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Comment by kop316 | Hacker News Reader

This is also true of the pinephone. My entire dev set up for for the pinephone is on my pinephone. All I do is hook up a USB cable and SSH into it (which makes testing a lot easier since mmsd needs to talk to the modem).

What is really neat though is any apps that I develop on my pinephone work on the librem 5 too! Some of the bugs found and fixed on mmsd are from Librem 5 users, and I have been collaborating with the chatty dev (I assume he has a Librem 5, I'm 90% sure he is a Purism employee) with the work I do on the pinephone.

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I am looking to purchase either (or both) of those phones. Would you recommend buying one of them now or waiting until a future release? It seems that both companies have extended the release dates a bit.

If you order Librem 5 right now, you get it "in a few months", so the software will be much more mature (while hardware already is). Pine64 currently accepts preorders only for the "Beta-version" of Pinephone.

I see. It seems as though the price tag has gone up compared to the dev versions. With that price I imagine they’d want things to be stable. I haven’t looked to see if they have a vcs or chats to see what types of issues are being addressed.

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

Pinephone’s “Preorder” is mostly just to scare off people that want the software to work, from what I can tell.

If you order a pinephone today, they estimate they’ll ship it to you in late April.

Also, their “beta phone” is the Nth revision of shipping hardware.

Pretty much. They really don't want regular consumers to be buying the PinePhone from them. They've been very upfront about this: the phone isn't priced for, and they aren't equipped to provide end user technical support. It's priced to get it in the hands of people willing to take some pain and help with the work of getting Linux where it needs to be on mobile.

If the phone hardware arrives defective/broken, that's one thing. If the issue is the state of whatever Linux distro you're running (including missing features/applications), that's not their problem.

Mine is from the first batch of 'final' hardware (i.e. the UBPorts CE) for over 6 months and the hardware is solid. The distros (all of them) have come a long way but still have a very long way to go.

I'm personally waiting for the next PinePhone iteration with a better chipset, since the CPU is pretty slow for even budget phone standards.

Combined with software improvements that will hopefully give a relatively smooth experience.

Then again, the PinePhone is so cheap that it's not a big risk either way.

And why wouldn't you order Librem 5 now?

The Librem 5 is a bit more than I'd want to spend on an alternate device.

Online banking 2FA and some other apps sadly tie me to Android.

Although that might change if Anbox works ( https://puri.sm/posts/anbox-on-the-librem-5/ ).

I have 3 android 9 apps that are important to me. Running those would allow me to switch forever. I went to the anbox site briefly but didn’t quite see a list of images.

You can't compare performance on the pinephone to Android phones because the OSes and app ecosystems are completely different: You just run Linux desktop environments and apps that are designed to run without hardware acceleration.

I run FVWM and Firefox on mine and it works very well.

FVWM sounds interesting. Would you like to share details of your setup? If so, I would like to interview you for my blog https://linmob.net!

Don’t hold your breath on the next PinePhone iteration. On the forums, people expect a new hardware generation to come in only 3–5 years from now. Pine64 seems to assume that the hardware is fine for now, it is only the software that hasn’t been developed and optimized enough.

You mention Anbox in another post here. Don’t expect that to allow you to run banking apps on Librem/PinePhone, as banking apps increasingly require the Android phone to pass Safety Net, and Anbox doesn’t.

> increasingly

Source? Even anecdata?

Less apps are required, in lieu of web apps on their websites.

If you want anecdotes, look at the LineageOS forums where people complain frequently that passing Safety Net on unGoogled phones is no longer possible even with the old workarounds, so now their bank apps won't work.

> Less apps are required, in lieu of web apps on their websites.

Some banks require you to install their phone app for 2FA – they have phased out separate code cards or code calculators now that everyone is assumed to carry a mainstream smartphone. So, even if you want to log into their online-banking website, you need an Android or Apple phone in order to authenticate.

Switching banks is pretty trivial.

I'd never use a service that forced themselves into my device like that.

Not everywhere has a diversity of banks to choose from like e.g the US. Some countries are reduced to an oligopoly or even duopoly where the banks don't differ in terms of their expectation that you will use their iPhone or Android app.

Y'all probably struggle to get wild blueberries from Maine, too.

Still going to recommend them as a best practice! =D

Also, I know these problems exist.

But you said increasingly. I disagree, I'm hearing less bitching about this than ever from people running Graphene or Lineage.

I would say "Yes", but I also have two Pinephones and have a Librem 5 order in the queue. One pinephone is my "dev" phone (since mmsd tinkers with core mobile networking stuff, I don't want developing to interfere with my normal usage).

I do not think either the Pinephone nor Librem 5 will have any more significant hardware changes, so the Pinephone/Librem 5 you buy now will be the same one you buy in a year.

If you're unsure, I think buying a Pinephone is a safe bet since its $150 for you to try, and if its not for you, you can probably get your money back by selling it.

What do you want to use it for?

For me, Mobian/Pinephone does everything I need it to do for typical daily usage except for Chatty supporting MMS (and hopefully this will be fixed within a month or so).

I care most about 2 android 9 apps I have that run in the background and use Bluetooth. Other than that sometimes I like to tinker and build small projects with the libraries available but am more concerned with the android 9 apps. Other primary usages are phone, text, and browsing.

In that case I would say either are stable enough for you to use. If you want something sooner than later I would get a Pinephone.

If you go with a pinephone get the 3 GB version, as anbox takes up a fair bit of RAM.

The version of the librem 5 that is shipping now is the "evergreen" model. Their next model is going to be named "fir" which is supposed to have a 14nm CPU[1] as opposed to the 28nm CPU in the evergreen model. This should mean better battery life, so if that is something that interests you then you might want to wait on the librem 5. Personally, I don't want to wait that long so I'm getting evergreen.

[1] https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-shipping-announcement/

CPU is probably not going to be the only change for Fir: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

Not seeing anything new in that post. CPU is still the only confirmed change, and they go through the implications of the device using the i.MX 8M Plus.

It's not even confirmed that it's going to use the i.MX 8M Plus. The initial Fir "announcement" assumed a quite different reality where all Evergreens would have been shipped long time ago.

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