pinephone 2 specs discussion - 5G WiFi6 BT5 NFC? -

[Danct12]

I'd like a PinePhone with 8GB of RAM, a much faster CPU (Quartz64 might be a great start). I would also like is support for 5 GHz Wi-Fi, 2.4 is pretty outdated as most phones (even budget ones) supports 5GHz Wi-Fi right out of the box.

The PinePhone display is still pretty fragile despite tempered glass claim, so perhaps we should use better tempered glass next time?

[sergio.pantalone]

I'd quite like an IR transceiver.  Working in AV it's nice to have a device that you can use as a one-for-all remote.

In the meantime have you looked into building a web-based IR transmitter? It's a fun little project and one you can find multiple guides for on the web, using an ESP8266 or Raspberry Pi. Here are a couple of links to inspire:

https://www.instructables.com/Easiest-ES...l-Via-WIF/
https://blog.gordonturner.com/2020/06/10...ansmitter/

And reach out if you have any questions!

[bitsandnumbers]

We cannot make assumptions for the best optimized hardware unless software is optimized itself.

I believe the wise thing to do before getting into these new hardware considerations is to wait and see what software can actually deliver with the current hardware. Then it will be easy to evaluate what kind of specs/price would be best for a new PP iteration.

True

But not much can be expected from Allwinner A64. It is from 2015 with 40 nm architecture. No wonder poor power efficiency and performance. This is 6! years old hardware not even designed for mobile use, you most probably do not use laptop from that time anymore.

All the more, you can't deny that when software will be optimized for the Allwinner A64, we will have *rock solid* base for an informed decision on hardware choice.

Plus, old hardware mean almost nothing. I insist on "almost", because at some point it matters. But recent hardware is really really really under-exploited in 90% of cases, and it tends to make developers lazy with sub-optimized softwares, hence most of the slowdown we see on old hardware.

The Pinephone can actually deliver enough for most of people use once we get the good hardware/software recipes. Even the RAM limitation should not be one before a few years.

Just so you know, before buying my Pinephone Mobian Edition (that I use as a daily driver), I was using an iPhone 5c (Apple A6 32 nm, dual core with 3-core PowerVR chip) that I bought some 8 years ago. Guess what : it still worked really well and snappy. Only limitiation (that even was not so limiting) was 1Gb of RAM and no more iOS updates. I had to let it go because of a dead battery.

So I really don't think that the Allwinner A64 is so limiting that we should begin thinking beyond right now : I truly believe in optimized software that get the most out of what we already got.

EDIT
The only really limiting hardware I see here on the Pinephone is the eMMC speed which is hard to overcome with software.

One last thing : the Pinephone has been made for tinkerers by an hardware hacking company that make hardware for hackers and developers (by hackers I mean "modifiers", not pirates). So a new iteration of the Pinephone will be for this category of customers that want opensource, hackable, self-repairable phones : this comes with tradeoffs because phone industry is mainly focused on closed-source chips and finding opensource hardware is a *really* hard job, let alone for smartphone production. Tradeoffs mean lower specs and older chips because manufacturers are very touchy when it comes to opensourcing new technologies. The only way I can see a well-spec'd fully opensource phone happening is if some manufacturer finally enter the breach and begin to sell a new range of modern, recent opensource chips for phones. I say why not, but it still doesn't exist.

[Gunk]

>Will we have a pinephone 2 specs discussion?

>I would like a 5G + WiFi6 + NFC + BT5 model, even >if the rest is the same as the 1

Better hardware would be nice.  Possibly upgradable camera module.  However without 5g lte I can't use it as a daily driver where I live.  They are turning off old bands.  Don't need another phone to store in the retired electronics drawer.  They already kicked three of my phones off the network.

[odh]

Would much rather see the original Pinephone be serviceable enough to be an everyday daily driver before we start discussing the Pinephone 2.

[gamerminstrel]

We cannot make assumptions for the best optimized hardware unless software is optimized itself.

I believe the wise thing to do before getting into these new hardware considerations is to wait and see what software can actually deliver with the current hardware. Then it will be easy to evaluate what kind of specs/price would be best for a new PP iteration.

True

But not much can be expected from Allwinner A64. It is from 2015 with 40 nm architecture. No wonder poor power efficiency and performance. This is 6! years old hardware not even designed for mobile use, you most probably do not use laptop from that time anymore.

I dunno, this SoC is able to run Android like a champ. Maybe it can't play the latest and greatest games, but achieving feature parity for linux vs Android on this lil guy is a pretty solid bottom line to work for first.  Also, not sure laptops are a good comparison since ones from 5-10 years ago were user repairable and upgrade-able. My old Windows 7 era laptop with a replacement battery and SSD runs great.

[bcnaz]

Perhaps they could "Socket" some of the Pine phone components ? So they could be "upgradeable" ? *(Like the Libreum 5)

I have a pile of laptops with Windows XP stickers on them, ** a new ssd drive, upgraded cpu's, adding some ram, and running various Linux Distro's

They seem to run very well for my use.

With Big Business behind Google, Apple, and MSN they build their software top heavy on purpose so it requires New stronger hardware every year.

From what I have seen : The Extraordinary Linux Developers can design more efficient software to do more with less hardware.

*>< In the automotive world, there are now some little 4 cylinder engines that are kicking butt on the big V-8 engines..... ><*

** "Bigger Ain't Always Better" ...

[zetabeta]

better pinephone, let's think options.

option a: keep current design, maybe doing very small upgrades if those do not break software and compatibility.

option b: doing two models, one and two. where pinephone two has better specs.

option c: ditching old design and going with pinephone two only.

we should take software development into the consideration as well.

i think option c is just plain suicide, leaving old users in abandonware status and developers need to quickly adjust for just few users.

option b is problematic as well. pine org need to harware support and desing two models, users will be split which one they choose, it might be a mess. this day will come, so when this transition is worth it. also if the pinephone two has seriously better specs, then i don't think it has lot of buyers.

option a is best at the moment (in my view). even though i'm little dissatisfied with some specs, changing to two models might seriously mess up development. pinephone development benefits from predictability.

so threshold is when benefits of pp two outweighs disadvantages of change and supporting two models.