Getting the Idea to Stick! (Ideation Marketing)

[food]

I've gotten speaking about the Pinephone to people down to a very simple pattern across demographics in my urban area:

I have a new phone (this is either after they ask me to do something a proprietary phone can do, and it can't, or it's a person I'm familiar with)
It's worse than the old one

It works as a phone with calls and texts and contacts
just like regular

AND It doesn't have any Apple or Google, Android or Windows on it
There are no backdoors; no one is able to come in, not even you if you mess up, though you can reset it if something goes wrong

It never does anything against my will
It's sort of similar to a filing cabinet that you have to maintain yourself

look at this camera, it's terrible! *laughs*

After they see it and have the knowledge that it even exists as an option, and don't feel threatened by it and how new it is, I let them know the following:
I don't recommend it for everyday use yet, You'd be interested in it if you're building it or you're testing it right now.

the idea does stick. That's key. Because anyone can search it on their own devices after the idea is there. That's where I see "marketing" the pinephone is at.

I also make it clear that it's perfectly acceptable that they own the apple or google phone and let them know I understand that's where they're at and where they put *their* money Right Now.

It allows people who are just finding out about the whole floss thing and the pinephone thing to come to their own realizations about what it is and not typing them into a box, or an "ideal adopter."  Same for the people who use for-profit tech: it allows them to see for themselves if they WANT to really take it on themselves, and it frees up me having to explain anything. It's more interactive than stereo-typing or selling.

I'm not a marketer btw, these are just conversations that I've been having started by how differently this phone operates

people also LOVE there's no ads on the music I play

[ryo]

Admittingly, the camera of the Pinephone really is terrible.
The default Gnome app doesn't boot up at all since the first time I applied updates, and the "Megapixel" app doesn't seem to store photos it takes anywhere (and the preview shows how bad the camera is).

I don't think that neither Pinephone nor Librem 5 (nor Fairphone to add this one in) would sell to the masses.
The masses care about the amount of mega pixels each camera has (because they can't just get a 38,000 yen GoPro), whether there's a FeliCa chip (because apparently a dedicated IC card is no longer cool), all the apps they use on Android and iOS (because open source alternatives are apparently for the peasants), whether it has 5G (despite of both health and privacy risks), and a design that is as thin as paper and screens almost entirely flowing out of the phone (forget about being able to replace the battery, that's so old fashioned).
Pinephone has none of that.

Freedom of doing whatever you want, not having big brother watching you at all times, and ablility to use for longer than 2 years max (which Pinephone is strong at) is generally an after thought.
And I think it should stay that way.
We've seen so many times how as soon as something becomes mainstream, it all ends up becoming a failure, it all ends up with government interference, it all ends up in cooperate greed.

[Zebulon Walton]

As it happens I was having this very discussion with a friend today, showing him the Pinephone. His reaction was pretty much that he couldn't see the point because it can't run the "apps" that he wants and the camera is not much good. That's going to be what most people think. They don't care about being tracked, instead going with the attitude "I have nothing to hide". (Orwell's Inner Party would be proud.)

What I see in the Pinephone is a way to escape from at least a part of Google's and Apple's  surveillance ecosystems, an operating system that can be tailored for what I want, not what some huge tech giant wants, the ability to remove the battery and switch off cellular and GPS, full disk encryption, and having a pretty much fully functional and highly portable Linux computer. So the cameras are what you'd get in a cheap laptop, so what, I don't care about that, especially given the price. (If I want a good camera I'll buy a good camera.) I also don't want the stupid "apps" that most people have tracking everything they do 24/7.

So it's really not something that the masses are going to want. Just as well to fly under the radar.

[KC9UDX]

It just isn't ready for the masses.

Whilst it's not problematic that people know about PinePhone, they need to also be made aware that the PinePhone is not ready for them, yet.

[zetabeta]

when i bought postmarketos convergence package. i thought i was playing casino risk, maybe this is total waste of money, but i'm so sick of google and apple duopoly, so let's give it a try. risk was worth it, and it seems as of now i'm not going to buy yet another android phone. pinephone is still in alpha stage having serious bugs. if even basic calls and texts work then i don't need to buy another so called "smart"phone. one big problem with pinephone is battery life.

i definitely like the idea of pinephone. hardware is transparent and software is opensource. partitioning is straight forward, which is not that clear on android devices. as a short version, android devices' bootloaders is too locked. in my view smartphones should have had this open idea in the beginning.

As it happens I was having this very discussion with a friend today, showing him the Pinephone. His reaction was pretty much that he couldn't see the point because it can't run the "apps" that he wants and the camera is not much good. That's going to be what most people think. They don't care about being tracked, instead going with the attitude "I have nothing to hide". (Orwell's Inner Party would be proud.)

!irony warning!, "this pinephone does not have whatsapp". who wants facebook owned whatsapp!?

"i have nothing to hide" attitude, i don't think government and corporations should know everything, especially corporations. as a example, in russia, do you want everyone to know you oppose current president. however, i'm more worried about corporations' data collection, which is just plain wrong. government may have right to know some stuff but corporations do not. besides even if information is allowed to be collected, corporations makes money of it. do i want to enrich google, apple, facebook and others with my data.

[KC9UDX]

Where I'm from, government doesn't have the right, but the corporations do, assuming you agree to let them (which most people do, ignorantly).

In fact we have a saying about giving up liberty for "security" which I believe applies here.

[ryo]

In fact we have a saying about giving up liberty for "security" which I believe applies here.

And in the end, you get neither...