Frustration with development pace

[a-wai]

basics of a PHONE do not work and we have no information if/how/when this would be ever fixed.

Ask Quectel, as it's 99% on their side: their modem firmware is pure crap.

[firefox-58]

As I understand it, all of the PinePhone specific development is done by volunteers. Instead of rubbishing how quickly those volunteers are progressing the software in their free time, you could contribute.

As long as the programmers efforts are splitted in

- phosh
- plasma-mobile
- Lomiri
- UB-Touch

I see there NO way to see any progress within the next months.

We have now more than a half year of development and You cannot even make reliable phone calls with the phone...... so what

Then other needed features will last Years

I have personally no problem with difficulties in developing. But such a long time without even the basic functions running correct does not give me much hope

---

basics of a PHONE do not work and we have no information if/how/when this would be ever fixed.

Ask Quectel, as it's 99% on their side: their modem firmware is pure crap.

If this is true - we can forget all hope on Pinephone

[Dendrocalamus64]

Thoughts?

You said you're lucky to make $500 a month doing contract work? If we paid you $500/month, how much could you get done on the Pinephone per month?

Anybody else we should consider funding? If we want progress, we can start paying developers.

[firefox-58]

I would gladly participate in making a notable donation for this

[Der Geist der Maschine]

Pine64 invests quite some money into OS phone development ($10 per sold smart-phone with several thousands sold). They could:

a) hire a full-time developer focusing on one OS. This OS would be ready in a short amount of time. Other OSes would leverage the code and soon catch up.

or

b) give part-time OS developers some funding. This results in slow development but gives the OS developers a warm and fuzzy feeling by making them the center of a potential smart phone revolution.

One can do funding in one way or another. Apparently, Pine64 went with the latter giving the open source development community a chance to make a meaningful contribution.

[Veraendert]

As I understand it, all of the PinePhone specific development is done by volunteers. Instead of rubbishing how quickly those volunteers are progressing the software in their free time, you could contribute.

As long as the programmers efforts are splitted in

- phosh
- plasma-mobile
- Lomiri
- UB-Touch

I see there NO way to see any progress within the next months.

We have now more than a half year of development and You cannot even make reliable phone calls with the phone...... so what

Then other needed features will last Years

I have personally no problem with difficulties in developing. But such a long time without even the basic functions running correct does not give me much hope

---

basics of a PHONE do not work and we have no information if/how/when this would be ever fixed.

Ask Quectel, as it's 99% on their side: their modem firmware is pure crap.

If this is true - we can forget all hope on Pinephone

The problem is not the desktop. And the Modem is being worked on (http://xnux.eu/devices/feature/modem-pp-reveng.html). Relax, enjoy the ride, this will probably take some time. Not that long ago there was no phone function at all, no BT, no working desktop and the battery drained in 2 hours.

I´m really grateful for the work devs have done.

[LinAdmin2]

The problem is not the desktop. And the Modem is being worked on (http://xnux.eu/devices/feature/modem-pp-reveng.html). Relax, enjoy the ride, this will probably take some time. Not that long ago there was no phone function at all, no BT, no working desktop and the battery drained in 2 hours.

I don't feel as optimistic as you do. The power drain from the modem might not be correctable. The link you gave is just the result of some useful reverse engineering. However this should not be necessary if the documentation from Quectel were adequate.

a-wai:
Ask Quectel, as it's 99% on their side: their modem firmware is pure crap.

Just from the fact that power drain once could be heavily reduced does not allow you to argue that this will ever happen again!

To sum up a long discussion:



Most probably the PinePhone will never become usable as an ordinary daily phone.


I guess you will need two batteries to be changed within a day.

[lot378]

basics of a PHONE do not work and we have no information if/how/when this would be ever fixed.

Ask Quectel, as it's 99% on their side: their modem firmware is pure crap.

Please provide a breakdown of the issues encountered with EG25-G for the benefit of the community because they/we are all interested.

The modem is quite widely used, may be it just needs some understanding of all the operational characteristics to know how to use the device the way it was intended. If that understanding is aided by reverse-engineering (more exactly, hooking up adb to the device via 1.8V UART to have a poke around) then that's fine by me. My gut feel is most developers found it difficult to understand the modem device and moved on to the next shiny that felt productive to work upon. There's no shame or damage to reputation for this, it's completely understandable when faced with a blocker. Especially when there is no real presence of a project manager to tackle the unblocking of issues.

[bcnaz]

Since early this year my Brave Heart phone has been "usable"  most of the time, for talk, sms texts.

Maybe not polished,   sometimes a working release,  will break with an update.
I  just re-flash to the last working release. 

Since Mobian has arrived,  there is always a release that  'works',    sometimes I do have to go back to a previous release.
That is not a huge deal when it just means flashing an sd card.

I send 20 to 40 sms texts every morning, occasionally it will quit and go back to the log-in screen. That can be frustrating, yes
  but I just sign back in and continue texting.

OR  when there are a bunch of mms texts plugging up the modem...
  There is a 'cli fix',   but I just use modem manager to clean out all the mms texts,  (which are not currently usable anyhow)

The audio/talk works on some Distro's now,  good enough to use,   though quality is still improving.

For data,  I prefer using hot spot to my laptop over the web browsers for sure, but some of the on phone browsers are getting better.
 YES, the data works, at least for me it does.  Using with both AT&T and T-Mobile carriers. (GSM)
  The phone/modem did not see any of the 4 different Verizon sim cards that I have tried.

I am basically a GUI Linux user,  So no special talent at making 'broken' systems work.
BUT I have been reading and following the forum pretty closely, looking for tips,  and asking for help.

Not only was I one of the first to purchase a Brave Heart when '"Pre-orders"' first opened,
  I have since purchased 3 of the PMOS Community Edition Convergence Pkg phones,
      and I have a Manjaro Convergence Pkg phone on order.

*  I would have stopped buying Pine phones after the Brave Heart,   if they "Did Not Work" ...

  Currently battery sometimes goes 10 to 16 hours under various conditions, that I have encountered.

[natasha]

I am happy to hear that one or two users are brave enough to use PP as a daily phone.

However, I am with the majority of comments. I bought PP in July, and for the first months, I have been updating the phone with Mobian every 2-4 days. Now it is on my desk, resting there...I do not think I am going to update until a few weeks or months... If I saw any improvement, I would keep updating, playing, etc. but I do not see any movement. We have Daily releases: Some apps work, next day they broke, next they are up again, ... but nothing really changes. At this pace, probably it will never make it. People will get tired before it can make it.

I am with the idea of crowdfunding to hire developers. That is a great idea and might be the only way. I will also contribute as much I can (mainly if I see progress)