10-20-2020, 12:54 PM
First off, this is NOT a beta quality release. A Beta is feature complete but presumed to still have lurking bugs. They shipped this one with showstoppers like "won't take a phone call" and "phosh is known to lock up after using it for a while."
Now with the bad out of the way, this is the first release that is really close to having the power problem beat into submission. I have the modem powered down by hard switch and still most releases manage to eat 10% per hour. Left it asleep for 10 hours, 83% battery remaining. Oh. Yes. Not as good as my LG Android can pull off (less than 1% per hour idling on 3G + WiFi enabled) but finally down to daily driver candidate levels as long as the modem's power management lives up to the datasheet.
The camera is erratic and the picture quality is poor, looks desaturated and noisy even in sunlight. And as documented, it is crashy. Par for the course across current distros though. The calculator is only usable on the default basic layout, all others are larger than the available display in both orientations. Again, this is common across distros. And so on.
The list of showstoppers, things that would prevent trying to move a sim card into it and actually carrying this phone are:
1. Phosh crashing. (getting auto rotate back would be tasty gravy)
2. The phone actually rings on an incoming call.
Nice to have things:
1. Gnome Authenticator gets some realistic way to acquire key material.
2. Camera becomes usable. Probably related to the above item.
3. Plugging the USB cable into a desktop does more than make a sound. USB network good, MTP mode second best.
Now with the bad out of the way, this is the first release that is really close to having the power problem beat into submission. I have the modem powered down by hard switch and still most releases manage to eat 10% per hour. Left it asleep for 10 hours, 83% battery remaining. Oh. Yes. Not as good as my LG Android can pull off (less than 1% per hour idling on 3G + WiFi enabled) but finally down to daily driver candidate levels as long as the modem's power management lives up to the datasheet.
The camera is erratic and the picture quality is poor, looks desaturated and noisy even in sunlight. And as documented, it is crashy. Par for the course across current distros though. The calculator is only usable on the default basic layout, all others are larger than the available display in both orientations. Again, this is common across distros. And so on.
The list of showstoppers, things that would prevent trying to move a sim card into it and actually carrying this phone are:
1. Phosh crashing. (getting auto rotate back would be tasty gravy)
2. The phone actually rings on an incoming call.
Nice to have things:
1. Gnome Authenticator gets some realistic way to acquire key material.
2. Camera becomes usable. Probably related to the above item.
3. Plugging the USB cable into a desktop does more than make a sound. USB network good, MTP mode second best.
