08-23-2022, 03:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-23-2022, 03:52 PM by Subsentient.)
For what it's worth, after installing the right firmware, I find the PinePhone Pro's wifi driver to be much more *reliable* than the PinePhone's. I'm not a fan of blobs, but the most important thing to me is that the *operating system* is true FOSS, and nothing too sinister in the firmware.
If I had to guess, I would say they probably picked a Broadcom chip because despite its needs for blobs, once you actually add the blob it wants, it actually works. Not defending Broadcom, but I had a lot, and I mean, a lot, of issues with the 8723cs chip in the original PinePhone. Simply pulling too much data over wifi was enough to hang the kernel. Something about disabling cores for powersaving would totally destroy the reliability of the driver, and it wasn't always necessary to do that to get it to hang the phone solid. To my knowledge, the original PinePhone's wifi drivers are still a diarrhea smoothie.
If I had to guess, I would say they probably picked a Broadcom chip because despite its needs for blobs, once you actually add the blob it wants, it actually works. Not defending Broadcom, but I had a lot, and I mean, a lot, of issues with the 8723cs chip in the original PinePhone. Simply pulling too much data over wifi was enough to hang the kernel. Something about disabling cores for powersaving would totally destroy the reliability of the driver, and it wasn't always necessary to do that to get it to hang the phone solid. To my knowledge, the original PinePhone's wifi drivers are still a diarrhea smoothie.
