Frustration with development pace

[daniel]

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

I actually enjoyed reading your post. so, thanks for writing it.  I think many of us think like you. We love this project, we admire the developers, we cannot believe this is done by volunteers,... yes pretty awesome and it makes one happy being part of it. It is an adventure and it can fail as other Linux phone projects failed before. Maybe wasn't the time then, and it is now... who knows...

About the Librem5 I was very surprised to learn that it is not functional either. Man, not the same paying $150 for a pinephone than $750 for a librem5 that cannot be used...

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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....

Agree, however, the OS postmarket shipment was before getting the money. If the money has any effect on the OS should be from now on. Also to say, not sure how 50K can help. I see more to compensate efforts. In the US this would be a low salary for 1 person. In Europe maybe you can pay the salary of two people (probably not, after they also should pay taxes, health care plans, etc). But my feeling is that this will be split amongst many contributors. So in the end not too much help, just a thank you to many. Any idea of how the money is spent?

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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

Ok @hiintye and @bcnaz I think when some people say they are using PP as a daily driver and others say they don't they might be doing the same thing.

I also carry my PP and my iPhone. I try to call and get calls with my PP, but I am not saying it is my daily driver bc I cannot trust it and I have to carry the devil apple with me too.

However, you are doing the same but you are saying it is your daily driver because the other phone is a crappy one.

I am not attacking you, I just want to make the point of how people define a daily driver. For me should be a phone you use daily and you trust. Bringing another phone that you really trust (expensive, cheap, or cracked screen doesn't matter) makes that second phone your truly daily driver, not the PP.

[Veraendert]

Stop bashing PMOS. Without their devs we wouldn't have a camera. And the modem not working reliably isn't their fault. Quectel is the culprit here.

[hiimtye]

Stop bashing PMOS. Without their devs we wouldn't have a camera. And the modem not working reliably isn't their fault. Quectel is the culprit here.

if you mean me, I never bashed them. however, there has been a known bug with the audio stack that every few seconds makes a quiet, high pitched sound that has never been addressed. should we thank the devs for never fixing this?

I'm currently using pmOS, I just prefer Arch based distros because the package management system is superior. Alpine Linux tries to make some sort of middle ground between apt and makepkg/PKGBUILDs that fails in both directions. as much as I detest debian's package management systems, they are objectively better than Alpine's

@daniel, I don't consider my pinephone to be daily driver ready, as I've mentioned previously, which is why I keep a backup phone with me. if I considered it to be daily driver ready, I would only carry the pinephone

[Veraendert]

Stop bashing PMOS. Without their devs we wouldn't have a camera. And the modem not working reliably isn't their fault. Quectel is the culprit here.

if you mean me, I never bashed them. however, there has been a known bug with the audio stack that every few seconds makes a quiet, high pitched sound that has never been addressed. should we thank the devs for never fixing this?

I'm currently using pmOS, I just prefer Arch based distros because the package management system is superior. Alpine Linux tries to make some sort of middle ground between apt and makepkg/PKGBUILDs that fails in both directions. as much as I detest debian's package management systems, they are objectively better than Alpine's...

No. I meant this:

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.

[Zweitaktmotor]

I have just caught up with this thread and agree with most of the sentiments.

Here are two further points nobody seems to touch upon:

1. Using the Pinephone as a daily driver is a major shift for a user: They either have to swap their SIM card over or need to tell all their contacts the new number they are using. Add to that the fact that they may want to keep some records, such as SMS sent and received, contact lists etc. and it is clear that most people will only do this if they feel they can trust the phone. For this reason, the Pinephone remains a toy for me. I actually carry it with me when I go out, but have not given its number to anyone.
I really only have it with me in case my main phone dies on the way.

2. Most of the frustration expressed in this thread stems from the fact that nobody seems to know what is going on. I am mostly using UT and look into Mobian from time to time, using my "Switchboot" script (as I am tired of physically peeling off the back of the phone to change SD cards. This should have been designed differently!). UT provides updates almost daily, sometimes twice daily. And each time I see another 17MB to download, I'm getting excited: "Wow, they did something!". But this being a toy phone (see above), I have no way to find out what the new features are. Any app that is updated in the app store carries some brief "What's new" description, even though it may only say "Translations updated. Thank you translators!" - Not so the UT updates. There is nothing. I am not interested in too much technical detail, but a simple "Improvements to XYZ" would go a long way and could actually prompt me to give feedback. But as it is, I am not going to test every single phone feature just for the sake of it. I do the update, watch if the mobile and wifi signals come on and switch it off again.

In summary: I have no idea what has actually improved in UT and am simply waiting for someone to say: "Hooray, it's ready to be used."

[quantumphoton]

Stop bashing PMOS. Without their devs we wouldn't have a camera. And the modem not working reliably isn't their fault. Quectel is the culprit here.

Which working camera?

[bcnaz]

@daniel

So by your reasoning the spare tire in the back of my truck is my  "MAIN TIRE"  ?  DUH..

Even before I had a Pine phone, I usually have had a spare phone in the glove compartment of my vehicle,  would that be my main phone ???

The objective 'here' is to help fellow forum members with using their Pine phones, and share what we learn.

We can contribute to the developers in different ways, some help write the software, while some contribute to the developers with cash.

Many of these developers are working for little or no pay,  So I find it very unjust and distasteful that so many just pile out their complaints.

That helps Nobody !


 >  The first Brave Heart phone went up for "Pre-order"  mid-November of 2019,  they have came a long way in a short time
        ...  even as such a small operation.

[Zoomzit]

I think I find myself somewhere in the middle of "This is amazing development!" and frustration.

On one hand, it is amazing what this community has accomplished so far. Great work and I'm excited about where this project will wind up.

On the other hand...I'll admit that I was disappointed that the next edition is KDE. Mobian is working really well, is the closest to daily driver and they aren't getting funding. Makes me a bit concerned how these editions are selected as KDE seems pretty far away from usable and another "barely usable" distro isn't really what is needed right now. I also think there is a lot of mobile data/calling that linux devs are not familiar with. With Pine64 would invest in some resources to bring in someone to dev the mobile specific software to benefit all distros.

[publiclewdness]

It occurs to me, we could donate to megi to try and get him able to afford to work on the PinePhone near full time. He has a contribute page on his site:
https://xnux.eu/contribute.html

I had never heard of him before so thank you for this info. I am always on the look out for people and projects to donate to so I will certainly try to give him monthly donations going forward.

[wibble]

Stop bashing PMOS. Without their devs we wouldn't have a camera. And the modem not working reliably isn't their fault. Quectel is the culprit here.

Which working camera?

Megapixels, which made the preview much more fluid and significantly improved image quality over the previous camera apps.
https://blog.brixit.nl/pinephone-camera-...es-part-3/