Suggestion: better performing pinephone
06-04-2020, 02:25 PM
You're right that, if you want to run 3D games, the Pinephone is not a good fit for you.
This is an experimental device in an ecosystem (Linux applications on mobile devices) that barely exists yet. It uses a processor that is relatively tried-and-true for Pine64's development community - the A64 - which was a very reasonable choice because it keeps the system relatively simple to develop for and inexpensive. Computing power on the order of what other extant smartphones are capable of would have been a bad decision, because it would have jacked up the price and development complexity of a unit that is really not much more than a field testing platform for a very new category of free software, and not given us much in return because so little usable software is available presently.
If you really want a foss-phone that has more premium specs, you can always check out Purism's Librem 5. It costs 750 USD, and will be plagued with more or less all of the same software issues we have over here, just with overall slower progress, since far fewer people can actually afford to buy the phone in order to work on it. I like Pine64's approach better.
This is an experimental device in an ecosystem (Linux applications on mobile devices) that barely exists yet. It uses a processor that is relatively tried-and-true for Pine64's development community - the A64 - which was a very reasonable choice because it keeps the system relatively simple to develop for and inexpensive. Computing power on the order of what other extant smartphones are capable of would have been a bad decision, because it would have jacked up the price and development complexity of a unit that is really not much more than a field testing platform for a very new category of free software, and not given us much in return because so little usable software is available presently.
If you really want a foss-phone that has more premium specs, you can always check out Purism's Librem 5. It costs 750 USD, and will be plagued with more or less all of the same software issues we have over here, just with overall slower progress, since far fewer people can actually afford to buy the phone in order to work on it. I like Pine64's approach better.