PinePhone: PostmarketOS Community Edition
postmarketos.org
postmarketos.org
That said, the Pine-* devices are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream. The PineTime watch back-face is not glued on, even .. but that just makes it a perfect hacker statement! Something so very satisfying about having a device so open, the case doesn't even close. ;P
That said, the Pine-* are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream."
Perhaps "ready for mainstream" is overrated (from a user perespective). Consider that many of the supposedly "ready for mainstream" proprietary hardware products that consumers have been continually fed for decades are laden with problems. Consumer routers are the first example that comes to mind but there are problems with almost everything, no matter how slick the marketing. The sellers try to block consumers from fixing anything and convince the buyers that they need constant "updates" that can only come from one source: the seller. They are effectively trying to destroy the concept of ownership.
This is a little unfair to the other Pine* products. The PineTime has not been released. A development kit was released. Of course the backcover wasn't fully polished. The finished products from PineTime are more polished, while still retaining a degree of hackability that is unheard of in most of the modern tech world.
I'll admit there's a bit to go still in terms of "ready for mainstream" software, I wouldn't buy one of these for my mom still, but that's pretty much a) linux's problem, and b) _why_ I bought it in the first place... (I've got several MacBooks and iDevices for all the stuff where I'm happy enough with Steve's ghost telling me "You're holding it wrong" when it's not doing things the way I wanted/expected...)
My intention was not to slag off Pines' efforts. Its just, once you see a generation raised on iThings and pocketRobots, trying to get them interested in the hacky nature of Pine, as a platform, is an interesting task.
I think the point is that it has to excel over the iPhone/Android/laptop classes in some, significant, manner, or else it just gets sniffed at. This is an important thing to recognise in the quest for platform adoption.
That isn't to say that PineDevices are not productive, more useful. They clearly are, and the fact of their quality competitiveness is refreshing. The PineTime watch is actually quite a cute thing to wear. I love being able to write python code on it, but its also comfortable hardware.
But as a platform, it will need the right attitude regarding the open nature of things. This takes a responsibility not common in most adopters of technological tools these days - and with each generational release from the tethers of last years consumer toy, the task becomes harder... or lets just say, more interesting for some of the hackers who want to make great leaps in a new arena.
Someone will write the killer PineDevice app, which won't work anywhere else ..
If you see mainstream domination as the goal, e.g. to surpass Android or iOS, you'll probably be disappointed. I see it as giving those of us that care about privacy, security and openness a way to opt out of the Apple/Google almost-duopoly, just as Linux distributions do for the Apple/Microsoft one on the desktop.
For me, it only needs to be just about good enough to use as a daily driver, for now. I know I will be buying the shit out of one when these are available in July.
I messaged friends yesterday saying "I'm totally gonna get one of these, and hope _so_ much I get stopped and asked if they can see my phone next time I cross a US border..." I'd be all like "Sure! Plug this into your Cellebrite UFED! Knock yourselves out!!!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900
Imagine if they'd just kept it around and upgraded it in hardware and software gently as a low-ish priority. It was already fantastic. Given security updates it's still better than any droid and less icky than any apple phone.
It turns out that I really wanted this N900 instead, I just didn't know it and at the time was too young to know about it.
There was some sort of attempted revival product called the Neo900 but it looks like it is dead / not updated any more. [1]
In the meantime, I will definitely order a PinePhone once they are in general availability and not pre-orders (sorry but Fxtec burned me so bad to get the Pro1 that I've learned my lesson RE: mobile device pre-orders), and I definitely will if Pine produces a physical keyboard for the PinePhone.
Definitely interested in adding Pine's take on keyboards to my PinePhone.
( https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2955-community-buildsailfi... )
So, this Fxtec Pro1 is super intriguing! I'm sorta stuck on iOS right now because my entire family uses it I would screw up their Messages game if I was on a different platform.
Also, people have PostmarketOS running on the N900. Sure, it's an ancient device, but that still cool.
The fact is that the market doesn't care, and even Android's case, it is more of an implementation detail than anything else.
Tomorrow ART and ChromeOS can eventually be running on Zircon and no regular consumer would notice the difference.
I think it could have been sort of the "Thinkpad" of smartphones, used by professionals and geeks.
Other than some units on display across Saturn and Media Markt stores, I never actually have met anyone using them.
I was using Symbian Belle at the time and that was a deciding factor just buying an Android handset, as time came for a new device.
Better than Nokia expected, which may not be a high bar though.
https://www.slashgear.com/nokia-n900-has-sold-well-in-excess...
Anyway, Microsoft was not interested in Linux on cell phones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19gryM8n9kU
This device will be a nice portable computer, so I can travel lightly with a phone, but use it as full blown desktop anywhere I can get hold of a monitor and an USB keyboard/mouse, without having to downgrade my user experience to Android.
The Librem 5 might be closer performance-wise; I'd be curious to see how it performs docked. Regardless though, both devices have accelerated development of real mobile Linux DEs, and I'm grateful for that.
Exciting times!
I would run my code editor locally and sync the files to the remote box.
Using my phone with external monitor/keyboard/mouse as a thin client seems fairly reasonable in 2020!
Which is not to say it’s unusable, but keep in mind this is a $150 phone and the software is still a work in progress as well. If you’re expecting to use something like this docked as a workstation... well, it’s worth tempering your expectations.
Are you sure? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8
I mean... I have a Braveheart edition PinePhone sitting right next to me, and it's usable, but I don't think I'd want to do even light development work on it. Not because an editor wouldn't run just fine on it (it probably would) but because of all the documentation I'd need to look up online during that process.
It's just sluggish enough with a few webpages open to make that sound pretty unpleasant. But fair, "unacceptably slow" may have been a bit hyperbolic.
(As it stands, I do have a PineTab on preorder, so... I’ll likely be giving it a try then, and that has nearly the same hardware as I understand.)
Is there an inherent quality of iOS devices that make them unsupportable.
Any given gen of iOS device has, arguably, more devices than any given flavor of Android devices (more fragmentation in Android platform) so in theory it would be more fruitful and impactful to extend the use of iOS devices (if at all possible) yet, this is not what we see. Leading me to think that Apple deliberately makes iOS devices unthinkerable.
This, to me, leads to the conclusion that buying iOS devices is unethical as the only long term alternative for iOS device is to have it recycled while android devices may retain the chance for reuse into the future.
When you say inherit do you mean the Apple Axx CPU can only only execute the iOS kernel and nothing else? Then the answer is no.
https://fossbytes.com/linux-based-mobile-postmarketos-on-iph...
But for all practical purposes it cannot run anything but iOS and any discussions about running an aftermarket OS is purely academic.
The project you referred to had a follow-up in late april: https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/22/linux-with-wayl....
Calling the project (or any project, really) "purely academic" with the implication that it will never evolve is nonsense. Like many other projects it's of course done for the hell of it, but so is most hobby/open-source projects, and yet many evolve into something much greater. There's plenty of reverse-engineering projects out there that have brought open life into closed hardware.
The question is just whether or not there's enough people interested for it to happen.
Do you honestly believe the average consumer, or even the average enthusiastic is going to be running Linux on the latest iPhones anytime soon? Apple is dedicated to locking iOS, and probably MacOS, more every hardware iteration. And by running anytime soon I mean usable LTE, GPS, Bluetooth and Wifi.
Case in point: postmarketOS and UBPorts, as well-established and very serious projects with plenty of traction, are not in the hands of the average enthusiast, and still has ways to go to handle even the Pinephone properly.
The problem I see in long term is: if there's no inherent property of iPhones that make them unhackable by aftermarket efforts I don't understand why there aren't more efforts or more success. Any given model of iPhone has many more units out in the market than almost any given model of android device that is officially supported by aftermarket efforts (ie. LineageOS, postmarketOS, etc).
I have a netbook with GMA 500, it has closed source driver for XOrg 1.9 (ten years old) and corresponding kernel [1]. I bought it because Intel graphic cards had open source drivers, not this one. Later I thought as you - someone would hack it, yes, kind of - there is a version without hardware acceleration. Eventually I was living with outdated XOrg server and patching driver to support updated kernel [2]. That I think is about as good as LineageOS - much better start than iPhone.
Hacking out of necessity is a bad idea. If not PinePhone I would definitely check open source drivers support in Replicant [3]. iPhone is too far away (and its users like iOS).
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Controller_Hub#GMA_500_...
2: http://sergeykish.com/linux-poulsbo-emgd
3: https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/DeviceS...
So what's the point of running it on hardware designed to address the issue of running FOSS alongside a blackbox baseband?
If you don't need the baseband, what's the usecase that a Chromebook form factor doesn't solve?
The exercise of maintaining an open baseline is valuable. Also, having a development platform is valuable.
Some modern phones keep the blackbox baseband isolated on a non DMA bus, such as usb. In those cases, you simply don't t rust the baseband as anything but a packet forwarder, and enforce full TLS/VPN at a low level in the operation system.
It is limited, though. No argument there.
It's a very cool device, and while it's def not a daily driver for most people, it's a ton of fun to use and seems to be improving quickly.
This is silly, but I always get confused about whether "group sms" == mms. Maybe group sms was mms years ago, and things have since changed.
I love trying these alternative OSes (I even thought Windows Phone was great!), and really hope I can use one as my daily driver in the near-future.
"The LTE modem on the PinePhone is a ‘black box’, and runs its own Linux system internally. This includes all the proprietary modules (blobs) needed to run the actual cellular radios. However, this system is almost entirely isolated from the main system running on the A64 SoC. The only data contacts between A64 and modem are USB connection for data and I2S connection for audio. All data going in or out of the modem must go over these connections.
There is no RAM or flash storage shared between the systems. In short, unless you explicitly send data to the modem, it is never in contact with the blobs running inside it. The modem cannot send any data to the phone unless phone is willing to receive it (that’s the basics of USB)." [0]
That's in addition to the kill switches.
There might be other blobby aspects of the SoC/peripheral support story that the Librem5 gets better than the PinePhone, I haven't dug deep there.
[0] https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straigh...
Hmm, it will be interesting if there are any major things than need to be fixed with the v1.2 PCB. There were quite a few things fixed between 1.1 & 1.2.
Like the other guy said with SD card you won't have an issue with storage.
Percussive Maintenance Phone?
Pimp My Pandemic?