PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
pine64.com
pine64.com
Will banks offer something that doesn't require authentication via an app? Governments? App here meaning: Android or IOS.
One solution might be to provide a sandbox for Android apps, but you would still be locked into Google's app-store and require accepting their terms of use. And while your OS might be open and not user-hostile, all the apps everyone uses will still be the same.
I want a phone like this, but I don't see it changing the duopoly.
And people with a pinephone will have a great phone with a great OS, but with a shitty selection of apps.
That's part of the point of using Linux -- not creating an ecosystem from scratch.
Virtually all of my computing outside of my phone is already done on Linux devices, and the setup works for day-to-day computing. Support is good enough for me. What makes you think Pinephone going to have worse support than my current Linux desktop?
My hope with Pinephone is that a decent influx of Linux phone users will improve the quality of desktop software on Linux as well, since it forces devs to stop ignoring touch screens and to start thinking about responsive design. Ideally, the desktop versions of many apps should scale on interfaces like this without needing to be rewritten. But regardless, I'm still not particularly worried that my bank website is going to stop working.
(I use Linux exclusively on the desktop so I know what you are talking about, but it just isn't going to work on a phone in the same way).
Can also be done with Android app via Anbox: https://social.librem.one/@dos/105119691527269967
Currently, I don't use a banking app because I don't trust my bank to have that level of access to my phone with a proprietary app, and because my bank's app isn't particularly good in the first place. So I'm not really losing out by using Pinephone. In fact, I might have more functionality after switching, since Android development is a mess and on a Linux platform I might be tempted to build something quickly for myself that periodically pulls down the CSV data from my bank and does a few things with it.
I'm not saying that proprietary devs are going to start mass-building apps for this, I'm just saying that for a segment of the population, this may turn out not to be the problem you think it is.
----
Apps on my phone that I need replacements for:
- NewPipe
- Podcast app/music app
- Maps
- AndOTP
- Signal (and/or Matrix)
- Orgzly
- Good browser support
- Maybe a few misc utilities, probably something I'm forgetting
Do I have confidence that those apps or equivalents will be ported? Honestly, yes, I do. It would not take an insurmountable amount of work to build a Linux ecosystem that was more functional than my current phone setup.
- NewPipe > FreeTube, AudioTube
- Podcast app/music app > GNOME Podcasts, GPodder/Lollypop, Elisa
- Maps > PureMaps, GNOME Maps
- AndOTP > Keysmith, GNOME Authenticator, Two-Factor-Keychain, Numberstation
- Signal (and/or Matrix) > Axolotl / various, Nheko feels most complete currently
- Orgzly > Emacs maybe?
- Email > Geary (I still use Evolution though)
- Good browser support > Angelfish, desktop Firefox has been adapted nicely, once Chromiums Wayland supports matures it will also be a viable option (it’s very fast, but has annoying issues with text input currently)
You can find a bigger list of apps in https://www.plasma-mobile.org/. There is a few still missing that I will try to add later.
To develop apps for Android I have to set up an emulator, dev environment, learn a bunch of extra ropes, package everything. But I can throw together some bash scripts in a day, it really opens up the possibilities to solve a lot of my own problems.
Compare that with something like Windows Phone. Not having apps there is a serious problem, because I don't necessarily want to pull out C# and build an entire app to fix every issue I have.
I also use Linux with my bank. All banks I know of in my country require you to install an invasive "security software" (warsaw), even when you're using the web browser; some also require the phone app to be used as a second factor (for instance, one bank generates a dynamically changing QR code after you enter your password; you have to open its phone app and scan that QR code, which the phone app uses to generate a number to be typed below the QR code).
For the government, it's easier, you just have to install the ICP-Brasil root certificates (since they haven't been accepted yet by Mozilla).
It's not just that Linux isn't going to break the app store duopoly in your case, nobody is going to, because your government is effectively reinforcing that behavior. Forcing people to install root certificates on their devices is a problem on a whole 'nother level over just commercial incentives.
I just don't see how any technology or market-based solution will solve that problem. What happens when the government starts deciding that its authentication software won't work on rooted devices? What happens when the bank decides they need contact/GPS/camera permissions on your phone for "security"? I mean, that's not an app ecosystem problem at that point, it's just full-fledged required malware from your bank.
In the US (for all of the many, many faults with our trash-dump of a banking/federal ecosystem) at most I've only ever been asked to do 2FA using completely open standards, and the worst problem I've run into is that my bank's website won't load over some VPNs. I can even disable analytics on my bank's website and it'll still work.
But getting support on a Linux phone OS for what sounds to me at first blush like malware and spyware isn't really the best solution to what you're describing. The problem isn't that the malware isn't available on Linux, it's that you're forced to install malware on any of your computers, including iOS/Android.
The government isn't forcing anyone to install the ICP-Brasil root certificates; if you don't, the government websites will just show as untrusted in the browser (since they're signed by one of the CAs which chain to the ICP-Brasil root), but other than that they should work the same. Things might be different if you are authenticating your identity to the government with a certificate stored on a smartcard or USB key, since these certificates are also signed by a CA which chains to the ICP-Brasil root; I don't know if adding the ICP-Brasil root to the browser is necessary to make that work.
As for the banks, AFAIK the government doesn't mandate how they approach their online banking security; their use of that invasive "security software" is probably mostly path dependence at this point. It was very common to see computers infected with malware designed to steal online banking credentials from the browser, and that "security software" was supposed to block that kind of malware (for instance, by blocking the browser accessibility APIs whenever the user goes to an online banking site). Things are already better than in the past (that "security software" used to be Windows-only, for instance, so Linux users couldn't use online banking).
And yeah, all the bank apps I have on my phone require contact/location/camera permissions (the camera permission is unavoidable since they have to be able to read the QR code for PIX payments, and boleto bancário barcodes), and for at least one of these apps, I strongly suspect it's using the location permission for security purposes (the location indicator always lights up whenever I log into that app). It wouldn't surprise me at all if it also rejected rooted devices.
Sure, if you want an app for an open source platform like Linux, that may take a lot longer. I think there is already a common platform for this, but not many banks offer it.
My issue isn't that those apps aren't available for Linux. Even if they were available for Linux I wouldn't install a bank app with those permissions. I wouldn't install that on my primary Android phone (I guess there's a good likelyhood I couldn't, since I run rooted Android).
I'm not sure what I would do in that position. Maybe get a separate phone just for banking? I don't know, it's really tough. I sympathize.
But yeah, the Pinephone is not going to solve that problem, banks would need to move over to open standards for authentication through apps that are trustworthy. Just releasing their apps for a smartphone wouldn't be enough. At least any "security software" that can run on desktop Linux can also be run on your phone, assuming it doesn't freak out over the hardware, and assuming you're willing to tolerate it.
Is this meant to be taken literally? I would be surprised if e.g. mBank didn't work with SMS as the sole enabled 2FA.
Personally, I would rather have an extra Android phone for cases like this, as well as for the times when one has to make an actual phone call, though. I wouldn't expect the call quality on the pinephone to be anything to write home about, even if the software was all mature already.
On the other hand, I would not call the App Selection shitty, see https://LINMOBapps.frama.io.
For example, the Dutch government is slowly pushing everyone to either use their authentication app (for DigiD, the national digital government authentication service), or just stop using digital government services all together and just digitally mandate friends or family to handle your digital affairs. This latter option is of course targetted at the infirm and elderly. People who are able, literate, and have computers with modern OSes on them at the ready, but not one of the two smartphone OSes are considered to be such a minority that they can be safely ignored until they fold and get a cheap Android device.
I don't have a smartphone with Android or IOS, and I get nudged constantly when using DigiD (on a laptop or desktop computer) to get the app for authentication. My bank also nudges me at every transaction (which I do on a desktop computer with a stand-alone card-reader they provide). I can't turn off the nudging or make the services remember my choice, and always have to perform an extra click to authenticate. The upcoming digital government law goes a step further and mandates a level of assurance that can currently only be met by the app for accessing your healthcare records. This is of course not required: you are also welcome to go to the healthcare provider in person and ask for you dossier on paper. And when you do so, you will be nudged at every step of the way to consider using their app.
If this is a pattern that occurs worldwide, then smartphones that do not offer these apps have a very limited audience, and will remain curiosities for tinkerers and privacy conscious folk willing to make the trade-off (or even have a separate Android phone for the stuff mentioned above, for each adult member of their household).
We somehow managed to get through the phase where Microsoft Windows was a hard requirement on your computer for compatibility reasons (remember how South Korea was stuck with ActiveX way beyond its sell-by-date?), but now we're stuck here.
The argument that App stores must be regarded as public utilities because banks don’t support the web makes no sense. Banks can easily support the web.
Could not you use identity service from different EU country (based on eIDAS regulation)? Here in Czechia there is eIDAS-compatible identity provider that uses U2F tokens.
Unfortunately, while there is a migration going on from offering only DigiD to offering the whole eIDAS suite (in the Netherlands this is done via a government service called ToegangsVerleningsService, so vendors only have to implement a SAML connection to that which will eventually support eIDAS), it is by no means sure that every government function will allow eIDAS instead of just DigiD. It's honestly a very opaque process.
Great to hear that the Czech Republic chose U2F (now part of WebAuthn) though!
This almost made me spill my drink ))
Is it so much better in the Netherlands, or do you just not get to interact with government bureaucracy much? Trying to e.g. get a building permit over here without using MS Office and Windows is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy...
https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl
I'm sure that if it grew in popularity they might be inclined to support it further.
Also, there is in the EU a Digital Markets Act being worked on. That will mean some networks that play a big part in society will need to allow third-party clients. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...
It clearly isn’t going to do so overnight or in a year or two.
But it easily could over the 5-10 year timeline. A distributed App Store plus an experience that is more attuned to the needs of users than iOS or Android can accomplish that.
To solve the ‘bank’ problem all it needs to do is provide a really solid PWA story.
What it shouldn’t do is provide Android compatibility.
Why would this project be more effective at doing this than iOS or Android?
I don’t see why people other than ideological technologists would want to use this phone.
To be clear, I think it’d be great if they did, but I think you’re massively understating the difficulty of challenging iOS and Android. Many companies have tried before - Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, and failed.
AFAIK every single change in tech starts from such people.
Why would non-idealists use this phone when the alternative they already have in their pocket and know how to use can do everything the PinePhone can do?
Nobody expects them to.
People will use it when it does something the alternative they already have cannot do.
Using the term ‘idealists’ is perjorative but more importantly, it implies confusion about why people buy this phone.
The people who buy the phone today do so because it allows them to do things which the alternatives cannot. I.e. the purchase is pragmatic. This is the precise opposite of idealism.
1) avoid the privacy issues of Android & iOS 2) have the confidence that as long as their hardware work, they will have updates 3) buy from a brand that will allow you (or a third party) to fix your hardware (Pine64 sells you spare parts, and at reasonable prices!) 4) have an user-replaceable battery 5) have an affordable smartphone (I know, there are 30$ android phones but they tick none of the above points)
The points 2 to 4 will interest an increasing number of people this century, imo
edit: typos
The answer is to do things they cannot do, or will be too slow to do. This is unlikely to be possible for a company like Microsoft.
This is an excellent question. The basic answer is that the incentive structures are different. Apple’s platforms are primarily designed to efficiently deliver commercial software. The app-store, the apis and everything else about their OS ecosystem is designed around the idea that packaged Apps, immutable to the user and remotely maintained by a commercial developer, are the answer to solving end-user problems using computers. They implement this model better than anyone else, but it’s not the only model.
Two other models are GNU Linux and it’s open source ecosystem, and the Smalltalk model as exemplified by pharo. In both of these models, the user isn’t just a consumer of Apps or the system, but is an active participant in creating it.
I’m not suggesting that either of these are the solution as they stand. I’m just pointing out that the iOS / Apple model is not the only possibility. You are right that just competing with it directly would fail. Even Android is failing at that.
> I don’t see why people other than ideological technologists would want to use this phone.
This is perjorative sounding, but a reasonable concern. If the answer was ‘people would use smalltalk instead of buying apps’, or ‘with Linux people can build whatever phone they like’, then I’d agree with you.
Of course we need something that end-users can plausibly use without being a technologist.
My argument is that we can actually build such a thing, and that it can be much better as a ‘bicycle for the mind’ than iOS.
> Many companies have tried before - Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, and failed.
This is to be expected. A company trying to compete with Apple on their terms, even if they have the resources of Microsoft, is going to fail.
The answer will be a low-end disruption - something that is good enough, but also capable of things that iOS is not because of the commercial model. It won’t come from one company trying to take on Apple directly.
That’s a big “if” though. Curious if you think there are larger trends that would suggest that the current standard of the “walled garden”/closed software model will become less effective than the “active participant” model in meeting the computing needs of everyday people.
Actual computer literacy in the sense of being about to both read and write programs is only going to increase over time.
My sense is that Apple is underserving the needs of software creators in general, by shoehorning everything into Apps.
They could respond to this, and I have been expecting them to for years. My sense now is that they may be too are too blinded by the store model to realize what is happening.
This is one of the trends that I think Jobs would have understood, but that a post Jobs Apple may miss.
Another trend is the rise of crypto. I am not a Bitcoin bull or anything like that, but now that there is so much creativity in the crypto space, I think it’s entirely feasible that we could solve the problem of distributing trust, so that we can provide something for end users with the safety of the App Store but without the central gatekeeper.
This is not even close to being a solved problem yet, which is why I oppose the breakup of app stores.
However the basic tools seem to exist for us to solve it, as does the pressure.
...What? Citation needed. Android by far accounts for the majority (85%) of smartphones not just worldwide but even in nearly all wealthy countries other than the US, Canada and Japan.
https://www.mobileapps.com/blog/android-vs-ios-market-share#...
The fact a lot of people download free apps is pretty much meaningless.
You may as well say a lot of people visit websites on Android.
By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.
It’s not the world’s most active software ecosystem. The web is.
> is failing because it doesn't extract as much capital
It is failing as a business.
> as a system set up as a premium product ecosystem targeted at the world's elites?
If you consider most American teenagers to be ‘the world’s elites’, then ok.
> By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.
Only if it were true, but it isn’t.
But banks see this is an expense that can be cut if everyone would just use the Android or IOS smartphone they already own (conveniently making the customer pay for the hardware), and when you have that support in place, you would want to be able to do the actual banking on your smartphone too — not just authenticating. So now banks have two apps and a PWA they must maintain, along with the infrastructure for the dedicated card-readers.
So at this point your bank is asking all the people still using card-readers to please consider using the app, so they can kill off that feature. Dutch bank ING tried this when their old authentication method needed replacing (they where one of the last banks still using SMS tokens). Their approach was to nudge/annoy/scare customers into using their app for a year, but in the end they folded and grudgingly had to provide stand-alone card-readers as well.
Some of the newer small digital only banks in the Netherlands are 100% app only though, and the bigger banks are quite jealous, but can't just drop support for their existing customer base.
This view would also protect FOSS projects that emulate the iOS environment (e.g. Wine but for iOS)
I have Telegram on my Pine Phone and it works great.
It also runs a proper version of Firefox (even if it does identify itself as running on Android.)
https://twitter.com/biktorgj/status/1357217053745250304
(edit: caveat: they might not be able to actually ship the firmware since laws on this are very strict basically everywhere)
The app store(s) is a bit of a problem, but in time it might be solved. Not a big problem for me....
But I'd also like to see android compatibility. Multiple banks now basically require you to have an android app. Unfortunately that might also require better specs, since sideloading an entire android might take significant RAM :(
Still, kudos to pine64 devs for the openness of all of their projects! IMHO even the raspy is not as open, even if it might have better benchs
Gatekeeping may be a feature or a bug depending on your opinion, but we don't all have to have the same priorities for our software repos, because we can each choose which repos we use.
? ... financial incentives is the motivation for most labor.
The pool of people who are capable of collecting garbage is non-scarce, so the price for labor is relatively small compared to the social value it produces.
Advertising is so well rewarded because the attention of consumers is a very scarce resource, so companies put massive amounts of money into capturing some of that.
And public institutions may serve a useful function, but again seem to be mostly about civil service powerbroking and providing extremely safe employment.
There are certainly (often larger) nonprofits with a tendency of overpaying their leadership and/or pushing policies favored by their corporate funders. I would in this context however not conflate "most visible" (ie largest advertising budgets) with "most". Most nonprofits I have worked with are ran and operated by hardworking people on minimal budgets.
Thus widespread availability of "labor of love" open source software, and the relative crappiness of a lot of commercial software.
If I didn't require an income to cover a family of five, I would be retired, and doing whatever it is that I love at any moment. But instead, I work for a living, for money, to meet our needs.
In other words, "communism" is an authoritarian/dictatorial political system that masquerades as an economic system until it doesn't have to put up with any dissent, at which point it goes back to "capitalism." (State or Party or whatever. I think they call their version "with chinese characteristics" in the west.)
I'm not making a fundamental judgement on this, all laws are coercive in some sense, capitalist systems often have redistributive features, taxes and such.
However redistribution in the extreme and complete sense in communism is often characterised in utopian terms. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. That's a fine sentiment, but it entails an awful lot of systematic and thorough coercion, and the virtual elimination of freedom in the distribution and use of capital, or in fact property or resources of any kind. This is why we keep getting the "no true scotsman" complaint that criticisms of communism are invalid because they are never 'real' communism. That doesn't account for the coercive and prescriptive nature of a thoroughgoing redistributive system run by a bureaucratic elite. Since they need the authority to redistribute all resources, they need effectively unlimited power. That's why they keep ending up becoming so corrupt.
To the extent that socialist systems retain any freedom in the use, exchange and accumulation of money, they become correspondingly capitalist. Hence communism with 'Chinese' (read capitalist) characteristics.
Most countries I can think of implement a mix of capitalism and socialism. Some features are capitalism, some are features of socialism.
Coercion and taxation are not capitalism, taxation is just theft operated by the state.
I consider the "no true scotsman" argument for communism to be valid: we never arrived to real communism and that's because it's impossible.
Communism can be achieved only if all the individuals of society are perfect; without that perfection the best you can achieve is a socialist dictatorship.
On the opposite (anarcho-capitalist) side, I think we should try to get rid of all our society socialist features and see if the free market can support us entirely. In my opinion, capitalism is not bad, we just don't have enough.
I agree communism is impossible, that's why I think no true scotsman is an invalid criticism. My post was largely an attempt to explain why I think it's impossible and also actually undesirable. That's all just semantics though, I think we agree on the actual issue.
I disagree with your last paragraph. I oppose socialism as an ideology, as it is pursued by dyed in the wool socialists, but don't necessarily oppose all policies implemented in the name of socialism. I oppose ideologies generally, politically I support policies that have turned out to work, whatever the reasons might be.
For example I do believe in the power of free markets and that capitalism is essentially based on individual liberty. However for example here in the UK we have a very effective and beloved national health service. It's not perfect and might not be the system I would choose from scratch, with unlimited power to make it as I wished, but it works and I would oppose any attempts to radically reform it. There's just too much that's good about it that we could break. Maggie, one of my political heroes, tried to reform it along market lines in the 80s and it was disastrous.
But then there are historical reasons why Britain has some of it's economic and political settlements. Social consensus is important and what works for us might not work for others with different traditions, institutions and expectations.
There is not much difference between China and western countries. Sure, China is a bit more oppressive (understatement of the year), but they both have element of capitalism and a huge set of coercitive and authoritarian laws which err on socialism.
So you ratchet up the friction for entry, that helps devs?
Say what you want about the app store, but across all the devs for iOS, how many would go through the trouble of self distributing their product? Marketing, infrastructure, payment system etc... ? The app store is a tremendously low friction way for market penetration.
Sure, we may need to calibrate the revenue sharing arrangement. However the "merge your software into the repo" as an either/or alternative is laughable.
The plain truth of the matter is that commercial app stores are malware distributors, and community repositories are not. The commercial app store model does not work, at least not for the user.
Also: not all software is commercial, and not everyone wants their phones commercialized. Your business model is often simply not welcome on the platform. You're not entitled to make money. If we want a platform without commercial software incentives, that's our business, not yours.
While your statement is technically correct, the number of users falling into that category, and would go the extra effort to ensure a non-commercialized day to day phone is usable, is infinitesimally small. Most users embrace the convenience associated with the commercial solution.
This will be a tiny niche phone
Yes. So what?
I will be more direct for your benefit.
Not only are you wrong. You’re wrong on a scale so large, 100 years ago the average person had never thought of numbers that high.
Not only is the commercial App Store system working for users, it’s working for billions of them. Billions of humans are cool with it.
Your “open App Store” concept works for so few people, as to hardly be compared in the same breath.
Are Google and Apple's implementations of the concept bad? Yes. But it's not very difficult to separate out the traits of the implementations with the traits of the idea. Steam seems to be doing very well, and as a user of that platform, they are executing it pretty well.
Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension before trying to speak for others.
My argument boils down to "Perfect is the enemy of good"
Now, the more general argument about the "commercial app store model not working" is utterly ridiculous - you can't make any useful generalizations with a sample size of 2. (actually, Steam seems to be doing pretty well - I rarely hear people complaining about it, and it's a commercial app store)
> Not only are you wrong. You’re wrong on a scale so large, 100 years ago the average person had never thought of numbers that high.
...is an amazing comeback, that I will be taking.
If I buy a phone from you, and then download an app that bricks it, I want my money back from you.
Yes, you can argue that I'm responsible for that, but consumer protection laws will apply, and there's going to be a court case, possibly even a class action suit. Too many uneducated users who refuse to take personal responsibility for their actions. Yes, it's not ideal, but this is how people are.
Your response has at some point got to include vetting the software that your users can download onto their phone, for purely financial reasons.
If I buy a laptop, and then install Linux on it, and download a malicious package and install it, then that's on me. If someone buys a Dell laptop and downloads a malicious application and installs it, then Dell support gets to deal with that problem. After a while, Dell is going to install some software by default to help with this, and spy on what users have been doing purely so that if they mess up then Dell can help. Eventually this happens enough and Windows gets an app store, and fairly soon after a version of Windows that can only install apps via the app store.
This is not about control for control's sake, or revenue (except saving support costs). This is about protecting people from themselves.
But sure, if Pine can put a big sticker on the phone saying "do not install anything on this phone" and make that legally binding, then they won't need an app store.
App distributiors are distributing malware. The vendors and the app developers are spying on you because it's profitable to sell your data. They keep walled gardens so that they get their 30% cut of every transaction. They are doing it in the service of their financial interests, which also motivates everything else they do.
The idea that they're doing it out of some kind of charitable desire to keep the user's phone working is ridiculous.
Are you smoking crack?
Citation needed.
> The commercial app store model does not work, at least not for the user.
The hundred of millions of Google Play users would like to have a word with you. (rampant ad-tech and freeware model are a function of the "race to the bottom" in app pricing, conditioning users to trade privacy for free apps, and Google's existence as an advertiser, not the fact that the Google Play store is commercial)
> Also: not all software is commercial, and not everyone wants their phones commercialized.
You can, uh, have an app store that distributes both commercial and non-commercial apps. In particular, there's a lot of open-source stuff on Google Play (and probably on the Apple App Store too).
> Your business model is often simply not welcome on the platform.
What platform? Who's not "welcoming"? The Pinephone runs open-source software.
> If we want a platform without commercial software incentives, that's our business, not yours.
Again, what platform? Who's "we"? The users? I'm a user, and I want commercial incentives - what makes your desires more important than mine?
Only a authoritarian, selfish mindset rejects a feature (commercial software) that is desired by some fraction of the user population, is useful, and is compatible with alternative features (open-source software) for a poor, vague reason like "commercialization".
Or does your definition of "software freedom" sound like "you can run anything you want on your computer...except for "proprietary" programs (which we get to define), or those that "enable" proprietary programs"?
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=flashlight
Click through some of these and see what permissions they ask for. Full network access, run at startup, view network connections, GPS location, read contacts, read the SD card, ads, microtransactions, the list of offenses goes on and on. All to do exactly one thing: call this function:
https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/camera/core...
This is malware, and the services which distribute it are malware distributors.
>Only a authoritarian, selfish mindset rejects a feature (commercial software) that is desired by some fraction of the user population
Only a shmuck or an abuser thinks that it's okay to exploit user's ignorance of the alternatives to monetize their every waking breath and steal as much information about them as possible through deceit and propaganda. Prohibiting the exploitation of the public is not authoritarian, even if it means you don't make as much money.
Malware has been distributed through open-source repositories multiple times before, so by your convoluted definition of "malware distributors", open-source repositories are those, too.
> Only a shmuck or an abuser thinks that it's okay to exploit user's ignorance of the alternatives
As stated elsewhere in this thread[1], not all users use these commercial stores out of ignorance of alternatives. In addition to being a logically poor argument, it's empirically false. Moreover, the word "exploit" is divorced from reality and not applicable to the situation - giving users the choice to have commercial app stores available is clearly not exploitation from any sane viewpoint. I'm calling you out - you're using logical fallacies and emotionally-laden weasel words to try to sneak a bad argument in.
> to monetize their every waking breath and steal as much information about them as possible through deceit and propaganda.
Snuck premise: "commercial app stores all monetize and surveil their users to the maximum extent possible". There's absolutely nothing intrinsic to a commercial app store that causes any of that to happen. But go ahead, prove me wrong - show me that every commercial app store has to do this. I suggest starting with Steam, and showing me the massive amount of data-collection that you clearly think they do on their users.
> Prohibiting the exploitation of the public is not authoritarian, even if it means you don't make as much money.
Same snuck premise - show me exactly how the nature of a proprietary app store makes "exploitation" necessary - after defining "exploitation". And independent of that, your argument is still false. Trying to claim that you're "prohibiting the exploitation of the public" attempts to cover over the fact that your proposed "solution" is authoritarian (the motive has absolutely nothing to do with that categorization).
That's not true - what's freed is the GNU/Linux part of the modem that comes from Quectel, which is just an interface on top of Qualcomm's proprietary firmware which does the real work. This is similar to unlocking a proprietary Android phone with an integrated modem and replacing its UI, while the firmware stays as closed as it was.
This is a great development nevertheless, but such mischaracterization doesn't do anyone any good.
Have someone secretly put it on the Ethereum blockchain? There will be literally no way to delete it after that.
So what this means is that PinePhone is basically a smartphone withing smartphone, and what's opensourced is the Linux kernel running on the modem's SoC. It's very nice, and allows you some more control (now you get two Linux capable SoCs in one phone that you can fully use for whatever you want, which is quite interesting!), but the actual modem part is as blobby and impenetrable as ever.
Where the blob is running is maybe only relevant to how much control it has over the rest of the system.
It's nice that you can boycott them and use those that don't impose arbitrary technological restrictions on you, right?
You overestimate how your lifestyle isn’t representative of the world.
I’m not diminishing their impact (although I question lots of their business practices). But it’s not the most important tech, by a huge huge margin.
Privacy is not the only concern, phones are massively used (about a 50% of population) and we all use them for all kinds of purposes - and that part is also growing.
Not to have an open-source option for someting this widespread is not a good idea by my opinion.
> People on this site like overestimate the avg. persons concern with ....
The "average person" concerns come from "average" understanding of the subject. Average person didn't even need a smartphone 20 or 30 years ago - SF toys :)
EDIT: subjective yea, but come on dude people being able to eat is more important than google not knowing what type of porn I like.
I'm also not sure how Doordash is supposed to help at all for people who were already eating significant amounts of fast food.
Either way, all you're really doing with Doordash is passing the risk of transmission off to someone else. Ideally the delivery person has a better immune system than you (and refrains from making contacting those with weaker immune systems), but that whittles down the demographic of those who seriously benefit from Doordash even further.
Also, the PinePhone project is poised to bring serious repairability, privacy, and security options to a device category many now consider to be essential. It's not so trivial as preventing Google from accessing up your search results.
Regardless, we're comparing potential mortality to potential rights violations. If anyone can figure out how to objectively compare the value of human lives to human rights, give me a call.
I'm not 100% sure I'd rank this as #1 on my list, but if not, it'd probably be at least #2 or #3. Open source phones (and tablets) are something I've been dreaming about and looking forward to for a very long time, and I'm happy this is finally starting to come to fruition.
> We have open source browsers, we have open source social > apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones. > Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users > will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of > complaining and >legal coercion, to one of choices and > markets.
What you are talking about in the text above is not delivered by Open Source, which is just a practical advantage. The values you mentioned are fought for by the Free/Libre Software community [0].
I recommend to anyone interested in this topic (e.g. the differences between Libre and Open Source software), read more about the GNU project as a starter [1].
As a disclaimer, I'm by no means an expert on this topic which is another reason to follow the links below.
[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
EU Law states two years regardless of manufacturer wishes.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
=> The two-year period starts from the day you received the product:
And given it is shipped from Poland, it falls under it.
You are not buying a Pixel 4, you are buying something that still needs a lot of work.
This is Pine64, which is about as close to community driven hardware development as you can get. They give you the open-source design and source code. If you think you might need a two year guarantee just don't buy their product, it's probably not a good fit for you anyway.
That didn't work out very well. They just found different, more insidious ways of screwing people over.
https://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/buying-advice/washing-ma...
https://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/buying-advice/washing-ma...
https://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/buying-advice/washing-ma...
https://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/buying-advice/washing-ma...
...
But I suppose this type of stuff is exactly what the higher priced stores are for. If you want it cheap but without support, buy directly from China.
Also Pine64 is from China, they are based in Hong Kong iirc. The shipping warehouse in Poland is just a place where they keep stocks.
My country is more on the "we just want the cut" side, but some people in Germany had trouble getting individual shipments into the country, for example.
It's not like we're talking about some kind of small print in the EULA here, either. It's prominently plastered all across the website, and during the ordering process.
> Beta Limited Edition PinePhones are aimed solely at early adopters. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience.
If you mistake this for a finished phone, I hope regulators will see that Pine64 did due diligence to warn you that this is a half-finished prototype of a phone. At the end of the day, if malicious customers do complain to regulators because their "early-adopter" phone wasn't production ready, it seems that legally Pine64 can simply refund those purchases.
> core functionality of the PinePhone still an ongoing effort. Thus, the device cannot considered a consumer-ready product.
> DISCLAIMER [...] If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute, DO NOT purchase the PinePhone. When fulfilling your purchase, please bear in mind that we are offering the PinePhone at this price as a community service to PINE64 community. Thank you.
This type of device feels just like an extension of what people do in the open source hardware community when a small group gets some custom PCBs made: Someone releases it on a forum, enough people show interest, they decide how many to get made and then one person makes and pays the order and distributes them without really making any money (considering the time they put in you might say they are losing money). That's what this is, just more pieces without you having to do surface mount soldiering.
I mean what do people expect for $150, it's something to buy to hack on.
"When can your customer claim redress?
Be aware that you are legally bound by any public statements you make about your products, especially through advertisements or on labels.
If you are a retailer, your customers can ask for redress under the legal guarantee provided by EU law - if an item:
- doesn't match the product description
- has different qualities from the model advertised or shown to the client
- is not fit for purpose - either its standard purpose or a specific purpose ordered by the customer which you accepted
- doesn't show the quality and performance normal in products of the same type
- wasn't installed correctly - either by you, or by the customer, due to shortcomings in the instructions
You are right and you are wrong. They must provide a 2 year warranty on the functionality of a "Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone" with the following disclaimer "Beta Limited Edition PinePhones are aimed solely at early adopters. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience". A beta is not expected to function correctly. Hence, there is no justification for return under eu law. People writing these laws aren't idiots.
Additionally, that warranty state works well in other jurisdictions and is fine.
ahhhhhhh, I feel like I got baited.
Every since the days of the OpenMoko[1] I've wanted a real "open source mobile device" - something that runs Linux (or a BSD, or FreeDOS, or ReactOS or something open), that can make/receive calls, get on the net, and that I can carry in my pocket. Not being ludicrously expensive is also a desirable feature. And now between this PinePhone, and the Purism phone, it looks like what I've been wanting finally exists. I can't overstate how happy this makes me.
Edit: and yes, I know that an "Android Phone" running F-Droid is close to the same thing, and I am glad F-droid is out there. But this still feels like a step further in the right direction.
Regarding the Librem 5: The final hardware (Evergreen) supports calls and SMS reliably. Unfortunately its battery life is still a bit lackluster.
[0] https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PinePhone_Software_R...
With Mobian for me it now works stable enough to be used as a daily driver.
Trying to cancel the order, even if supporting the initiative would be nice, my 3D MMO needs OpenGL ES 3!
How Samsung was thinking when they removed that project is impossible for me to grasp. They should have extended it to make linux run on the standalone S9 and they would have kicked Apple/Google in the nuts big time!
The build quality is on par with some early android phones before glass screens became standard. performance is kind of what you would expect. Not great but it works. I definitely wouldn't consider this daily driver ready yet. I still think its worth supporting. With RISCV gaining steam perhaps the next version will use a mobile optimised RISCV SOC instead of the weird janky embedded ARM unit they have now.
Commercial eNBs are sub $1k, and you can spin up an open source EPC in an evening, config your own SIM cards, etc.
Harder than setting up a WiFi AP, but much easier than winning spectrum at auction and less work than getting a traditional cellco eNB running (IMO). The Ruckus and Airspan eNBs I have feel pretty similar to a enterprise-class WiFi AP (Aruba/Cisco).
I'm by no means a mobile app developer but if I wanted to dabble in making a small app, I'd be confused which stack to use and which distributions it would be compatible with.
"Today we are very pleased to announce that the PinePhone will ship with Plasma Mobile on a Manjaro ARM base from this point on."
https://www.pine64.org/2021/02/15/february-update-show-and-t...
Not a big fan of extremely old hardware which would never be able to keep up with what I can get out of a Raspberry Pi.
In fact, how feasible is it to create a hat for the Raspberry Pi compute module which operates effectively as a mobile phone. Like you would an obviously need a screen as well as some buttons, I've seen several game boy looking cases but nothing shaped like a phone
There's also an Arduino one: https://learn.adafruit.com/arduin-o-phone-arduino-powered-di...
> postmarketOS now boots on over 200 phones and tablets (as of 6 May 2020)
That, I believe, is about mainline kernel. And only boot.
[1] https://tuxphones.com/postmarketos-boots-200-linux-phones-ta...
I've clicked several pages, each of them contains "How to enter flash mode", usually some combination of the buttons.
Except the bug with the backlight [0] is still present and I sometimes see screen flickering at lowest brightness (although rarely).
I never understood it why it has to be so hard to find a reasonably speced smartphone that fits comfortably in your pocket
Thanks, not half bad! And only a tad bigger. If not for the shorter battery life I'd consider switching.
I too prefer small screens, but I bought a Pinephone anyway to support the effort and help testing.
Typed from Firefox on my Pinephone Braveheart running Mobian (works fine for me).
Offhand, does anyone have a list of closed source drivers this device? It’s not a dealbreaker to me (I use many raspberry pis in my home), but it’s nice to have an inventory.
> I looks forward to seeing reviews.
There are many reviews already available. Hardware is practically identical.
- closed source software running on the LTE modem,
- proprietary firmware for the Realtek bluetooth/WiFi chip
- optional firmware for camera autofocus.
- firmware in the touch controller
No closed source drivers in the kernel or userspace though.
[0] https://linmob.net/2021/03/21/linbits37-weekly-linux-phone-n...
[1] https://media.kaitaia.life/videos/watch/f072045c-b713-48c6-9...
They did something similar when testing gaming on linux -- used an unusual distro rather than just use the latest Ubuntu, and then complains about issues that only exist in their chosen distro... no shit.
I have no idea how they got so popular, they always make mistakes like these in their content.
At this point, given the existing application ecosystem, the best (only) option for a new phone maker is to tightly integrate inexpensive processing hardware with Android, and enter the market with a surprisingly performant phone at a low price point.
I think you and I have very different ideas of what constitutes "mainstream".
> No mobile phone will sell enough to survive by offering low-performance hardware and off-the-shelf software no matter how open it is.
Why?
1. The market for technology is driven by price/performance. It is why there is a 4K Vizio TV at $400 sitting next to a 4K Samsung at 10x the price, and both of them sell. Buyers purchase technology based on price and performance. Low performance, low price. High performance, high price.
2. The high end of the mobile phone is coveredeither tightly integrating the OS with the hardware (like Apple), or by building very powerful (and expensive) hardware for an off-the-shelf OS. The low end of the mobile phone market is covered by midrange performance Android phones. A low performance phone on an unsupported OS just will not cut it.
Low-end Android phones still sell and I don't see any reason why PinePhone couldn't come out with a more high-performance model in the future. But releasing a $1k+ phone with beta hardware and software doesn't sound like a successful way to enter a market. The platform is still maturing and, for now, I'd still consider it a dev kit or an rpi-esque tinkering device.
Cool if the PinePhone didn't exist, but against it it doesn't look that good, I would say.
A Pinephone 2 / Pro wouldn't be that much more expensive.
That said: They are funding a lot of phone software development, especially libhandy seems to come ... in handy pretty often.
There is no information when Pinephone 2 arrives and how much it will cost.
> Cool if the PinePhone didn't exist, but against it it doesn't look that good, I would say.
Yes, it does: https://social.librem.one/@ozmik/105939468751642844
The problem might be that we don't have a quality comparison yet (or I haven't found it), but I wonder if there is a performance bottle neck in the hardware. Maybe the software is still better optimized for the pine and the Librem will start to pull ahead as more developers get a chance to work on it.
It just depends on what your "daily use tasks" are.
Recently I've compiled GTK4 on both phones and it took my PinePhone almost twice as long as my Librem 5.
Disclaimer: I work for Purism on the Librem 5, although I'm very excited with the PinePhone as well - I'd say it's good for its price.
Standard edition costs $800.
Either way, there are enormous numbers of people happy to drop $1000 on a phone, maybe more. It's a lot of money in that my first car was cheaper, sure..
Allow me, however, to go one step further. You're 'working' class. You're not 'lower' than anybody else.
Pine64 sells their devices at rock bottom prices and lets the community develop software.
I personally would buy the Librem5 if they solved the battery life issues.
I would prefer to pay double or triple for a phone that has all the opensource and privacy goals but also competes in performance and build so it can be my daily driver. I realize that we also want open standards and privacy for the masses but they will be the last group to adopt not the first.
If this is the secondary 'dev device' now because the platform isn't complete enough to be a primary, the price point makes sense. Can't wait for when it can be a daily driver. How far can you get with a good phone+contacts (voice calls), sms, and excellent web browser? Pretty far. Other apps are nice but they can be the add-ons.
When I need performance I usually turn to real computers or specialized gadgets.
I would like to know what apps people are using for video chat, if they aren't using Signal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHOgVmxH_dA
SW is lacking somewhat, still.
Video chat on the PinePhone is "early work in progress" at best, see https://marius.bloggt-in-braunschweig.de/2021/03/04/pinephon....
Well, I will for sure get one, when I can.
https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html
SW would probably need a bit tinkering. Make sure the in-call audio profile is set up correctly for recording, and some way to start/stop recording during a call.
No, thanks. 1920x1080 at a minimum.