype were available at the time either FOSS or as a closed binary package.  Hacked drivers were developed over the last 15 years to the point that most of the features were available in a nearly full FOSS way for the Nokia and earlier the Sharp devices.
The openMoko phone was similar to the Pine64 line in that it was designed with only components that were available with complete data for FOSS drivers released by the manufacturer, but there was not really critical mass beyond a few radical FOSS devs.
Now we finally, with sideloaded apks going away on android, a reason why more people will be demanding a freer phone.
In my opinion building a private phone like the graphineOS offerings are not enough, libhybris and using android driver blob releases is not enough.  Blob drivers at a minimum hold upgrades to the last binary closed driver package released by a hardware manufacturer.
The pinephone or any device with real FOSS drivers can be kept working for as long as there is dev interest in supporting said hardware.
This says nothing of the uncertainty what the dark secret software and drivers are doing behind our backs.
I have only talked aboutsoftware.
The Pine64 and Librem hardware has a FOSS booted CPU and modularizes the modem, there is no shared memory, and we have mostly hacked the closed blob software from the OS that the modem is running.  In a normal apple or android phone the modem is running a foreign hostile OS that can read the shared memory and do things within the operations of even a fully FOSS system running on the main CPU.
So that is the point of this and related projects, someday with enough critical mass of privacy and freedom seeking users we should be able to boot a FOSS system onto an open hardware(RISC-V?) design user respecting and protecting communicating and computing device and eventually get a flagship experience as good as but different than what you currently can buy in a mobile shop where you are locked into a walled garden ad you must replace hardware and software every three years while sharing your every activity with companies who want to sell that information to all bidders private and police and smother you with bespoke advertising and other infringements on your person.
A nice side benefit of the software and hardware of the Pinephone line at least is it is also immune to Cellbrite USB hacking attempts.

short:
early days i thought android was linux and i thought other linux projects were mostly useless. that was somewhere around 2010. now i know that android is abuse of linux by alphabet inc, too much closed stuff and control in it. actual linux is outside of android. (ios and macos is abuse of freebsd by apple.)

[Kevin Kofler]

A dumb phone cannot browse the web, check e-mails, look up public transport schedules, show maps, etc. The PinePhone can do all that, and I do all that with it regularly.

There are also plenty of fun stuff I can do with the PinePhone that I cannot do with a dumb phone. I can even SSH into it. Or from it.

I cannot run Android or iOS apps on my PinePhone, but neither can I on a dumb phone.

As for power consumption, I simply always carry a power bank, and as soon as I come home, I plug the PinePhone back in (and also recharge the power bank if I had to use it).

[biketool]

A dumb phone cannot browse the web, check e-mails, look up public transport schedules, show maps, etc. The PinePhone can do all that, and I do all that with it regularly.

There are also plenty of fun stuff I can do with the PinePhone that I cannot do with a dumb phone. I can even SSH into it. Or from it.

I cannot run Android or iOS apps on my PinePhone, but neither can I on a dumb phone.

As for power consumption, I simply always carry a power bank, and as soon as I come home, I plug the PinePhone back in (and also recharge the power bank if I had to use it).

As much as it dirties the hands you can use waydroid, I understand you can even have a chroot boot along with your system to have a reasonably fast response as if the android apps were running as native.
I only briefly experimented with waydroid using a allwinner pinephone where it was unsatisfactory but the PPpro or a future RISC-V phone would probably have enough power.

[Zebulon Walton]

I think the cold truth is, because its too slow and unstable to do anything else then calls and sms with it, but then the loop goes back to the beginning, what is the point..

I think I can answer this as someone who has owned a Pinephone for 5 years now and uses it only for phone calls.

I've been using cell phones since the early 1990s. (In fact I still have the same phone number I started with.) In most of that time of course smart phones did not exist. When they came out I stuck with simple flip phones. Then when 3G service was discontinued my carrier sent me a new flip phone. However despite being a "simple phone" it was festooned with Google services that I did not want. So looking at what was available that would be Google-free I chose the Pinephone. It was pretty rough at first but Mobian got to the point where it worked well enough for making and receiving calls. So I've been using the Pinephone as my daily driver for years now.

The only issue I really have is the modem sometimes gets into a funny state and needs to be rebooted. I placed an icon on my screen linked to a script to perform this function so I don't have to reboot the entire phone. (I'm running stock "002" firmware. I've thought of flashing the modem with the open-source upgrade but it's working well enough that I have not wanted to risk doing that.)

Of course battery life is not great, but normally I leave the phone off unless it needs to be used, and if possible I hook it up to external power to use it. Since the battery is removable it's easy to carry a fully charged spare.

In any event, the point of all this is that depending on one's use case the Pinephone is not pointless at all.

[biketool]

In any event, the point of all this is that depending on one's use case the Pinephone is not pointless at all.

It is a phone designed for the user, not your mobile provider not google, apple, facebook, or an AI company to watch you, for all of the reasons I listed it is your phone made for you.