Bought a Pinephone convergence edition last summer. Came loaded with Kde and Plasma. It worked, somewhat, out of the box. Prompted me to do an update, from an on-screen button. I did that, and the phone was bricked. Could not get past the login screen. I put it away; brought it down to Arizona with me when I came down last week. Tried to boot it up. Would not accept the default password. So... I used my laptop the download Manjaro + Phosh, and write it to micro SD card. That worked. Got the phone running on it. But when trying to insert the SIM card, it slipped out of the adapter, and tore half the pin out of the socket. That design of SIM socket is CRAP! Such a failure should not be possible. It is a design flaw which is inexcusable. Anyway, I was able to pull up the remainder of the damaged socket pin, and got my currently-active SIM installed, using a different carrier piece. I was able to make one call, which went to recipient's voice mail.
Could not set time and date. Phone requires an Internet connection for time and date. Why not get those off the cell tower, like everybody else does? Fail.
With Phosh, once an app is opened, it cannot be shut down. All you can do is minimize it. Fail.
None of the touchscreen buttons on the top bar would work. Maybe they aren't supposed to? Who knows?
The touchscreen in general is very clumsy to use, and slow to respond, leading to buttons getting double-struck. Touch screens suck in principle, of course, and any device that purports to be a "computer" should have a physical keyboard. Like my late lamented Blackberry, now obsolete because of 4G.
I bought this phone because I wanted to avoid the inherent evil in the Apple and Google ecosystems. I wanted a phone with some of the useful functions of a smartphone, without all the cruft. Well, the "useful" functions basically don't work well enough to be useful, and there is still plenty of cruft, enough to choke a horse.
There needs to be a way to bypass the screen-unlock password. I will never put any information on my phone that I need to keep secret. Having to type in "123456" every time the screen goes to sleep is just too damned much monkey business.
Build a phone with the functionality of a Blackberry, give it the hardware switch options that the Pinephone has (one of the big selling points!), and I will buy it. If I can send and receive phone calls easily, send and receive text messages easily, and be able to use the Internet when on wifi, I will be a happy camper. I don't need a camera. I don't need a music player. I don't need to play Angry Birds.
Anyway, my SIM card has gone back into the flip phone. I'll see if I can sell the Pinephone to some masochist.
Gimme gimme gimme!
Why don't you build such a phone? I don't know what Blackberries do but I'd pay a lot of money for a brand new Treo that works on 4G, twenty year old PalmOS and all.
I don't have a PinePhone (yet). But it seems to me that you should be able to make the PinePhone do whatever you want. As for the time and date problem, aren't you already connected to the internet when you're connected to a "tower"?
(12-25-2023, 03:40 PM)gordinaj Wrote: Bought a Pinephone convergence edition last summer. Came loaded with Kde and Plasma. It worked, somewhat, out of the box. Prompted me to do an update, from an on-screen button. I did that, and the phone was bricked. Could not get past the login screen. I put it away; brought it down to Arizona with me when I came down last week. Tried to boot it up. Would not accept the default password. So... I used my laptop the download Manjaro + Phosh, and write it to micro SD card. That worked. Got the phone running on it. But when trying to insert the SIM card, it slipped out of the adapter, and tore half the pin out of the socket. That design of SIM socket is CRAP! Such a failure should not be possible. It is a design flaw which is inexcusable. Anyway, I was able to pull up the remainder of the damaged socket pin, and got my currently-active SIM installed, using a different carrier piece. I was able to make one call, which went to recipient's voice mail.
Could not set time and date. Phone requires an Internet connection for time and date. Why not get those off the cell tower, like everybody else does? Fail.
With Phosh, once an app is opened, it cannot be shut down. All you can do is minimize it. Fail.
None of the touchscreen buttons on the top bar would work. Maybe they aren't supposed to? Who knows?
The touchscreen in general is very clumsy to use, and slow to respond, leading to buttons getting double-struck. Touch screens suck in principle, of course, and any device that purports to be a "computer" should have a physical keyboard. Like my late lamented Blackberry, now obsolete because of 4G.
I bought this phone because I wanted to avoid the inherent evil in the Apple and Google ecosystems. I wanted a phone with some of the useful functions of a smartphone, without all the cruft. Well, the "useful" functions basically don't work well enough to be useful, and there is still plenty of cruft, enough to choke a horse.
There needs to be a way to bypass the screen-unlock password. I will never put any information on my phone that I need to keep secret. Having to type in "123456" every time the screen goes to sleep is just too damned much monkey business.
Build a phone with the functionality of a Blackberry, give it the hardware switch options that the Pinephone has (one of the big selling points!), and I will buy it. If I can send and receive phone calls easily, send and receive text messages easily, and be able to use the Internet when on wifi, I will be a happy camper. I don't need a camera. I don't need a music player. I don't need to play Angry Birds.
Anyway, my SIM card has gone back into the flip phone. I'll see if I can sell the Pinephone to some masochist.
pinephone updates time and timezone from internet, is it wifi, ethernet or mobile data (bluetooth might be possible as well). you may set manual or automatic update. carrier time might be available but i wouldn't totally trust it, although it is supposed to supply timezone info as well, i hope correctly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NITZ
for general information. pine64 provides hardware and not software. so software community is responsible for quality of software. and yes it is full of issues. my biggest annoyance is poor battery life.
btw, phosh is more stable than plasma mobile. manjaro seems to have issues going on, try other distributions, like archlinux, pmos or mobian.
Pine64 has screwed over so many customers by not doing anything about the SIM adapter and the SIM slot ripping out pins on the PinePhone.
@ gordinaj Check out Unihertz phones. BB wannabes, and very fairly priced. I have the Pocket Titan and have been satisfied (I use PP as computer only). Pocket's square screen occasionally tough if only b/c of its size, but phone certainly functions well for calling/texting/data. Custom ROM/help over at a friendly discord forum.
(12-26-2023, 01:34 PM)jakfish Wrote: @gordinaj Check out Unihertz phones. BB wannabes, and very fairly priced. I have the Pocket Titan and have been satisfied (I use PP as computer only). Pocket's square screen occasionally tough if only b/c of its size, but phone certainly functions well for calling/texting/data. Custom ROM/help over at a friendly discord forum.
It's too bad the Titan has flat keys in stead of raised or pyramid-shaped ones. How is typing on it?
The keys, at least on the Pocket, are raised, sloped down from top to bottom. I stink at typing on all phones, but I certainly do better on the Pocket than my Pixel 4a. If you really wanted a large kb, then the original Titan would be the way to go. Drawbacks: perhaps cumbersome and Android 10. The newer Titan is a rectangle, so more screen but smaller kb; prolly akin to the BB Priv.
Again, there is Lineage work so you can use a current Android, but I stick with stock to ensure problem-free calling, texting, GPS. Amazing battery life.
I have an old Nextel phone somewhere here, which should be the basis for all phone keyboards. Motorola i465 if memory serves. The keys are pointy. It's a ridiculously small keyboard but types better than any other "phone" or PDA keyboard I've ever seen. I didn't really like the phone but I kept it forever due to those keys.
If I can find the money (not likely soon), I'll probably get the Pocket; I'm pretty sure I'd like it.
My druthers is still for the Nokia E7, whose kb was first-rate. If the US carriers still played nice with 3G, I would go back to the E7, even today.
12-27-2023, 07:57 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-27-2023, 08:00 AM by MTXP.)
So far, Im disappointed as well. I mean they did tell me it was for experienced linux users only and I had pretty much no experience with linux and that it was a beta phone which can still have some flaws. But nobody told me that "some flaws" means the phone is completely useless in its factory state - no hdmi, constantly flashing screen, battery life numbers completely random so you may as well just guess how much battery you have and the list goes on. Thats not like any beta I have ever seen before, more like alpha at best.
What I really like about this phone is that unlike any other phone it will get better over time instead of worse over time but had I known I needed a degree in programming to get this thing working at least as good as other phones do, I wouldnt have had bought it. Too much money for something thats just a dust-catching decoration IMO. Unless I take hours or days making it work, doing like a hundred steps tutorials how to flash it and so on, I cant use it for anything. So yeah, still plenty of room to go. BTW if anyone has a way how to flash OS into the phoen from SD card withotu instaling X amount of other programs with command line first, let me know.
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