Librem 5 Evergreen vs. PinePhone (Part 2)
thatgeoguy.ca
thatgeoguy.ca
With regards to thermals, my writing may have been a bit unclear. The thermal issue was definitely only during my one trip, when it was in the car with me and had been charging + running for a couple hours of driving. There was sunlight but it wasn't in direct sunlight. I suspect charging + running (music) + ambient heat was part of the problem, but I've never had a phone be that hot even on a long drive like that. I've been fairly careful otherwise to not place it in direct sunlight, mostly because I'm afraid the heat will damage the battery in some way.
As for the battery, I'll have to do some digging there, although I can't get to that today. Those are great tips to look into though, thanks for posting them. I'll note that I haven't tested the latest kernel, so if any patches have gone into the Librem 5 regarding power in the last three weeks, I probably wasn't able to quantify that!
The ideal solution is probably either removing the rouge highlighter from inline code elements, or shuffling the only-for-blocks .highlighter-rouge styles in monokai.css to a new rule div.highlighter-rouge, since they’re not suitable for inline code elements.
(I’m mentioning this here because the author is actively involved in the thread and thus there’s a reasonable chance of it being fixed.)
I'm not a web developer by trade, so this is good advice and something I never looked into. Thanks for the heads up, I'll have to block Javascript and see if I can get it working. I might be able to remove the prettify stuff entirely.
In case anyone is curious about the state of Calls/MMS/SMS on the Pinephone/Librem 5 (keep in mind this is very Phosh/SXMO centric, so YMMV for KDE/Ubuntu Touch):
- Calls work fine, but (on the Phosh stack) there is no way to get a notification about getting a voicemail. There is some work on getting Visual Voicemail to work (T-Mobile USA isn't a problem, but other's may require some tinkering with to figure out).
- SMS works fine on the Phosh stack (and most distros to my knowledge)
- MMS is supported from a backend perspective (through mmsd-tng, which I assume the author is referring to), but, to my knowledge, no chat application (i.e. Chatty on Phosh, KDE, SXMO, etc) supports it. There has been work to get the Phosh stack (i.e. Chatty) to support MMS, and I am hoping that can be completed sooner than later (the remaining work for chatty is UI integration). I think there is work to also get front end support for MMS into SXMO (at least the person who is working on it has bugged me a few times to ask how to integrate with mmsd-tng), and to my knowledge, there is no work on it in KDE.
This is interesting and something I hadn't thought about. I have a PinePhone that I've been hacking around on for the past few months. If I had this phone a decade ago I would have been over the moon. I'd really like to make it my daily driver, but I simply can't because of the experience I'm now accustomed to on modern smartphones. My future of being a happy hacker with a fully open-source Linux smartphone in my pocket still seems a few years away, but the future is bright.
I wouldn't trust my PinePhone to do any of that, I don't even trust it to reliably boot. I have a feeling mobile is a moving target that FOSS won't ever be able to catch up with. I think we enjoy quality FOSS desktop hardware because the platform is so stable.
Maybe not securely. But, reliable enough.
For my android phone, i use password manager, 2fa, camera, reddit, a few random time killer games/apps (specifics dont matter as long as I can kill time). My on-call pager doenst NEED an app, since they will text/call me. But I have poor reception in my house so I need wifi calling (not available on pinephone).
All the bitwarden apps Ive found are either hardcoded to use the official bitwarden (cant change to my personal server), or are terribly slow webapps. And then auto complete isn't an option.
I could absolutely make most of these things work, but inevitably i need to carry my other phone with me because of the camera. Which feels like the real deal breaker for me. The pinephone camera is great for documenting things and passing information, but its not really great for capturing memories and moments. My bitwarden experience is disappointing in the moment, but grainy, bad photos are disappointing in perpetuity.
Get me a quality camera and I would begrudgingly use a worse reddit app or the mobile site. But until then, I'm stuck.
At the risk of putting words in the OPs post, such comments usually refer to linux on the desktop or other general purpose computing devices (also like the phones being discussed here), not server, embedded or other non-general purpose computing uses.
Linux, the bastardized Android kernel, with thousands and thousands of dubious non-upstreamed patches.
Except for one or two bugs (mainly, using kde with several user sessions sometimes fails and one grub update that failed (but my setup has multiple drives and partitions)), they can handle it themselves.
But there are some things Linux has that makes it much better imho :
- only security updates (I run Debian stable), so you're not constantly reminded of rebooting your computer - you're not constantly pushed to install this or that - you don't have notifications about useless stuff - applications , while admittedly scarcer, don't install stuff all other the place (more notifications) and behave well - when I update Debian I don't have to update my computer - endless support for some hardware (got a scanner for 20 years now, doesn't work anymore on Windows 'cos the drivers don't exist anymore)
For me it leads to a much quieter work environment and that counts a lot.
But sure, it's less polished than Windows or IOS. But, well, while "being in control" was a political stance for me 20 years ago, now it just feel so much better.
Sometimes I compare my Linux to TV : it's much better when you can watch it without the commercials.
Just FYI: You can make Debian look just like MacOS, and it literally feels just like MacOS too! :-)
How my Desktop looks (Ubuntu 18.04): https://ibb.co/pJxT0Ng
Here is a guide on how to do this (which I used): https://medium.com/@shahriarazizaakash/make-your-linux-ubunt...
Anyways, I have to use Windows as I have a print-related disability. Windows has better support than MacOS and Linux for the certain type of print-related disability that I have. I also rely on screenreaders, and Ubuntu just does not work as nicely. So, I do a QEMU/KVM Windows 10 GPU passthrough, for using a screenreader, and it has no noticeable lag whatsoever. This likewise works quite seamlessly. It's basically like running Ubuntu and Windows together in harmony, but with Ubuntu as the base OS. A good guide (that also shows the thought process with setup) is here: https://pastebin.com/5tuvWTMH
Yes. It is orders of magnitude more usable than Windows 10 at least, which is awful. I haven't used OSX in a few years, but there were always some annoyances about maximizing windows, having to jump through hoops to install programs from the internet, or having to restart after updates.
I would very much like to see a user study of new computer users trying out Ubuntu, Windows 10, and Mac OS for the first time.
This is shifting the goalposts. Desktop Linux is perfectly usable for me, not for my wife. I'm interested in a more Linux-like phone for me; I'm not looking to see if it would be better than an iPhone SE for my wife.
For comparison Bunnie's Precursor [i] (FPGA RISC-V mobile) is slated for ~2yrs of development, and he's someone who has the connections and know-how to trim the delivery schedule as much as possible.
It's not - it's pretty much a regular unlocked Android phone in this regard, which is why it was stuck on old Android version for a while. Other OSes work there by using Android compatibility layers. It is a very interesting and noteworthy project because of other reasons that you already mentioned, but FLOSS-friendliness of its components isn't one of them (which isn't surprising, as this requirement limits your available choices quite a lot; and so do the Fairphone's other requirements already).
> In fact, while I’ve been generally impressed with the pace of improvements from all over I think that there are still some critical areas where the phones fall short. For the Librem 5, the battery life and thermals are definitely this device’s Achilles heel. For the Pinephone, I think the weakness of some of the hardware is problematic and isn’t something that most people would want to put up with.
It seems like hardware is the big gap here. It must be tough to innovate on hardware with low-volume niche devices, creating a chicken and egg dilemma for adoption. Are there any realistic options for these two phones to have more regular/modern iterations of their hardware? Perhaps a partnership with some existing manufacturer that is struggling for relevance in the phone space like LG or Motorola?
This is kinda what Jolla did with the Sailfish X program - they periodically choose one of the mid-range Sony Xperia devices that are part of the Sony open device program, then port Sailfish OS (a pretty nice mobile Linux distro) on it and sell licenses to people.
It's not a partnership per se, rather a symbiosis, but has been working like this for years. Also nice that they support the devices long after official support for the original Android firmware has ended. :)
For more see:
I think the hardware is a limiting factor, but part of what makes these devices unique (as other commenters have pointed out) is that they can run with minimal proprietary blobs. I don't believe either phone is at "no blobs" yet, since even Purism had to have blobs for the Baseband and Wifi (I think, or maybe it was just Wifi?). Nevertheless, Ubuntu Touch does work on Android devices today, and I think even PostmarketOS has some adoption on OnePlus 6/6T.
Overall though, I'd say that power isn't really the big thing. I think existing software has shown that you really don't need a lot of compute to be able to run apps smoothly on these phones (Morph browser, many GTK apps on the Librem 5). Battery life remains a concern with these devices, but that seems to improve bit by bit over time (at least, the Pinephone does. Not sure what is up with my Librem).
I think getting a partnership would be doubly tricky though, because a lot of the market just doesn't want these phones to begin with, and struggling companies are unlikely to attempt to explore mobile Linux unless they know it'll turn their ship around. Maybe if they get banned from using Android somehow (much like Huawei was), but even then I can't say I'm sure that Linux is appealing for companies in that scenario.
Baseband and Wifi both run blobs, but not on the main CPU and not from the userspace. As a result, the phone is the only one recommended by the FSF: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v11/.
> Not sure what is up with my Librem
Librem 5 does not have suspend-to-RAM yet: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
Stuff like the above-mentioned N900 could reach weeks of uptime without any suspend-to-RAM (and at least a couple days with wifi on). There is something definitely wrong here.
There is more to having a successful mobile device than just dropping a formerly optimized for desktop OS on them.
> There is no amount of software optimization that will make the Pinephone smooth.
And ta-da, a simple enough GUI is smooth.
Plus you are focused on the wrong part of the stack. Pine and Librem are acceptable device manufacturers. They just need better SoCs / better software support for existing SoCs. Think Samsung Exynos, Rockchip, Mediatek.
Keep in mind Pinephone is (at least current gen) primarily intended as a dev device with a long lifecycle.
Not sure about the Pinephone, but Purism explained that they were searching for hardware allowing 100% FLOSS. i.MX 8M Quad SoC worked for that: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/. No other mainstream manufacturer is interested in that.
We should remember that the late Blackberry phones did have Android app compatibility and still failed. Librem and PinePhone are not even at the starting point yet, which is unfortunate.
Generally supporters of FOSS phones who have to run an Android bank app or their country’s official ID app which is SafetyNet and Play Services-dependent, are encouraged to simply get a cheap Android phone for those limited purposes. Not to expect the PinePhone or Librem to run such apps.
Blackberry didn't have an amazing OS to hold it up. That's why it failed
People who depend on e.g. WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family simply won't switch to a phone that doesn't run WhatsApp.
Those messaging apps (or apps like Uber/Lyft) in particular have network effect (i.e. the decision is not solely your own) and a new entrant for the phone hardware has to support those apps (hence the Blackberry's decision to be Android compatible) or they are dead on arrival.
I don't think there are many apps that people depend on on Windows or Mac in the same way people depend on WhatsApp or Uber on their phone.
Sure, people in certain occupations may need to use Windows/Mac-only apps, but there's plenty of people who don't use them.
I run Linux Mint on my laptop (and have for years) because there's no Windows or Mac apps I personally want to run. This is thanks largely to (a) webapps (e.g. Google Docs), and (b) cross platform dev tools that made e.g. VSCode, Brave, etc possible (which doesn't exist for phones outside Android/iOS), and (c) me not being a gamer.
I think it's one thing to recognize that Purism is providing patches, but that doesn't translate to a device people can and want to purchase.
You seem to be missing the point of Librem 5: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
> You can't even order a Librem 5 if you want it right now
But you can order it to support the company and you will get it with a delay.
> but that doesn't translate to a device people can and want to purchase
The queue for Librem 5 phones is huge considering Purism does not really deliver, so I disagree.
I'm here to support the ecosystem but it needs to start from a place of actually being a part of my real life.
I know the articles phones are not mainstream. I would like a mobile OS OS :-P and as a light user I am willing to make a few concessions.
But this isn't even in the same league.
Nonetheless, I do appreciate the community forming around this. For a long time in 2020 it felt like encryption was going to be a "when we get to it" task, so it's good to see more things popping up.
Disclaimer: FWIW the closest I ever got to Arch proper was Manjaro, so I definitely didn't do an exhaustive search of every distro.
They are making a keyboard for the Pinephone.
I think I read somewhere that once a year Google does free PCB prints if the board designs are free/libre design. If that's true (source, anyone?) does anyone who reads board schematics know of neo900 did enough design to print the new boards and 3D print the spacer to upgrade old N900s?
If you look online, you'll probably find a lot of cons, as I think many people who backed this on Indiegogo has unrealistic expectations for this device. For me, I can say that this has been the best "smartphone" I've ever had. There are numerous small things which could have been improved - but the biggest thing - the keyboard - is actually really good (and I speak as someone who prefers to use custom mechanical keyboards like the atreus with his laptop, so I am picky).
If you can make Android a comfy environment (termux, your programming languages of choice, neovim & syncthing), it becomes a usable mini laptop when necessary.
I haven't used this, but it's on my list of things to watch. I dearly miss my Droid 4 phone because of the physical keyboard, however it was always just too sluggish to put to real use.
I ask because I'm not clear on the architecture of smartphones, which makes it hard to spot opportunities for creatively hacking them. As I understand it, there are at least two OS-like layers: a "baseband" that IIUC is responsible for controlling the radio hardware, and an OS that sits atop to provide applications/display/touchscreen-controls/etc.
I'm aware of projects like PostmarketOS, but these seem to be a replacement for the OS. Is there any equivalent for the baseband? I have an old OnePlus One and would love to have access to some sort of low-level radio API that would let me generate/modulate/transmit/receive/etc radio signals.
For Pinephone, there is something: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11815
Sorry, the phone world is still very foreign to me. I realize these questions may sound silly, but I'm slowly piecing all of this together.
Is there documentation anywhere I can reference?
I quit reading the article then and there! Bah!
On the contrary, Gtk and libhandy have excellent usability on phones and make applications that can run seamlessly on phones and desktops.
> Flutter, Electron, React Native
I'm not touching any of these with a stick. There no justification for demanding to run a web browser when a native application would do.
Show me a single app that uses transitions and fading in/out sidebars, and has swipe gesture integrations.
As long as this is not supported by concept (Gtk boxes will never allow this type of scene graph) I don't think Gtk can be called mobile-ready.
Mobile screen space is very limited, and as long as Gtk is static as a scene graph by nature, you'll have to do thousands of hacks to "somehow" fake it. The gsettings app on phosh is a damn dirty hack of hacks.
And with pure CSS, you would need literally less than 10 lines of layouting code.
I'm not saying electron is better, but Gtk as a layouting concept is heavily outdated. If you don't think so: read the phosh codebase. You'll start to cry after an hour, how devs persist to make this somehow work due to beliefs that Gtk is made for this. It isn't.
You're really overestimating the Pinephone's hardware. Firefox takes about 10 seconds to open.