Frustration with development pace

[Cree]

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/

Speaking of Megapixels, what is with that exactly? Im a bit amused tbh. The gnome "pinhole" camera had fantastic image quality, but only access to the back camera, and a super laggy refresh rate on an image that was sometimes reversed. Then along came megapixels which works differently in each distro its on. The lag is gone, its way faster, some distros give front/back access, others are more of a viewfinder that don't snap anything, and some just work, but the window doesnt fit the screen. Okay i get all these little idiosyncracies, yet megapixels has substantially lower res and poorer image quality than pinhole. Couldnt we either have made these features available on pinhole and fixed the refresh rate OR gone to megapixels but first fixed the resolution? I think its a bit lazy to just switch between one or the other, neither of which functions fully, hoping the next one will, without addressing the core drawbacks of each.

[hiimtye]

the problem with PinHole (or Gnome-Camera) is that it was a last minute addition meant to address the fact that no other phone type camera apps existed. it is based on mock ups made by the GNOME team, and has a very small code base and basically no configuration. it uses libhandy which is an api that was made last minute to support gnome-camera

megapixels on the other hand is very configurable, and works using ninja. if you actually read the documentation, all of the issues that you have can be addressed by configuration (and better firmware for lower latency). take a look at the git readme:
https://git.sr.ht/~martijnbraam/megapixels

[Lousy Fisherman]

I have no idea why you people are disappointed, arguing with hardware is difficult. The progress I have witnessed is truly amazing. I 'm ordering another Manjaro edition because my PMOS edition moved to production and I need a dev machine. Arch, Mobian and Manjaro all have basic phone functionality. I don't need any more. Though I would like more

YMMV
LF

[daniel]

@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.

Hi @bcnaz,



I am very surprised by your tone. I do not think I was complaining. I am supporting developers as much as I can. I am a fan of PP...



And because I like PP and want this project to survive, I allow myself to raise my voice to critique all the weaknesses. 



I apologize if you felt attacked or offended.



However, I wish we could disagree on any point, and still talk about that.



I just wanted to raise a point: People call 'daily driver' to different things. For me, a daily driver is my iPhone. I carry my PP with me? yes. I call from my PP? yes. Would I take it with me without the iPhone? No. However, I take my iPhone without my PP.

You are ( o were) in a similar situation; however, you call the PP your daily driver.

That's all.



I do not like the example of the spare tire. If you get a flat tire you use another tire of the same quality. You can get a flat tire and still there is nothing wrong with the tire. Maybe a nail on the road.



However, you carry another phone because you know PP is not fully working, you know you cannot trust it as a daily driver. That is what I wanted to say. PP is not ready as a daily driver yet, but I celebrate that you and I are using it every time we can

[Lousy Fisherman]

However, you carry another phone because you know PP is not fully working, you know you cannot trust it as a daily driver. That is what I wanted to say. PP is not ready as a daily driver yet, but I celebrate that you and I are using it every time we can

I do not carry another phone. Since November 15, my Pinephone is my one and only phone. The only compromise I make is I reboot twice a day whether it needs it or not. I have a few little shell scripts that reset the modem in various ways but I am extremely happy with the functionality.

YMMV
LF

[daniel]

However, you carry another phone because you know PP is not fully working, you know you cannot trust it as a daily driver. That is what I wanted to say. PP is not ready as a daily driver yet, but I celebrate that you and I are using it every time we can

I do not carry another phone. Since November 15, my Pinephone is my one and only phone. The only compromise I make is I reboot twice a day whether it needs it or not. I have a few little shell scripts that reset the modem in various ways but I am extremely happy with the functionality.

YMMV
LF

That's great! this is coming together very quickly!

[hiimtye]

if I could get Facebook messages on Firefox for ARM, I could probably use the Pinephone as a daily driver. unfortunately, it tells you to download the app.

there is no app.

ergo, I need a second device to retrieve messages. I could use Qutebrowser (which I prefer as a browser tbh), but it's unstable on pmOS due to library versions

my main issue with the Pinephone is battery life. the battery drains very quickly on it. I can get acceptable photos using megapixels so if I need to take pictures of blueprints I can, but the battery doesn't last long enough for me to use them all day.

[firefox-58]

With Manjaro BETA3 the phone runs easily 24hrs. But phone calls do not work reliable. Other apps are usable. So if someone works a usable platform --> Manjaro should be under the first choices

[Ph42oN]

if I could get Facebook messages on Firefox for ARM, I could probably use the Pinephone as a daily driver. unfortunately, it tells you to download the app.

On many OS on pinephone firefox useragent is made to look like you are on android device. I think that is a bad design choice because many websites give you version with less features and tell you to install android app if they detect you are using android. But you can change useragent from about:config so thats all you need to fix it. I needed to change it so i can use google drive and not get limited version of reddit that keeps telling to install app all time.

[hiimtye]

if I could get Facebook messages on Firefox for ARM, I could probably use the Pinephone as a daily driver. unfortunately, it tells you to download the app.

On many OS on pinephone firefox useragent is made to look like you are on android device. I think that is a bad design choice because many websites give you version with less features and tell you to install android app if they detect you are using android. But you can change useragent from about:config so thats all you need to fix it. I needed to change it so i can use google drive and not get limited version of reddit that keeps telling to install app all time.

pro tip

for reference, the user agent string I used is:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux; rv:74.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/74.0