PinePhone Pro silver lining, it’s fast, real damn fast

[ashoka232]

There’s been a lot of grumbling the last few days among my friends about PPP and various power issues. Frankly, it makes a person a bit paranoid to enjoy their new device. As soon as I got it I mentally made note:

1. don’t even attempt to upgrade packages
   
2. take out the battery the instant you are done
   
3. find some way to prevent deep sleep
   
4. keep plugged in at all times https://www.fuelly.com/forums/f8/loose-g...22996.html
   

All that worry aside, a small little part of my brain is smiling about how fast it is. I knew as soon as I got it I would have a gut check about whether it’s speed would be tolerable or not. I can safely say yes.
Web browser loaded up Reddit just fine and scrolling felt good.
I’m eager to get to work with some gesture control phone experiments I want to do. This phone is going to be a winner.

[dchang0]

Which OS are you running?

I have tried several, and some are really sluggish (factory Manjaro was one, Arch was another) while others are very speedy (factory SailfishOS).
I'm currently trying Mobian and it's right on the edge of feeling a bit too slow. Boot-up and first login seem too slow to me for sure on Mobian, but afterwards is okay.

SailfishOS was awesome, but the camera app didn't work (it does in Mobian) and I had some trouble with cellular data in SailfishOS too.

[DrYak]

SailfishOS was awesome, but the camera app didn't work (it does in Mobian) and I had some trouble with cellular data in SailfishOS too.

The official camera app doesn't work (because it relies on an API of SailfishOS that normally calls into an Android firmware's driver).

Shutter works.

The main (back) camera has troubles waking up from sleep. But if you reset it, it springs back to life:

Code:

echo ff920000.isp1 | tee /sys/bus/platform/drivers/rkisp1/{unbind,bind}

(Run first "devel-su" to get root).

[dchang0]

SailfishOS was awesome, but the camera app didn't work (it does in Mobian) and I had some trouble with cellular data in SailfishOS too.

The official camera app doesn't work (because it relies on an API of SailfishOS that normally calls into an Android firmware's driver).

Shutter works.

The main (back) camera has troubles waking up from sleep. But if you reset it, it springs back to life:

Code:

echo ff920000.isp1 | tee /sys/bus/platform/drivers/rkisp1/{unbind,bind}

(Run first "devel-su" to get root).

Thanks for the detailed response!

[biketool]

<snip>
SailfishOS was awesome, but the camera app didn't work (it does in Mobian) and I had some trouble with cellular data in SailfishOS too.

Which version of mobian are you running?  I have trixie running and no libcamera, I also wasn't able to get megapixels to compile.

As for power, I feel like we need to both fully utilize the hardware acceleration by the OS which is not used by default(all CPU) ad we also need to sleep most of the CPUswith only whitelisted apps getting to even try to access thebig cores or multiple CPUs/freqs.  Ihave a 2013 Nexus 7 tablet and I can easily get 10 hours of web browsing running LineageOS but I can barely get an hour listening to an audiobook over earphones with the screen blanked and wifi/bt turned off on my PP or PPpro.

[dchang0]

<snip>
SailfishOS was awesome, but the camera app didn't work (it does in Mobian) and I had some trouble with cellular data in SailfishOS too.

Which version of mobian are you running?  I have trixie running and no libcamera, I also wasn't able to get megapixels to compile.

As for power, I feel like we need to both fully utilize the hardware acceleration by the OS which is not used by default(all CPU) ad we also need to sleep most of the CPUswith only whitelisted apps getting to even try to access thebig cores or multiple CPUs/freqs.  Ihave a 2013 Nexus 7 tablet and I can easily get 10 hours of web browsing running LineageOS but I can barely get an hour listening to an audiobook over earphones with the screen blanked and wifi/bt turned off on my PP or PPpro.

I was running Mobian bookworm with Phosh for a while (all latest updates from the official repos). It was okay; front and rear cameras worked with the included camera app and web browser but the camera viewfinder was laggy in the app, and photo quality was poor. (These are no surprise--others here have mentioned these issues.)

I then upgraded to Mobian trixie with Phosh using the official repos. I did not test the cameras before going on a OS-flashing-spree. If I go back to Mobian trixie, I'll be sure to test the cameras and report back here.

You're correct about hardware accel. I'm not skillful enough to figure that out, but I have seen how hardware accel. matters big time in other situations (especially VLC/ffmpeg playback). It also keeps the main processor cooler.

[biketool]

<snip>
SailfishOS was awesome, but the camera app didn't work (it does in Mobian) and I had some trouble with cellular data in SailfishOS too.

Which version of mobian are you running?  I have trixie running and no libcamera, I also wasn't able to get megapixels to compile.

As for power, I feel like we need to both fully utilize the hardware acceleration by the OS which is not used by default(all CPU) ad we also need to sleep most of the CPUswith only whitelisted apps getting to even try to access thebig cores or multiple CPUs/freqs.  Ihave a 2013 Nexus 7 tablet and I can easily get 10 hours of web browsing running LineageOS but I can barely get an hour listening to an audiobook over earphones with the screen blanked and wifi/bt turned off on my PP or PPpro.

I was running Mobian bookworm with Phosh for a while (all latest updates from the official repos). It was okay; front and rear cameras worked with the included camera app and web browser but the camera viewfinder was laggy in the app, and photo quality was poor. (These are no surprise--others here have mentioned these issues.)

I then upgraded to Mobian trixie with Phosh using the official repos. I did not test the cameras before going on a OS-flashing-spree. If I go back to Mobian trixie, I'll be sure to test the cameras and report back here.

You're correct about hardware accel. I'm not skillful enough to figure that out, but I have seen how hardware accel. matters big time in other situations (especially VLC/ffmpeg playback). It also keeps the main processor cooler.

Clapper is to my knowledge the only app with proper hardware acceleration, it can play most mp4 files, no where near as flexible as VLC or ffmpeg but it is specifically compiled for our hardware accel mode, you can get it from flatpak/flathub.