Suggestion: better performing pinephone

[nodoze]

iMX-8M

Choosing iMX-8 is why people who gave Purism $600 (or whatever) all the way back in 2017/2018 are just now beginning to receive their phones.  Let that sink in . jpg

I am all for low cost development options with minimal/slower RAM and cheaper initial components but wish the PinePhone wasn't locked into such low specs with no upgrade path and no options for increased specs.

I think "locked in" is a quite hyperbolic statement.  I also was happy to get 3/32 option (coming from Samsung s5 with 2/16) so I also do not know where you get "no options for increased specs"?  And the platform (Linux phones, I mean) is very, very young.  Who knows what may come in future?

I for one appreciate the strategy Pine have taken.  Linux phones have a long way to go before they are ready for Normies to use them as daily driver.  Therefore get as many of them into the hands of people to tinker / dev and improve the state of the platform overall.  I am actually thankful Pine have given us inexpensive alternative to Librem 5 because it means I can actually get one in my hands and start helping advance the state of Linux phones sooner rather than later.  And not just me but many other people, too.

I am also excited for my 3/32 Pinephone to arrive and think Pinephone has done many things right. 

I am also really excited that the Pinephone can easily boot to SDcard for tinkering and easily switching between lots of different distributions/builds. There are a lot of things Pine64 has done which are great.

I am by no means an expert, but the way I see it, the pinephone's hardware choices were made so they could be made available in such a larger scale, at an affordable price when anything better would just be $$$$$ and would run too hot or used closed-source blobs.

By the time better hardware becomes available, enough software advancements will have been made so that this current pinephone will run like a champ. My hunch is that the pinephone 2 in maybe 3-5 years will be able to take advantage of all the progress right out of the gate on top of beefier hardware specs, so it will feel like a true generational jump in improvement.

Just give it time, but once maybe Manjaro or Mobian have stabilized/improved enough, I do think even some 3D indy games could be officially ported to (or even made for) pinephone.

I may be having a hard time being patient.  I want Linux Phones to be good choice now/ASAP and not just for phones but also for true convergence as a PC.

I do see the point that having weaker specs forces the software to become optimized to become usable and I am all for that optimization.  I just wish that the current SoC wasn't already maxed out at 3GB and power with no direct upgrade path.

Sorry if I am being terse or otherwise dismissive as that isn't my intent.  I wouldn't have ordered a PinePhone nor would I be here if I wasn't a fan and supportive.  I guess I just want to be able to do so much more now or at least sooner than later.

[gamerminstrel]

@nodoze I completely get wanting the better hardware now. Whenever I'm home instead of at work I've been using my ubports CE edition pinephone (2GB RAM/16GB storage) and the hardware limitations rear their ugly head real easily if I'm not careful. Weak processor and slow-ish emmc also are prevalent.

(this is just me rambling, not taking a stab at you)

That said, even if the hardware was beefier on release, this thing would still be pretty unpleasant to use right now. The big hurdles that make this unusable on a daily basis are all software. Your average consumer would have felt cheated if they had to pay $300 for a phone that breaks the Firefox UI when you switch from portrait to landscape then back. Or takes 20+ seconds to open the Aisleriot(Solitaire) flatpak. Or crashes when you try to peruse the app store (of which 90% of apps are not usable for various reasons). Mobian still doesn't have the flashlight or autorotate functionality that Manjaro has.

For comparison, I bought a cheap (on sale for $50) unlocked Android phone (Asus Zenfone Live L1) that has similar, maybe even worse specs (1GB RAM/16GB storage, similar CPU), and that thing runs circles around the pinephone for basic usage like websites. Until they have a baseline of performance like that, I feel like going for the best HW they could for $150-200 was the best choice.

Mine is an older HW revision that even has a hardware flaw so it can't charge properly while plugged into a USB-C dock. Unless I buy a replacement mobo, my pinephone can only run on battery while docked for convergence.

BUT I LOVE MY PINEPHONE. That's the crazy thing. Pine64 is figuring things out as they go, and because of software improvements, it is gradually evolving on a weekly basis even. When I first got this thing it took multiple tries to flash Mobian onto it bc the installer was in beta I think. It didn't have camera functionality, or bluetooth, wifi was unstable, video-output via USB-C didn't work (anything but charging didn't work with the usb port actually), Firefox didn't work. Gnome Web took a full minute to load a web page.

If anything Im having a blast just using it and being pleasantly surprised when x issue is suddenly fixed now.

[AndrewBlackmiller]

On one hand because stronger usually means more expensive ...and on the other hand I think we have to do something against these "planned obsolescence" problem.

If we use our resources - a mobile phone for instance - with more care we safe our environment in the long term and a lot of money in the short term -> win -win situation
For instance - would you buy a new car if just by doing a service it will run as fast as new?

Trust me, I know what's possible just by doing the right Software-Optimizations, because I've done this in the past many times on my dally job.
You wouldn't believe what's possible

And maybe you guys can add some further ideas to move forward in that direction?

Best regards from Vienna,
Andrew >:o)

This is the 'Pinephone Hardware' subforum;
I will gladly use the 'Pinephone Software' subforum to make any Software Optimization recommendations I have there.

I won't be going into the 'Pinephone Software' subforum and telling threads that are pursuing software solutions &/or alternatives that hardware is the only acceptable question to be asked nor that Hardware is the only answer.

Some of us want to do things with Linux Phones that the Pinephone will never be able to do because of the hardware limitations no matter how well you optimize the software.  Some of us want true convergence and want to be able to do advanced containers, virtualization, & more which do require software but also require hardware that is expandable and it is not just about the Central Processing Unit (CPU) core speed...

--- snip ---

Hi nodoze,

I was thinking about an appropriate answer to your somewhat harsh reply but I think the last 5 posts gave you the right answers, better than I could do it

But let me add just one important thing:
We have to see a "linux mobile" as a compound of hardware AND software. To get one part more powerful is just half or less of the equation.
BTW - this is why it absolutely makes sense to discuss software-optimization related to hardware in the hardware-thread

And again. I think we can get the Pinephone on actual specs to a level of usability that is on par with much "faster" and "more advanced" mobile phones running Android or iOS. And I also agree that any future "linux mobile" will benefit from any optimizations done now!

So lets stop talking about "powerful hardware" if we just have to kick the Bits to do their job faster ))

Best regards,
Andrew

(BTW: I'm not a native speaker so please excuse my poor English :| )

[nas]

So lets stop talking about "powerful hardware" if we just have to kick the Bits to do their job faster ))

But for a bit of fun, here's a completely unscientific geekbench4 ranking of hardware.

single core 1948 multi core 6305 - qualcomm sd835 (fxtecpro1)
single core 1751 multi core 6545 - unisoc t7510 (~jingpad)
single core 1273 multi core 3031 - rockpro64 rk3399 (pinebookpro)
single core 0877 multi core 2256 - raspberry pi4
single core 0848 multi core 2228 - quartz64 rk3566 (~pinephone2)
single core 0774 multi core 1776 - freescale imx8m-mini (~librem5)
single core 0528 multi core 1412 - rock64 rk3328
single core 0428 multi core 1017 - pine64 a64 (pinephone)

A 2x speed-up would be handy in the next version but since that's years away, will have to hope for further software optimization.

[pagesix1536]

If Nokia could make the N900 with a single core CPU at 600mhz and 256 MB of RAM run well with Linux and Xwindows, I don't see why the Pinephone with 4-cores at 1.2ghz and 3GB of RAM couldn't perform well. All about getting rid of the bloat in the OS/kernel, and good drivers that work with the hardware.

(Yes, I'm aware the N900 had a dedicated CPU to handle the camera/audio/telephony as well as a GPU that most likely had highly-optimized but closed-source drivers.)

[Lord Windy]

The Pinephone is more than powerful enough. I've been using a variant of the Awesome desktop on the phone and it is running more than fast enough for me. It was the Gnome and KDE desktop environments that I've had the issue with. That has been brought up by basically everyone at this point.

I'd actually like to see something weaker as I want battery life for days. I bought the Pinephone after the Keyboard was confirmed back with the Manjaro edition as my dream has been to own one of those ultra portable tiny laptops - similar to the Pandora/Pyra. I don't need amazing performance, I just want a 20 hour battery life.

[AndrewBlackmiller]

The Pinephone is more than powerful enough. I've been using a variant of the Awesome desktop on the phone and it is running more than fast enough for me.  It was the Gnome and KDE desktop environments that I've had the issue with. That has been brought up by basically everyone at this point.

Yes - both desktops - KDE & Gnome - have their edges and korners at the moment

Beside my PinePhone I've converted a Google Nexus 5 to "Ubuntu Touch" and I've to admit its the most stable and also the fastest linux mobile-system at the moment  IMHO. I've tested the Nexus in "convergence"-mode also and it works pretty well (using the rigth hdmi-Adapter ).

So whats the difference between "Nexus/Ubuntu Touch" and "PinePhone/Gnome/KDE"?
I think one major diference is that canonical did a lot of integration/optimization on hardware/driver-software for "Ubuntu Touch".
Its not the hardware that makes it faster - Nexus 5 and UbuntuPhone are on par related to hardware-specification.

So maybe we should do the same for "PinePhone/Gnome/KDE" .....
Any other ideas how to move forward from here?

Best regards,
Andrew >:o)

[Schugy]

I own a pandora handheld and the easiest way to speed up the phone should be WiFI and storage.

5 GHz 433 MBit WiFi result in 245 MBits real world transfer speed.

I also own 2 UFS cards and damn these things are fast and energy efficient. I know the cards are hard to get and dual slots for UFS/SD may not fit
into the phone. (e)UFS uses LVDS and is full duplex (read/write). SD cards are RF jamming devices and not worth a $.
At least the eMMC should be replaced by eUFS for more snappiness. Even the oldest standard that is not EOL should be sufficient. E.g. reading huge picture galleries while simultaneously writing the thumbnails would be so much faster. The same is true for browsing with Firefox or the installation of new packages.

[lacriz]

I've been using a variant of the Awesome desktop on the phone and it is running more than fast enough for me.

Hi,
I would very much like to try the awesome desktop. Do you mean this here? https://awesomewm.org/

I am currently using arch + phosh, do you think I could replace phosh with the 'variant of the awesome desktop' you mentioned?

[ryo]

I've been using a variant of the Awesome desktop on the phone and it is running more than fast enough for me.

Hi,
I would very much like to try the awesome desktop. Do you mean this here? https://awesomewm.org/

I am currently using arch + phosh, do you think I could replace phosh with the 'variant of the awesome desktop' you mentioned?

I think lacriz meant SXMO, which is a tiling window manager for Pinephone.
Though currently it only seems to be running on postmarketOS.