Frustration with development pace

[hiimtye]

my wife got me a UBPorts edition for my birthday because she's the best ever. I've experienced varying degrees of progress when I flash different builds with different development bases.

I'm currently using pmOS only because it's the only offering for sxmo right now. I don't have enough of a know-how on the backend workings of the pinephone to build my own Arch based image (Arch or Manjaro) using sxmo, so I've found myself at the mercy of the pmOS people since falling in love with the DE. it has horrible battery life on standby, which I think is because it's lacking a lot of power saving features of other builds. there's also a bug that seems to be present in all pmOS builds where it will hum/buzz consistently for several seconds then stop, and repeat again a few seconds later. that most certainly also negatively affects battery life.

the first UBPorts build I tried (that shipped with the phone) completely lacked audio. I had to reflash a newer build and reset the phone a couple of times, and then finally audio worked. now every build (from any offering) seems to include audio. calling and texting seem to work well on Shaw/Freedom in BC (Canada). data seems to work, assuming you've figured out the GUI quirk that prevents it from being enabled (Phosh, I'm looking at you).

at the moment, the core features of calling, texting, and data seem to be covered, even for a relatively new mobile carrier like Shaw/Freedom. the camera worked for a while, but it isn't working on any new builds I've tried, although I haven't tried new builds in a week or so. battery life on pmOS/sxmo is terrible, although I feel like that isn't representative of most builds.

I don't know, when I got the phone most builds couldn't even switch over to voice when they received a call (UBPorts was the only offering that could). now that's done seemlessly in all builds. the Pinephone has progressed quite expediently since I've gotten it, but it's still not quite at "daily driver" level. once I have the core features, plus a respectable battery life, I feel like I can call it daily driver ready.

also, I got the phone, with the expectation that it wouldn't be daily driver ready. there was a page long blurb in red on the store page explaining that it's basically an Alpha release, for people who are willing to tinker, and flash builds to experiment and provide feedback. the store page was very clear. that warning seems to be missing from the Pine Store now.

[Subsentient]

I agree with what June, Natasha an BCnAZ have all said. However with regards to some of tbe feedback highlighted regarding modem firmware holding up progress, i am baffled. I have absolutely had call text and data functioning on every build for at least 3 months, mostly out of the box, sometimes with manually updating APN settings. However I am aware people may have different experiences with different carriers, but i dont really know if that's a pp issue, firmware, software, or carrier issue. My best bet is its a carrier band (spectrum) issue. Different carriers using different frequencies, though all can be categorized as 3g/4g. If thats it, it could be a software, firmware, or hardware matter. Doubt its hardware though. Just need to tell the phone what frequency to bands to loom for. If its not that, then its probable people who dont have signal may have in fact corrupted their modem while tinkering and could be in need of a firmware reflash.

What OS are you using? And what software for calls and texts? I notice some of the problem is the modem sending nonstandard replies back to ModemManager, which makes ModemManager throw up. The new firmware does indeed improve this, along with intermittent call audio.
I suspect distributions using oFono or other phone backends may have different behavior.

[NobodyNew1]

Let me start off by saying, I know absolutely nothing about phones and am a beginner Linux users in general. I briefly had the PMOS release, until my 11 year old nephew sits besides me on the sofa one day, sees me playing around with the phone, and then says to me, "I think I can do something with this." At the flick of the wrist, I handed the phone over. He's 11, smarter than me and there was something in his tone that was believable. Plus, he is the future and possibly now part of Linux's future.
I've read all 7 pages of this and still today processed an order for the Manjaro edition. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I want a Linux phone so bad that I don't want to accept that this might only be for Dev's and a tinker toy for people. But, I try and think of ( what I think is a short time ) the short time this phone has been around and where it is now. I also try and think that it's all being handled by voluntaries. Also, didn't pine64 say they have a 5 year investment in this or something like that ? If I look at all that, that gives me hope that this phone will work one day or maybe not. Maybe the Pinephone will die and Librem succeeds or they both fail, but maybe in the death of those two phones there will be a birth of another Linux phone.
I get the frustration of everyone, and foresee my own as simply wanting a phone that can call and txt. I don't use any apps or social media and have de-googled my world as much as humanly possible. I know this post doesn't contribute to anything here and probably shouldn't be written here, but after reading through these 7 pages, I had to or wanted to say something.
My simple words of support through all of the frustration is, atleast we all have ones of these phones, atleast we have a group of dev's that put their own personal time in to work on this project, and atleast we have each other to bitch to, to help, to learn from, and in the end possible grow from this project. I know it doesn't change the fact it's not a completely working phone, but atleast something came from it and lets not through in the towel, let us push forward !!!
Thanks

[Cree]

I agree with what June, Natasha an BCnAZ have all said. However with regards to some of tbe feedback highlighted regarding modem firmware holding up progress, i am baffled. I have absolutely had call text and data functioning on every build for at least 3 months, mostly out of the box, sometimes with manually updating APN settings. However I am aware people may have different experiences with different carriers, but i dont really know if that's a pp issue, firmware, software, or carrier issue. My best bet is its a carrier band (spectrum) issue. Different carriers using different frequencies, though all can be categorized as 3g/4g. If thats it, it could be a software, firmware, or hardware matter. Doubt its hardware though. Just need to tell the phone what frequency to bands to loom for. If its not that, then its probable people who dont have signal may have in fact corrupted their modem while tinkering and could be in need of a firmware reflash.

What OS are you using? And what software for calls and texts? I notice some of the problem is the modem sending nonstandard replies back to ModemManager, which makes ModemManager throw up. The new firmware does indeed improve this, along with intermittent call audio.
I suspect distributions using oFono or other phone backends may have different behavior.

This is my experience with Mobian, UBports, Manjaro and Arch. All have functioning calls text data. Not sure about the rest as ive not tested others.

[amosbatto]

It seems like there should be a happy medium between the PINE64 and Purism models of development.

It is pretty obvious to me that PinePhone needs to have a couple technical people on its staff that do kernel hacking and can help the communities when they have questions/problems that they can't solve, but that means that it charges more per device.

Maybe PINE64 can set up a donation system to direct funds to people in the community who are doing serious dev work, but I think it would be better to raise the prices of its hardware and use those price increases to pay a couple developers. The goal isn't replace the communities, but work on the low-level stuff where the communities need help. The people working on Ubuntu Touch, Phosh and Plasma Mobile shouldn't have to talk to Quectel to figure out how to improve their drivers or work on the camera drivers.

Another option is maybe PINE64 should consider using a modular cellular modem on an M.2 card that can be replaced like the Librem 5 has. I realize that this is a major redesign of the phone and will make it much thicker, but it would allow the community to try out multiple modems and try to find one that actually works. Another option is to use a different soldered cellular modem. This won't help the people who already bought the PinePhone, but eventually getting to a good modem has to be the goal in the long term, and it isn't clear to me that Quectel is a good company to work with.

Purism is running into serious problems as well with its BroadMobi BM818 since it doesn't support VoLTE and has problems with suspending and waking up the system when a phone call is received. Its other option, the Thales PLS8, is outdated and doesn't support many of the LTE bands. So Purism hasn't found the right solution either, but at least Purism isn't stuck with a single modem that it can't change.

[LinAdmin2]

I agree with amosbatto that pine64.org hits some hard limits trying to get a usable software by an unguided community. Hiring themselves software experts might be difficult because most probably they lack the competence to make good selections.

IMHO paying $10 per phone of a special release as it was done with the postmarketOS and is planned with manjaro for next batch does not look like an optimal approach.

I would be interested to hear who got how much of the postmarketOS batch. I had heard it was $ 50'000 and if this is true I must say that I am disappointed because that software did not fulfill the expectations.

It remains to be seen by end of year if manjaro can solve the problem....

[bcnaz]

Just a note :
While I do use the Pine phone(s) as my main phone(s)
I do also carry a cheap-o old message phone ...
My family & friends call first to the Pine phone, but they also have the back-up number if it is needed.
Not everyone can do this, obviously.

Not only is this "safer" but it also is a way to know when/or if the Pine phone fails.

[hiimtye]

Just a note :
  While I do use the Pine phone(s) as my main phone(s)
  I do also carry a cheap-o  old message phone  ...
    My family & friends call first to the Pine phone, but they also have the back-up number if it is needed.
    Not everyone can do this, obviously.

Not only is this "safer"  but it also is a way to know when/or if the Pine phone fails.

I find myself doing this also, only I use the second phone with wifi only, a cheap ZTE that has a cracked screen that works for email and facebook messenger

[ThrillGates]

Just wanted to post a big LMAO to the people complaining about software development and blaming Pine (and the people on this forum trying to help and calm you down). Please, forgive any typing errors as my eyes have rolled to the back of my head.

• Open source = anyone/everyone is a developer
  
• You are part of everyone and can be anyone
  
• Complaining about development <> development
  

[RTP]

@bcnaz @RTP

I recently tested Mobian on my Braveheart and if the device is locked/sleeping inbound calls do not ring/wakeup the device. Are you saying you do not suffer from this issue?

Mobian: Haven't missed a single (word only based) sms text yet. Even in sleep mode it appears to catch up once awake and receive messages sent during sleep mode.

*** I suspect txts w/certain emoji characters could cause issues *** might be something worth testing for those having issues with texting.

Recent Tests: On the calls end I did a test while making sure PP was under sleep (since the post I am quoting),. Unfortunately, while the 'caller end' rings, the PP does not show the call or ring when called under sleep. So there does seem to be an issue receiving calls while phone is sleeping. Unfortunately as a daily driver I have had to let potential callers know so they do not think I am ignoring them (they can txt/email til working properly). When not sleeping (obviously) calling out/receiving report is 100%/4G. Once in a while minor sound clarity complaints if I were trying to be picky. Not entirely unexpected for me as it had a warning about being early stage when I purchased it.

Works reliably for my main needs: a portable touch screen linux computer/tablet w/internet using cellular data and associated encrypted messaging comms for that + email.