10-23-2023, 04:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-23-2023, 04:57 PM by Kevin Kofler.)
(10-23-2023, 03:47 PM)PineFone Wrote: I'd have to look it up again, but there's a way to do this with a carrier less android and I'm assuming the same trick can be done with the PP.Sure, you can do VoIP without a mobile carrier, if you have another network available, which realistically means WiFi. Anything other than mobile data or WiFi (or Bluetooth or USB, but neither is long-range enough to be reasonable on the go) is not supported by the PinePhone out of the box and also not likely to be widely deployed any time soon.
(10-23-2023, 03:47 PM)PineFone Wrote: Calls made near hot spots only is less of an issue in suburban/urban areas.Nonsense. Even in this capital city (Vienna, Austria), public WiFi coverage is lackluster at best, and you also need to click through a captive web portal after connecting to the city WiFi, so forget auto-connect. Being only reachable for calls when connected to a WiFi is just not workable here. I doubt it works that much better where you live.
(10-23-2023, 03:47 PM)PineFone Wrote: While a PP would no longer be reliable as a daily driver, using VoIP in hotspots only for calls plus Reticulum's Sideband messaging service (similar to meshtastic, but not as far along in development) for SMS beyond hot spots because it can use wifi, bluetooth and ham radio signals to carry messages is a patch work replacement scenario I've been looking at.There is no way this is going to be widely deployed. PinePhone users alone are way too few to build a mesh network. (And PinePhone users running Genode OS are even fewer. Almost all of us run GNU/Linux. So do I.)
Really, carrier support is indispensable, there is no workaround. If all carriers in your country desupport the PinePhone, your only option to continue using it is to move to another country. At least in Austria, I am not aware of any carrier that does not work with the PinePhone.
