Pine64 Smarphone Spare Parts
pine64.com
pine64.com
Reparable electronic devices are one of the few levers that can have a huge impact to create a sustainable future.
Obviously it will require to rethink our economies, like reducing the taxes on labor to enable small repair shops to bloom everywhere.
Linux + a reparable device is the only way to stop e-waste!
+ ability to run the latest distributions on 10+ years old devices.
Installed Linux Mint 18 XFCE a while ago and recently upgraded to 20. Now it runs really well: I can watch YouTube, run VS Code, compile stuff, do some basic statistical analyses, etc.
If it weren't for Linux, this machine would end up as waste and I would have to buy something new.
The first time I did a clean install and the second I did a dual boot with Catalina (just for fun, Catalina runs like molasses). So I definitely encourage you to try with Mint.
But maybe it would run (walk?) windows 10 too, I haven't tried. I doubt so, though. :)
Just think of how many old cellphones that don't receive updates anymore could become media players, portable terminals, IoT consoles, instrumentation interfaces, retrogaming consoles, in-vehicle dash screens, etc. if only the manufacturers released the information necessary to install much faster and open operating systems and write device divers for them. Each one of these old phones recycled that way would be one less phone thrown away.
The Pine 64 isn't anything special hardware wise, actually it's way inferior to most popular phones (but runs much more optimized software, and no preinstalled junkware), however, being able to customize it to the point one day I could give it new life by buying say a faster mainboard instead of a complete cellphone then ditching the old one in a landfill, makes a killer argument in favor of Open Source software and hardware.
However, I’m much less optimistic about the use cases you list:
“media players, portable terminals, IoT consoles, instrumentation interfaces, retrogaming consoles, in-vehicle dash screens”
As far as I can see, there is essentially zero demand for any of these beyond hobbyists, since they can all be done much better by one’s current phone.
For me, the big reason for open hardware is that Android and iOS are nowhere near meeting the potential for what personal computing could be and we need the freedom to develop alternatives.
This isn’t really true. The only general-purpose interface for the PinePhone with any future to it (since UBPorts is based on decaying 2014-era software that even Ubuntu has abandoned) is Phosh, which has not yet been optimized. So much of Phosh’s tech depends on upstream GNOME packages whose devs aren’t terribly interested in optimizing for slower devices.
Also, a modern smartphone relies on a ton of battery optimizations to be reliable for everyday use, and that work has barely started on the PinePhone.
Which is to say this problem has nothing to do with licenses or repairability.
It does seem that taxing wealth directly rather than distortion-prone measures like income or capital gains could be the best response to the increasingly "gilded" age we're enduring.
Would be very interesting to hear some practital experiences!
Mobian has Anbox functional (though it is still experimental), so you can install apps on that. WhatsApp and Signal with without play services so that shouldn't be an issue.
Obviously you do have a use-case; please don't think I'm trying to say it's invalid, I just honestly don't understand what it would be and would really like to be enlightened.
Does MMS make it easy to have a group conversation, or does everyone have to remember to do the equiv or "reply-all" (add everyone's number in) when sending a message to the group?
Do you get free SMS/MMS included in your plan? (My American Aunt has always insisted SMS was obscenely expensive and refused to use it to communicate.)
Do you get Data as standard with the plan? (Eg is it that people can't easily use WhatsApp because they don't have data when out and about or is it that people just won't agree which IP product to use in the first place?)
Really appreciated; thank you :)
- MMS has been free and unlimited for the last decade or so on most major carriers (maybe more like ~7 years but we got it waaay before unlimited data made a comeback).
- Data comes standard most of the time, most people have at least a gig or two a month, going all the way up to unlimited. It’s not a problem of data use (since you’d be hard pressed to burn through two gigs of text and meh resolution images), but it’s that MMS is a lowest common denominator. Everyone has it, so you know you can reach them (except for the 10% of the time a message doesn’t go through and you don’t know about it :P). I’m in the US, and I don’t know anyone who uses something other than MMS or iMessage (which is invisible and acts exactly the same) for most of their communication. Some of us have Discord but we only use it on desktop. I think my parents may use Facebook Messenger for something.
MMS never seemed to catch on in the UK and never seems to be included in the free allowances which probably doesn't help (eg I have unlimited calls, sms, >100gb data but MMS still costs me 50p each). I think the only time I've seen it used in years is very occasionally when I ask an iPhone user to send me a photo and they don't realise I'm on Android and won't automatically have it funnelled via Apple, so instead I get badly compressed unreadable photos of printed letters.
...until you can't, as this thread shows. This is also part of what's keeping me from using my PinePhone as a daily driver.
Facebook Messenger is like iMessage except you can generally assume everyone is on it. The main caveat is that you get the best experience if everyone is friends on Facebook, so it works great for friend/family convos but poorly for stuff like online dating (mostly SMS, Snapchat, and iMessage) and coordinating loosely attached groups of people (GroupMe used to be popular for this, but I haven’t seen it in awhile, iMessage also gets used for this but strongly excludes half of all people).
It depends on the client, but yes, MMS makes it pretty easy to go.
> Do you get free SMS/MMS included in your plan? (My American Aunt has always insisted SMS was obscenely expensive and refused to use it to communicate.)
Most common plans that I know of have unlimited SMS/MMS/Phone calls (unless you get a really cheap one).
> Do you get Data as standard with the plan? (Eg is it that people can't easily use WhatsApp because they don't have data when out and about or is it that people just won't agree which IP product to use in the first place?)
Data is generally standard with a plan. SOme only give you a limited allotment, and some give you some version of "unlimited" (i.e. if you use too much they will start to throttle you).
It was for a long time, and still is with some services. I used a tracphone flip-phone for a while, and a single SMS is like half a minute of phone time IIRC.
I have a phone plan with a Sprint reseller that costs $6/month and still have unlimited texts. It's really rare for a plan to not include unlimited SMS, unless maybe it's prepaid.
MMS uses data though, and that can get expensive.
These days it's less than a penny per message for SMS, or just unlimited depending on the plan.
I know Signal can now, but can WhatsApp notify you of incoming messages without Play Services?
I really wish Pine64 would step in to help with these sort of base issues, or have a bug bounty for it.
[1] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/mautrix-whatsapp [2] https://fluffychat.im
For a daily driver, I literally just went out and picked up a new Android device this weekend because I can't see the Pinephone being able to take on that role for me from a software standpoint for quite some time or with this generation of hardware.
I don't have the first hand experience, but I was doing research on this very topic earlier today. https://www.github.com/nanu-c/axolotl looked promising. (ubuntu touch only)
As others have mentioned, anbox is another alternative.
I ended up going with the xcover pro instead, but I'm still highly considering getting a pinephone to do dev work on. There's exciting stuff to reinvent over here!
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/jl6q6w/pinephone_arr...
I’m never going to buy another Apple product. The first blow was being unable to install linux to “my” devices.
Firstly, I think it's now pretty clear that Apple (and others) provide products that have numerous restrictions after their purchase. You don't own the device in a completely divorced context, but instead you have an ongoing, unavoidable relationship with the vendor, and that includes a forced lifetime after which the device becomes unusable (for reasons other than actual hardware failure). This is not unique to Apple, although arguably they've moved to this model faster and further than others.
Secondly, there are reasons for this, and they're not solely about making more money out of you. For many (I think actually most) people, it's an acceptable trade-off. They get a good product experience, at least in part because of this ongoing relationship. For some people, that trade-off doesn't work. These people should not buy an iPhone, nor a Macbook, Apple Watch, or indeed many modern electronic products from many manufacturers.
I think it's worth explaining this trade-off: in concept, and in specific detail for popular products, so that non-technical people can make informed choices.
But both approaches are valid.
Linux is a kernel.
Concretely, I do trust google to use any data they can get of me. And probably keep this data mostly to themself, but who knows. And apple has maybe a bigger motive to keep their company image as privacy friendly, but I am not really buying into it either and in any case, as a non-US resident I do not trust hardware under the direct thumb of NSA and co.
So I want open Hardware and Pine seems to be the best, there is right now.
Look at something like GrapheneOS for a reasonable (in my opinion) take on de-Googling phones for which Google, somewhat ironically, has added important hardware security features: https://grapheneos.org
Purism is better: they pursue FSF certification for their phone and develop software empowering the user.
> They know what it takes to keep it secure.
I have yet to see anything properly supporting this. There's still malware for phones, and I don't trust either of the app stores.
In addition, Google especially -- but also Apple -- either exfiltrate way more info off of phones then I am comfortable with, or do a poor job of preventing others from doing so [0].
Personally, I would trust PMOS or a hand rolled installation of Alpine more than I trust either Google or Apple on both security and privacy.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/23/apple-ios...
> There's still malware for phones, and I don't trust either of the app stores
I feel like it is to do with scale more than anything. There are millions if not billions of people using iPhones. There are millions of apps in the App store. If for example, Ubuntu made a phone that was handed out to billion+ people, I expect worse if not complete catastrophe.
I know it is weird to say a closed door's company is more trustworthy than an open one, I support out-in-open development of things like OpenSSH and cryptolibs; I just don't see it in a relative sense. All other options IMO are worse. Pine64 and Ubuntu would sell out instantly if I had a few million dollars to throw at them. Amazon essentially has Canonical out on a leash - Amazon integration in Ubuntu is absolutely cancerous. I imagine the entire Ad-tech industry of the size of a Aircraft carrier and Pine64/Ubuntu the size of a toy boat, they would buy people out left and right to get access to large number of users if Pine64 gets traction.
Instead of harping on the negatives, if Pine64 guys can get huge amounts of funding (and employ smart people), have bounties for security bugs, and can win my trust with custom silicon and hardware encryption, prove themselves to be against Ad-tech industry, put customer privacy first, etc; I am onboard!
> I feel like it is to do with scale more than anything. There are millions if not billions of people using iPhones. There are millions of apps in the App store. If for example, Ubuntu made a phone that was handed out to billion+ people, I expect worse if not complete catastrophe.
Indeed. I do think that Linux based phones are definitely not there yet for the average user. I would feel confident setting up and using something on the PinePhone for myself, but would not trust millions/billions of people to do so, with the current software options.
> I know it is weird to say a closed door's company is more trustworthy than an open one, I support out-in-open development of things like OpenSSH and cryptolibs; I just don't see it in a relative sense. All other options IMO are worse. Pine64 and Ubuntu would sell out instantly if I had a few million dollars to throw at them.
Ubuntu for sure I agree with. I do still use an Ubuntu derivative, but only because System76 has shown themselves to be willing to make changes from base Ubuntu where necessary.
I've participated a small amount in the Pine64 community, and honestly get the sense that they are in the business to push for better/more open hardware.
> Instead of harping on the negatives, if Pine64 guys can get huge amounts of funding (and employ smart people), have bounties for security bugs, and can win my trust with custom silicon and hardware encryption, prove themselves to be against Ad-tech industry, put customer privacy first, etc; I am onboard!
Here's hoping. I think it is a possibility, and quite likely the best possible outcome for consumer electronics.
I like GrapheneOS a lot as a concept, no Pixel hardware to test with though.
Is there actually an easy way to do this? There are so many places in the Android sources where uses of google servers, services, etc. are baked-in. Even one of the "de-Googled" Chromium forks has to do some hacky stuff to ensure requests to google servers generated by internal request don't pass through. I mean, it's not technically impossible, but I suspect you mean something much narrower than just "never connects to a google server unless you explicitly request it to".
[0] https://e.foundation [1] https://lineageos.org/ [2] https://grapheneos.org/
Maybe the e folks have done all this thorough de-Googling, but the Google developers clearly write Android without thinking twice about tying some piece of code to their servers and systems. It's deeply ingrained in both existing code and Google devs' mentality, and quite depressing if one is serious about de-Googling in the sense of never connecting to a Google server unless by explicit action of the user.
This is why phrases like "completely de-Googled" are frustrating and likely misleading - superficial de-Googling is possible, but I haven't yet seen evidence of deep de-Googling on any Android derivative.
I'm heartened to read what's now at: https://grapheneos.org/#never-google-services , but there's a major sentence that's aspirational rather than reflecting reality: "Text-to-speech, voice-to-text, non-GPS-based location services, geocoding, accessibility services, etc. are examples of other open Android APIs where we need to develop/bundle an implementation based on existing open source projects."
Also given the pace of Android development, maintaining patches that strip out Google references will be a non-trivial endeavor. Let alone finding every new insertion of access to a Google system.
After diving into this issue, I came away more convinced that we need projects like the PinePhone and mobile-capable versions of Linux applications/environments to succeed if we want more control over what our devices are doing and to whom they provide data. Unfortunately, I suspect it is still quite some time away before we can reliably do relatively simple stuff on an open source-based phone as a daily driver that is table stakes on Android/iphone today.
I can disable them in kernel via DT overlay and that's it. There's no magic in it and the phone will know about as much about your location as your typical laptop.
TLDR they have the budget, but no actual reason to take good care of your data.
> Right to Verify: Society has the freedom to inspect the source of all software used, and can run it as they wish, for any purpose (Software Freedom).
This is an age old question raised by proponents of Richard Stallman's vision of what software distribution should be like. I strongly oppose this view, and here is why:
- Software that is critical to security, such as cryptographic libraries and protocols should be open source. At some point, trust needs to be placed on someone. These open source libs can be modified by Apple and we wouldn't know. Ok, then, the argument should be that Apple should open source iOS. Oh...but Apple can do things at kernel level. Ok, force Apple to open source the kernel. Oh...but Apple can trick us with microcode level code. Ok, force Apple to open source that too ~~! This chain can go on to the point where you can just say - I am building the phone myself from scratch. Then, you may ask, why should I trust Pine64's hardware? You can't just arbitrarily stop at some point in this chain of trust!
- Software that makes the Clock app tick and the Weather app give weather information has no business in the Right to Verification. A game that keeps you engaged and Photos app that edits your photos - with everything opensource, the world would be worse off. Innovation would cease. Free low-quality stuff everywhere.
- Users should own the data in an ideal world. I would hold the keys to my own data but then I realize how misinformed, incompetent and careless the general public is with their own keys. Most people can defend their household and their belongings, but when it comes to technology and abstract concepts - it would be a total chaos if every user had to keep their own key safe. I would pay for someone to keep it secure for me (sounds insane, I know but don't we hire security guards?). If that's true, then I might as well pay Apple to keep my stuff secure. When you buy a door lock, you're already placing trust in the vendor who manufactured the lock.
And you shouldn’t. There should be a possibility to verify at every single level, even if it might require special tools. Independent verification is the key to trust. But users can also choose to stop at any point if they so wish.
> - Software that makes the Clock app tick and the Weather app give weather information has no business in the Right to Verification.
Actually, such software should be verifiable and open, too, because otherwise it will have too much power over user, just like any software. It’s basically what Stallman says, and every time users start to use proprietary software in any form, it starts to do things against their will. Power corrupts.
> with everything opensource, the world would be worse off. Innovation would cease. Free low-quality stuff everywhere
I do not see how you came to this conclusion. A lot of free software is of higher quality than the proprietary alternatives. Care to elaborate? You are also using word ‘free’ as if it’s about price. Free software is not gratis.
> but when it comes to technology and abstract concepts - it would be a total chaos if every user had to keep their own key safe.
I fully agree here. The solution however is not to choose an almighty emperor that has infinite power over you, but to allow users to choose whom they trust and change their mind. I trust Purism with my hardware and software, but I also have the power to change my mind and pay someone else to develop my software, since it’s FLOSS.
That said, your viewpoint's validity is dependent upon being able to trust the hardware manufacturer of your device.
The chain of custody is a huge issue for hardware manufacturers, as Supermicro learned firsthand: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/10/07/bloombergs-big-...
I agree with the rest of your comment though.
I don't really see a debunking anywhere...
A debunking would be people in affected companies and within the U.S. Intelligence community going on record as saying this story is false.
If anything, the total lack of comment lends credibility here.
I wouldn’t expect the intelligence agencies to do so.
If it wasn’t false, there would be clear physical evidence by now.
It is false.
I've got an unpopular view about your lifestyle: this choice was a bad idea.
If any of these don't hold true, then I'd rather not use the latest shiny-app, fall back to a set of reasonable apps (maps, messaging, camera... I know that even these can be difficult on pine at the moment...) and only run software I can trust to do what I want and nothing else. That last bit "and nothing else" is really key.
Personally, I have come to hate interacting with android and ios devices lately because it always feels like they are trying to make me do something and as if they are trying to extract information from me, not the other way around. Very similar for the web by the way, which I also use less and less.
Essentially, modern smartphones feel like they're constantly working against me. They are powerful tools for sure, or at least they should be. But tools don't work against you. You can misuse them and hurt yourself, but that's not what's happening with smartphones.
These devices are actively trying to harm me (my mental health and my concentration at the very least) because the business models that produced them are based on that. Yes, even for apple. Their OS is much, much less like that than android, but iOS is nothing without the apps, and those largely follow the same pattern.
If an Adtech company can keep your phone secure, but sells your behavior profile, would you be happy?
I do want my phone to be such a thing.
The open source community simply hasn’t done what it takes to build a trustworthy, and usable end-user operating system.
We need to close the gap, and in order to do that, we need hardware.
To me it just sounds like learned helplessness but I don't even agree with the premise that we have been helpless. We have a thriving PC ecosystem with Linux and BSDs, most of which I would consider no less secure than my iPhone; in fact, those are the platforms on which we backup our private data.
The issue has been the incredibly fragmented landscape of mobile computing. The free mobile ecosystem has never had the chance to mature because it did not have a reliable foundation (like PC-compatible desktops[0]) to continue building upon. Android too suffers from it, and now Google is trying adopt mainline Linux[1]. Practically, developing a mobile device/OS has been a Sisyphean task.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-outlines-plan...
Disassembly is fairly easy, and it can be faster than using a third party service if you already have a few necessary tools. (screwdriver, hands, maybe soldering iron, tweezers, that's about it?)
Love this stuff!
Sent from my 2014/15 (low-end, year or two old parts then) Wileyfox.
It's not different with phones. Your 2 year old flagship phone does not have a laggy UI because it's slow. It's because people code for today's phone. And as long as enough people keep buying new phones, the software market will not optimize apps, since it's cheaper not to. And as long as software needs ever more resources, people will continue to buy new phones.
It's recursive. But it's not pure: the side effects are resource depletion, electronic waste, labour exploitation, increasing energy demand.
We won't escape this vicious cycle by perpetuating that very behaviour. And so maybe we can all do something about it, however little. Maybe by accepting a tiny bit of UI lag here and there.
The WordPerfect for Dos story fits in here: an awful lot of software seems to increase cycles (processing power used) without a proportional increase in utility.
Mind, this is a symptom really of how "we" have made a consumer society where companies can't exist without fitting into an ever tightening upgrade cycle -- that's incompatible with reducing energy use, reducing carbon footprint, reducing resource wastage and pollution.
We've made a sort of Skinner Box for society. It's not going well, but we've got enough distractions ...
It's easy pointing fingers and blaming circumstances. But I'm asking you: what would hurt exactly? Would your life be worse without the iPhone 12? Would you me less productive, would you be less happy?
If you're on Android, enable developer options and disable animations. Not only is your phone now many orders of magnitude more useable because it's responsive to your actions instead of being in store demo mode with UIs built for videos in marketing banners, you can also use an old phone very comfortably.
I use a five year old mid tier phone quite comfortably. There is the occasional app that stutters because it bakes in its own pointless animations or NIH smooth scrolling, but this is easily solved by not using broken software.
It's bad enough having a 300 ms animation. But when two, or even three get chained together, in addition to whatever lag there is for building the new UI elements, it's unbearable. And then there are the piss-poor apps on iPhone that seem to also depend on network data at some point, and delay all info display until the update comes through.
And the other issue with animations is that you're never sure when it's safe to tap a visible UI element, because it's not clear when that button that's sliding onto the screen will actually become active and responsive to user input. So the animation introduces tons of uncertainty about intersections too.
Animations should be capped to 100ms for any interaction. No chaining if one thing slides out, then another slides over. 100ms total, slide both those panels at once if you want to animate them, devs. Or bette yet, skip the stupid animation.
I agree -- mostly.
I think that animations can make some things more usable, in the form of drawing attention to a change happening on screen. I do agree whole-heartedly about the lengths of the animations though. If you're going to do an animation, make it fast enough I don't have to wait on it.
Personally, I'm interested in eventual higher specs because I think it enables more things down the line. For example, I have 2 GB of RAM right now (maybe 3 GB if I now decide to replace my mainboard). But what if Pine64 decides to put go the Raspberry Pi route, and suddenly add an option with 8 GB? Maybe you could use an LTE-enabled SIM card to build a cheap remote environmental monitoring node based on the PinePhone, since it's already got a camera, GPS, and the data link built in, and could access peripherals through the Convergence functionality. Who knows? Optional higher specs only extends the range of possibilities.
I do think that the 2->3 GB update was meaningful; I believe that using a web browser like the Firefox ESR version on my current Mobian version can eat up some RAM, so the extra GB actually difference for more compute-intensive tasks, but there's diminishing returns past this point for most cases. I personally agree that using 'need' to describe modern flagship specs is probably a little strong.
But then I realised that most of my limited phone use is instant messaging/video chat with family etc. and it wouldn't have WhatsApp, Telegram __might__ work but most of my contacts use WhatsApp and wouldn't switch for me.
So really I think I need to hear anecdotal reports of anbox working well on it, perhaps even for WhatsApp specifically before I bite the bullet. (I don't really want it as a toy/secondary phone, would just be a paperweight I think.)
It is my 'dream phone' though really I suppose - Linux & hardware repairable. OS is cool, but honestly I'd be happy just to see more Linux and designed for repair phones.
(Yes Apple phones are not the worst in that regard, but only because of sheer volume. Also, using multiple screw shapes, sizes, and lengths is pretty hostile/'authorised only' compared to Pine's single screw type.)
Good to hear re Telegram, thanks. Gah, I'm tempted again. I actually got as far as checkout before, but then tax and shipping was added last minute and it suddenly seemed not such a great idea on a whim, and to warrant more thought/reading reviews on which size RAM model to get.
Maybe 2021 will be the year of (my) Linux phone.. :)
A couple months ago I went through the hoops of getting anbox set up and working (which I confess involved a lot of mucking around with containers and package versions) and it was .. better than I expected?
WhatsApp and several apps besides installed and opened up fine, and first impressions were that it was surprisingly smooth, given how positively ... anemic the Pine's SoC is. Not pleasant, but definitely usable.
Unfortunately at the time, a bug in the software keyboard and wayland meant that all keyboard input was mangled, so I could never get as far as actually setting up whatsapp and actually testing it.
I remember seeing a month or so ago that Purism apparently fixed the bug in their software keyboard, so now it should work? I've been out of the country though, and haven't tested it yet.
There is a WhatsApp app on KaiOS (the FirefoxOS successor) which I think must be a PWA so I wonder if that could be repurposed to run on the PinePhone.
The KaiOS app looks interesting. It seems like they just repurposed the regular web version of WhatsApp, based on its limitations (no voice/video calling). It's a shame they can't just use local storage and let you use that by itself in a browser (without an android/ios device), but, oh well.
The downside are:
1. You have to host your Matrix server, so not everybody will be happy about it, or able to do so;
2. This relies on reverse-engineering the whatsApp web API, and is against WhatsApp TOS, you might get banned
3. You need another device with WhatsApp installed (an old android phone or a VM works fine).
Personally, this is the main reason why I refuse to use any of these proprietary apps, and I make this clear to my friends.
On the upside, if you go that route, you can go the extra mile and bridge facebook messenger, discord, telegram, and others to your Matrix account, and control everything on the go from a single app. I'm planning to work on push notifications for the Linux phone platform :)
Advantage of anbox approach is that it is the WhatsApp app, so audio/video calls (in theory) work too.
Matrix and bridges is cool though, I would like to set that up, it just unfortunately doesn't cover every use.
Still, the fact I can just drop any Linux aarch64 binary on it and run it without restrictions makes it very much worth it.
To be honest, for a daily driver, this is my wish list:
- At least 20 hours charge
- Browser
- Email client
- MP3 over bluetooth
- Phone audio
- Camera (video and audio)
- SMS
- Some form of IM that others can use (Matrix client would be nice)
- Tethering (via 4G)
- Native (gui) apps (Firefox OS was ok, but native would have been good)
> At least 20 hours charge
I think I get about 3 days on complete standby (with no sim card)
> Browser
Has had a usable browser for at least half a year.
> Phone audio
Works
> Camera
Its supposed to work on Manjaro at least.
> IM
Someone posted Matrix and Telegram work in a sibling thread
> Native apps
Pretty much everything is native afaik, excluding PWA/electron/emulation
Can't say about the rest, since I didn't really test it much with a SIM card :/
One thing I'll say though, it has(had?) problems with wakeup, ie. if it goes to sleep an alarm or timer wont wake it up.
I'm more interested in "realistic usage." Like you I haven't really tested it with a SIM card. Though just from a minute or two with the keyboard I found it impractical for carrying on a conversation over SMS so I don't think I could do a real test of the battery life anyway.
The on-screen keyboard is not actually the main problem, the main problem is just that the thing is very laggy compared to my flagship. I hit the wrong button and then the entire UI locks up and it can take a minute just to get back to the screen I wanted to be on. vs. on my flagship I can jump to the browser, do a search, jump back to messenger, send a message, jump to maps, look at something, and everything happens with typical subsecond responsiveness.
I think I rather buy it. Even building my desktop computer with little fragile parts I kept thinking I'd break it.