Suggestion: better performing pinephone

[nodoze]

iMX-8M

Choosing iMX-8 is why people who gave Purism $600 (or whatever) all the way back in 2017/2018 are just now beginning to receive their phones.  Let that sink in . jpg

I am all for low cost development options with minimal/slower RAM and cheaper initial components but wish the PinePhone wasn't locked into such low specs with no upgrade path and no options for increased specs.

I think "locked in" is a quite hyperbolic statement.  I also was happy to get 3/32 option (coming from Samsung s5 with 2/16) so I also do not know where you get "no options for increased specs"?  And the platform (Linux phones, I mean) is very, very young.  Who knows what may come in future?

I for one appreciate the strategy Pine have taken.  Linux phones have a long way to go before they are ready for Normies to use them as daily driver.  Therefore get as many of them into the hands of people to tinker / dev and improve the state of the platform overall.  I am actually thankful Pine have given us inexpensive alternative to Librem 5 because it means I can actually get one in my hands and start helping advance the state of Linux phones sooner rather than later.  And not just me but many other people, too.

I am also excited for my 3/32 Pinephone to arrive and think Pinephone has done many things right. 

I am also really excited that the Pinephone can easily boot to SDcard for tinkering and easily switching between lots of different distributions/builds. There are a lot of things Pine64 has done which are great.

I am by no means an expert, but the way I see it, the pinephone's hardware choices were made so they could be made available in such a larger scale, at an affordable price when anything better would just be $$$$$ and would run too hot or used closed-source blobs.

By the time better hardware becomes available, enough software advancements will have been made so that this current pinephone will run like a champ. My hunch is that the pinephone 2 in maybe 3-5 years will be able to take advantage of all the progress right out of the gate on top of beefier hardware specs, so it will feel like a true generational jump in improvement.

Just give it time, but once maybe Manjaro or Mobian have stabilized/improved enough, I do think even some 3D indy games could be officially ported to (or even made for) pinephone.

I may be having a hard time being patient.  I want Linux Phones to be good choice now/ASAP and not just for phones but also for true convergence as a PC.

I do see the point that having weaker specs forces the software to become optimized to become usable and I am all for that optimization.  I just wish that the current SoC wasn't already maxed out at 3GB and power with no direct upgrade path.

Sorry if I am being terse or otherwise dismissive as that isn't my intent.  I wouldn't have ordered a PinePhone nor would I be here if I wasn't a fan and supportive.  I guess I just want to be able to do so much more now or at least sooner than later.