Suggestion: better performing pinephone
02-15-2021, 09:29 AM
@nodoze I completely get wanting the better hardware now. Whenever I'm home instead of at work I've been using my ubports CE edition pinephone (2GB RAM/16GB storage) and the hardware limitations rear their ugly head real easily if I'm not careful. Weak processor and slow-ish emmc also are prevalent.
(this is just me rambling, not taking a stab at you)
That said, even if the hardware was beefier on release, this thing would still be pretty unpleasant to use right now. The big hurdles that make this unusable on a daily basis are all software. Your average consumer would have felt cheated if they had to pay $300 for a phone that breaks the Firefox UI when you switch from portrait to landscape then back. Or takes 20+ seconds to open the Aisleriot(Solitaire) flatpak. Or crashes when you try to peruse the app store (of which 90% of apps are not usable for various reasons). Mobian still doesn't have the flashlight or autorotate functionality that Manjaro has.
For comparison, I bought a cheap (on sale for $50) unlocked Android phone (Asus Zenfone Live L1) that has similar, maybe even worse specs (1GB RAM/16GB storage, similar CPU), and that thing runs circles around the pinephone for basic usage like websites. Until they have a baseline of performance like that, I feel like going for the best HW they could for $150-200 was the best choice.
Mine is an older HW revision that even has a hardware flaw so it can't charge properly while plugged into a USB-C dock. Unless I buy a replacement mobo, my pinephone can only run on battery while docked for convergence.
BUT I LOVE MY PINEPHONE. That's the crazy thing. Pine64 is figuring things out as they go, and because of software improvements, it is gradually evolving on a weekly basis even. When I first got this thing it took multiple tries to flash Mobian onto it bc the installer was in beta I think. It didn't have camera functionality, or bluetooth, wifi was unstable, video-output via USB-C didn't work (anything but charging didn't work with the usb port actually), Firefox didn't work. Gnome Web took a full minute to load a web page.
If anything Im having a blast just using it and being pleasantly surprised when x issue is suddenly fixed now.
(this is just me rambling, not taking a stab at you)
That said, even if the hardware was beefier on release, this thing would still be pretty unpleasant to use right now. The big hurdles that make this unusable on a daily basis are all software. Your average consumer would have felt cheated if they had to pay $300 for a phone that breaks the Firefox UI when you switch from portrait to landscape then back. Or takes 20+ seconds to open the Aisleriot(Solitaire) flatpak. Or crashes when you try to peruse the app store (of which 90% of apps are not usable for various reasons). Mobian still doesn't have the flashlight or autorotate functionality that Manjaro has.
For comparison, I bought a cheap (on sale for $50) unlocked Android phone (Asus Zenfone Live L1) that has similar, maybe even worse specs (1GB RAM/16GB storage, similar CPU), and that thing runs circles around the pinephone for basic usage like websites. Until they have a baseline of performance like that, I feel like going for the best HW they could for $150-200 was the best choice.
Mine is an older HW revision that even has a hardware flaw so it can't charge properly while plugged into a USB-C dock. Unless I buy a replacement mobo, my pinephone can only run on battery while docked for convergence.
BUT I LOVE MY PINEPHONE. That's the crazy thing. Pine64 is figuring things out as they go, and because of software improvements, it is gradually evolving on a weekly basis even. When I first got this thing it took multiple tries to flash Mobian onto it bc the installer was in beta I think. It didn't have camera functionality, or bluetooth, wifi was unstable, video-output via USB-C didn't work (anything but charging didn't work with the usb port actually), Firefox didn't work. Gnome Web took a full minute to load a web page.
If anything Im having a blast just using it and being pleasantly surprised when x issue is suddenly fixed now.