It seems like there should be a happy medium between the PINE64 and Purism models of development.
It is pretty obvious to me that PinePhone needs to have a couple technical people on its staff that do kernel hacking and can help the communities when they have questions/problems that they can't solve, but that means that it charges more per device.
Maybe PINE64 can set up a donation system to direct funds to people in the community who are doing serious dev work, but I think it would be better to raise the prices of its hardware and use those price increases to pay a couple developers. The goal isn't replace the communities, but work on the low-level stuff where the communities need help. The people working on Ubuntu Touch, Phosh and Plasma Mobile shouldn't have to talk to Quectel to figure out how to improve their drivers or work on the camera drivers.
Another option is maybe PINE64 should consider using a modular cellular modem on an M.2 card that can be replaced like the Librem 5 has. I realize that this is a major redesign of the phone and will make it much thicker, but it would allow the community to try out multiple modems and try to find one that actually works. Another option is to use a different soldered cellular modem. This won't help the people who already bought the PinePhone, but eventually getting to a good modem has to be the goal in the long term, and it isn't clear to me that Quectel is a good company to work with.
Purism is running into serious problems as well with its BroadMobi BM818 since it doesn't support VoLTE and has problems with suspending and waking up the system when a phone call is received. Its other option, the Thales PLS8, is outdated and doesn't support many of the LTE bands. So Purism hasn't found the right solution either, but at least Purism isn't stuck with a single modem that it can't change.
It is pretty obvious to me that PinePhone needs to have a couple technical people on its staff that do kernel hacking and can help the communities when they have questions/problems that they can't solve, but that means that it charges more per device.
Maybe PINE64 can set up a donation system to direct funds to people in the community who are doing serious dev work, but I think it would be better to raise the prices of its hardware and use those price increases to pay a couple developers. The goal isn't replace the communities, but work on the low-level stuff where the communities need help. The people working on Ubuntu Touch, Phosh and Plasma Mobile shouldn't have to talk to Quectel to figure out how to improve their drivers or work on the camera drivers.
Another option is maybe PINE64 should consider using a modular cellular modem on an M.2 card that can be replaced like the Librem 5 has. I realize that this is a major redesign of the phone and will make it much thicker, but it would allow the community to try out multiple modems and try to find one that actually works. Another option is to use a different soldered cellular modem. This won't help the people who already bought the PinePhone, but eventually getting to a good modem has to be the goal in the long term, and it isn't clear to me that Quectel is a good company to work with.
Purism is running into serious problems as well with its BroadMobi BM818 since it doesn't support VoLTE and has problems with suspending and waking up the system when a phone call is received. Its other option, the Thales PLS8, is outdated and doesn't support many of the LTE bands. So Purism hasn't found the right solution either, but at least Purism isn't stuck with a single modem that it can't change.
