I Love My PinePhone
jakob.space
jakob.space
That said, I don't find this very compelling: I am in fact called by people and I don't think having to implement a hack around the system's sleep state is acceptable (especially given that it may still not be reliable, what with the dependability profile of the connectivity chipset). It may be more accurate to call this a Pine: Not much of a phone to be found.
I agree about alarms; but like OP, I only use them when the phone's plugged in overnight, and hence not suspended. For ad-hoc alarms on the move, I just use my digital watch.
Perfectly functional phones with the added advantage of hardly any spyware or other garbage, plus - if I wanna - I can leave it anywhere for an instant reverse tunnel. Handy for many, many things ..
For me personally, this is one thing missing from a modern smartphone. Many old-school GSM phones, when completely turned off (but battery still inside), if there is an alarm programmed, will turn on automatically few seconds before the programmed alarm, just in time to sound on the dot.
Very useful, and exactly what I want, when I go to sleep. You can sort of approximate that with "do not disturb" mode, but that drains a bit of battery (and traffic in cell data plan) uselessly.
Airplane mode helps too I find.
On Pinephone, the RTC(has alarm support) is in the SoC and is always powered by PMIC even when the phone is off. PMIC can be configured to power up on interrupt signal, and SoC can be configured to pulldown the interrupt line on RTC alarm.
On Pro RTC is inside PMIC directly.
HW can do it. Alarm app just has to use the HW correctly.
(Tested on my PinePhone on Mobian: it works!)
Then timer firing will wake the system.
That's pretty much it. Standard Linux feature across all systems that support system suspend and RTC wakeup.
man timerfd_create
I wonder if waked writing directly to RTC doesn't break the kernel alarm functionality used by timerfd, but hopefully not https://gitlab.com/seath1/waked/-/blob/master/src/main.cpp#L...
But why not, it's FOSS. :)
But yes, I don't know why waked uses the dev node directly instead of using CLOCK_ALARM, and it's definitely possible it interferes with anything else going through the kernel using CLOCK_ALARM.
In general, setcap'ing the binary will work fine.
[1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-clocks/-/merge_requests...
Automatic resource management by kernel when the app crashes or is stopped is actually quite nice. You just restart the app and setup the timers again from the stored settings. You have to store alarms persistently, in any case. You'll get event in the eventloop of the app that registered the timer, etc. Complexity of the solution is minimal. Less opportunity for bugs and failures.
Is that true? Or does it just read from the rtc state? (Or leave it alone?) Also for efficiency reasons, don't you want a single wakeup being scheduled rather than potentially spaced out wakeups?
stored settings
Aka a database, right? Albeit a per-user database. What you are talking about sounds more like a service (daemon) than an app, though, from my perspective. A sort of per-user waked. That operates by holding timerfds it negotiated away from a privileged service. You can't revoke FDs anymore/yet, right? Although you can mark them cloexec and go on a killing spree.
Yes.
I just want the timer to fire and be handled in the process where it's needed, regardless if the system is suspended or not completely transparently. Waked doesn't help with that. I certainly don't want a special daemon that I have to register with over a complicated protocol (d-bus) in addition to having to manage the timers in app when it can be avoided just by passing a single flag to timerfd_create which will work universally and will not depend on systemd.
Spliting alarms into a deamon and UI shell is kinda pointless unless some other app would need access to alarms. But that would be a different service than waked in any case. Waked doesn't handle timers.
Just no OS exposes an API allowing that to userspace.
They are a neat gadget. But I don't think they're more or less of a neat gadget than any other Quectel 25(?) based iot device. The phone form factor, for me, was rendered useless.
(This is regardless of whether you're connected to a WiFi network or not. ie just disconnecting from a network isn't enough; you have to turn the dip switch off.)
Nobody has to implement hacks. There's a proper solution on Pinephone that can wake/power it on alarm. OP just doesn't know how to do it.
The sale page of the PinePhone says this in red letters[0]: "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."
And their wiki has this to say[1]:
"Bear in mind that the software for these smartphones is very early, with most of the software being in alpha or beta state. That's especially also the case for scalability of applications, their availability and practicability, any hardware function implementations and the firmware. The software is provided as is. There is no warranty for the software, not even for merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose."
[0] https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-linux-smar... [1] https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone
If I'd bought a PinePhone expecting a working phone, I'd be pissed. But as a hackable phone-shaped Linux platform, it's totally cool.
The reliability on HDMI out is flaky though in my experience. I have both versions of Pinephone eg. Pro.
And no; not a smartwatch that needs charging every day - or ever…just a timex that might need it’s battery replaced every year or two.
As far as reliable connectivity, dumbphones are way more rock solid than any smartphone could pretty much ever hope to be.
Worse connectivity than the first cell phones from the 90s, worse applications than the first feature phones from the early 2000s, worse performance than the first smartphones from the late 2000s.
As of today there is nothing really redeeming about it. Sure, some tech enthusiast can hack together a GTK application that shows his FOSS conference's schedule, but that's like having a spork in the middle of the amazon forest.
Does pinephones perhaps have some scheduling issues? That’s the only thing I can think of, it either has way too many processes and/or the switching is way too frequent. But linux itself manages it quite well in my experience even on low-end devices so I honestly don’t know.
EDIT: I assume parent does as well, but I definitely meant the non-pro pinephone here. I don’t have the pro one, but that presumably performs better.
Honestly, try browsing the web for a few minutes and it gets uncomfortably hot. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if some devices (mine included) have buggy hardware more so than the one you got, because I would expect much worse overall opinions otherwise.
And arm is not a new compilation target, so I don’t buy software differences being entirely the culprit, either. Worse battery life? Sure, that would explain it. But having trouble running a terminal and opening settings in 45 seconds is just criminal.
I really haven't had that experience in quite a while. I am mostly running DanctNIX or postmarketOS 22.06 with Phosh and browse with Firefox (with uBlock Origin - I also have a second Firefox profile that has NoScript installed for sites that just have too much janky JavaScript) or Epiphany.
It may help that the south of Germany is not super hot (just hot) and that I use Biktorgj's Modem firmware.
Edit, example: I am writing this in Firefox on postmarketOS while having 4 other tabs open and also two more apps (Tootle and Secrets), and the phone isn't even slightly warm.
Same thing for early PDAs like Symbian and WinCE devices - all software running on those would be native. Well, WinCE got .NET at some point, and it was usable, but that one is fully JIT-compiled.
Edit: Also, if you want to follow the topic of GNU-like Linux on mobile hardware, you may like my blog https://linmob.net
If you wonder about apps for postmarketOS, Mobian etc.: I am also maintaining a project that attempts to list them all (and that needs your contribution): https://linuxphoneapps.org
[1]: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone#Hardware_revisio...
Also not sure if Megous's work on the camera will make it to mainline (?) Or at least be installable anytime soon.
I understand that the author is quite happy to have a Linux phone but all of the good parts (even the killer feature emacs) could have been achieved with a LineageOS phone with no Google Apps.
Saying "I am really happy with this purchase!" and then in the same breath mentioning that the battery life is quite bad, connectivity is flaky at best, the phone doesn't wake up from suspend and suspend prevents the alarm from working... it's quite disingenuous.
Alarms do work, OP just missed the apps that make it possible: https://linuxphoneapps.org/categories/alarm-clock/
Regarding connectivity: This really seems to depend on the hardware revision (OP's braveheart edition was the first available to the general public), the proprietary bits of the modem firmware, your carrier and maybe a bit luck: I am having less connectivity issues on my PinePhone than on my iPhone 13 mini. Seriously.
[1]: See https://mainline.space and contrast it with https://not.mainline.space
But ultimately I mainly use my phone for the following:
- Banking and government authentication - e.g. with BankID and Kivra in Sweden. This is necessary to send money, make payments, file taxes, etc. There's no way around it unless you want to deal with going to the few remaining bank branches in person and sending letters. Same for buying and using train + metro tickets.
- WhatsApp - it's massively popular in Europe for communication and even some services. That said it is slowly losing ground to Telegram (and to a lesser extent Signal and Matrix).
- As a camera. Most high-end smartphones have incredible cameras which means you never need to carry a camera with you for most things, this is pretty indisposable too.
And unfortunately none of the GNU/Linux phones come close to solving those use-cases. Desktop convergence is great, but it's not worth giving up all of those. And if I have to carry an Android anyway, then I may as well just use my Steam Deck for the convergence (and gaming).
You can bridge all of those to a Matrix account and use a Matrix client.
As an admitted fanboy of matrix, I sure hope it gains more popularity. Not just because i like the protocol and associated technologies, but also because it can represent usage of something not propriatray for citizens. The more big insitutions like banks and gov. services that allow for use of non-propriatary tech stacks means that maybe more people can leverage them for engaging in more digital (and safe) ways. Further, i looke at the wechat model in China, where so much is done over that platform. Now, imagine as much can be done over an open, secure protocol..which if implemented optimally can perhaps in the future allow for phones/mobile devcices to be built still performant but lower cost allowiong for more folks on other side of digital divide to be able to buy and use them...to engage with orgs/insititutions/gov. for their benefit. (Clearly, my wishes here have lots of "ifs" and dependencies...but, hey, i can dream, right?)
And I don't see WhatsApp adopting a custom protocol like Matrix, especially since they already run on fork of ejabberd and XMPP is the established IETF internet standard. The same thing applies to Google, Facebook, Zoom, Jitsi, etc. which all use or have XMPP experience for their chat products.
Google and FB purposefully removed federation, so it doesn’t make sense for either of them to add it. So WhatsApp is out.
—
I wasn’t saying WhatsApp or any chat app specifically should implement Matrix natively. I don’t trust big tech. I am saying, Matrix works well enough and isn’t dependent on the whims of big tech.
I like the matrix approach of having all features included in the core protocol, instead of xmpp's approach of leveraging extensions...whicuh again is not bad, its simply what i prefer. also i favor matrix's bridging approach, though it has its flaws (for now). Of course, time will tell...and ultimately i favor any technology that empowers users with more privacy and security, and liberty (through choice as well as open sourceness).
I realize this may seem backwards to some people, but I think using a hardware key is actually on the forefront of future best security practices. More complicated devices are simply too easy to hack.
Here most (all?) banks still allow web access with 2FA through SMS or a physical key. Has that been phased out in Sweden? Our e-government services likewise have multiple authentication options, with a phone app, smartcard, USB key or other proprietary dongle serving as the second factor. I'm pretty sure this is implemented according to some EU standards, is this not the case elsewhere?
I actually got a free USB and NFC FIDO 2-certified key as part of a promo, which I use for government services. I know it's not a panacea, but I trust it more than my smartphone.
As someone who needs to use maps a lot, this phone is not daily driver ready. It's also a terrible experience for web-browsing and taking photos.
That being said, I love the pinephone, not because of it's usability, but because of potential. SSHing into my phone and having my familiar linux filesystems and programs is a dream come true. It's truly incredible how far they've come with development on the hardware and driver side. The hardest problems are largely solved, and they are shipping devices to the community in hopes of fostering people to work on the remaining software problems and improving performance on the software side. I think Pine64 and the Pinephone's contributions to Linux on mobile are enormous, even if they aren't perfect, and we are better off for having them.
The manjaro distribution is probably the most usable, but still needs a ton of work.
Super fun to play with though.
They ship it from Hong Kong with no packaging foam, so it arrived with a broken screen. I contacted them about it and they gave me some trouble shooting things which didn't work and then told me I could pay to ship it to their service center, even though it shipped to me broken. They referred me to their return policy which at the time basically says the buyer assumes risk for the product if they ship it broken (which is a violation of Visa and Mastercard's seller's terms of service)
I then had to fight them for months to get my chargeback, the whole time they were threatening me in childish ways and only after I won (because obviously, I don't know why they thought they had a chance) did they politely offer to pay for a return label.
Horribly run company, if you order from them be sure to use a credit card or something with a chargeback capability
It's a store for hackers; it's not meant to be a consumer shop. I think they even warn you to not buy if you expect returns or customer service.
That's worth nothing.
> it's not meant to be a consumer shop. I think they even warn you to not buy if you expect returns or customer service.
Reminds me of: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/24/the-adventures...
"Wow! I didn't know you could even do that."
I do not understand why somebody would do such a thing consciously. We have the situation that somebody wants to distribute the hardware at cost for development. And a big group of people who want exactly this deal. Why is there a need on a personal level to basically sabotage this? Or what am i missing that doesnt make this behavior really dickish?
edit: And again, i am not talking about people who misunderstood what exactly was offered here. That absolutly shouldnt happen. I just dont understand why somebody would do this consciously.
But these issues only occur at scale. As long as PinePhone is able to keep their zero-guarantees model under the radar, maybe it's fine
edit: again, not defending their packaging skills here.
Ultimately "YOU CAN'T DO THAT" just doesn't mean you CAN do that as long as the letters are big enough bold enough or red enough. It means YOU CAN'T DO THAT.
You cannot offer goods that don't work on a website where you anticipate people paying with their paycal mastercard visa or amex and expect them not to exercise terms that must exist by law because the alternative to someone doing the easy thing and yoinking their money relatively cheaply back over the wire isn't the incompetent OEM keeping the money its waiting for a very expensive lawsuit wherein the customer takes back not only their $99 but the $5000 it cost them to collect their $99. If enough people do that ultimately they ruin you and people come to take all your tinker toys and auction them to pay your debts.
The actual alternative is to have an actual signed contract with prospective "developers" for access to equipment. There isn't a blurb you can put on a website that will serve.
It’s the kind of place you can maybe talk to an actual human.
It’s not the kind of place where you break your Credit Card Merchant’s rules and refuse refunds on items poorly packaged and broken on arrival.
After reading OP’s comment, I will never be ordering from this company, and I was highly considering it.
But in a philosophical and aesthetic sense, if you can't fix the screen yourself, you might not be the target audience for this product.
A decent comparison would be wild, ad-hoc music festivals or raves. Nobody deserves to have painful experiences, and such experiences certainly do not have to be a fundamental part of these events. Nor should people be shamed for complaining after the fact. That said, it's also true that you have to approach these things with a certain mindset that's conducive to making the most of it. The comments I'm seeing here don't reflect that, even if I don't disagree with their arguments regarding commercial responsibility.
These devices are sold close to cost price. Ethically the disclaimer still makes sense even if shipping killed your screen and not manufacturing.
Although I'm surprised it's not possible to get the shipping company to foot the bill.
If i personally send you a prototype at cost and you demand it to be treated like a normal customer interaction the result will be that i wont be sending out prototypes at cost to just anyone any longer. Thats quite the bummer for people who wanted one.
So the question is how can we connect group A (manufacturer) and B(eager testers) without group C(Consumers) getting caught in the whole thing?
edit: Not saying what Pine is doing is good or bad, but the core problem isnt specific to Pine and many tinkerers might end up in this situation one day. And charging above cost is extremely counterproductive in some situations because it locks out some developers.
If you genuinely want people to be prototype/beta testers, give them the phone for free and then ask for it back at the end of the beta period. But the transaction occurring here is, fundamentally, a consumer transaction no matter what Pine wants to call it, and that comes with certain responsibilities which cannot be disclaimed, period.
I confused why somebody would claim them despite knowing that the only reason they can get a device in the first place is because they are ordering something that is not meant to be ordered by consumers. They arent priced in. You used a mechanism and involved yourself into an interaction you werent supposed to be in. Because the fix for the problem at hand is no longer allowing just anyone to get a devkit. Because the whole point is to get the device to developers as cheap as possible.
edit: Or differently put, the problem here isnt that OP got damaged hardware but that he ended up in an interaction he wasnt supposed to be in. And keeping people from accidentally ending up in there is one problem you can work on, but what motivates people to do this consciously?
If you stuck to "didn't you agree with that policy" perspective, you'd never get in a car, on a plane, or buy anything.
What is a lot harder, and needs additional information about the motivation, is why somebody would consciously engage into this interaction and then demand it to be a different format. Because then it becomes a task of filtering out motivated people.
> Modem: Frequent disconnects, not receiving calls
Something I believe to be observing is that the phone can stay consistently connected for days if stationary but as soon as I take it out for a drive or longer walk I immediately start getting the disconnects, which I so far have only been able to resolve by a full reboot[0). This seems to indicate that switching towers and/or disconnecting triggers it.
> Bluetooth Audio
At this point I'm realizing OP may have a masochistic leaning. But props for pushing and no kink shaming :)
Aside from the modem dying, my biggest pain-point is absent in the post, despite running a fundamentally similar software stack. Ranfomly, audio will not work in calls. Sometimes it's flawless. Sometetimes I can not hear the other side. Sometimes the other side can not hear me. It happens often enough that it's barely worth the hassle to make phone calls if I can avoid it.
Regarding TOTP apps: https://github.com/grumlimited/authenticator-rs is very close to being a nice experience. It's already functional and stable, needs what seems to be mostly a couple of simple UI tweaks.
[0]: There are some pointers that I was not aware of tho, especially the state of baseband firmware; thanks!)
I can't actually relate to e.g. the Android comparisons, since prior to my PinePhone I was running Debian on an OpenMoko Freerunner (since 2008, before Android was released!).
The article mentions the "convergence" dongle and keyboard case, both of which I have:
The convergence dongle is a great idea, but I can't quite get it to work. In particular, I can't get power at the same time as peripherals; so any time I'm using a keyboard+mouse+monitor the phone's battery is quickly draining. The USBC connection is also annoyingly loose, compared to another dongle I've got (although that doesn't have power passthrough at all).
The keyboard case is certainly bulky, but I don't mind; and the extra battery life would consistently last all day unplugged. Unfortunately, it stopped charging a while ago, and I'm not sure why; maybe a software update, maybe I blew the charging circuitry by connecting the wrong port (the manual warns not to do this!)
The keyboard is pretty pleasant to use, either hand-held with two thumbs, or "properly" on a flat surface. I've completely disabled the on-screen keyboard, so using the phone feels less claustrophobic. I can't imagine using Emacs with an on-screen keyboard, but with the keyboard case it's great.
The keyboard provides an extra USBC port for charging, which could solve my issue with the convergence dongle: have power plugged into the keyboard, and the dongle+peripherals into the phone. Unfortunately, they don't both work at the same time. Hopefully this could be hacked around in software, but kernel/firmware hacking is still a bit beyond me :(
As for OS: I've been using the supplied Manjaro. I've managed to boot NixOS Mobile on an SD card, but only as far as the TTY login prompt ;)
Remember being excited with new AOSP features[1], not the "AI-powered", proprietary nonsense Google has been cranking out recently[2]? Remember rooting?
[1] - https://www.androidpolice.com/google-io-2022/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history
- Lost his SD card with the photos he took the day he got the phone. I haven't lost a photo since I started auto-backing them up with Google Photos in 2014
- Photo of the leaflet which I assume was taken with the PinePhone looks like it's from a 2008 smartphone
- Seemingly case options are so limited he went straight to 3D printing one? Perhaps that was just for fun
- Had to use a glass screen protector made for an iPhone that works good enough but doesn't fit exactly
- The phone shuts down on impact(!!!)
I can't imagine putting up with this for a day before giving up and buying a normal smartphone. I guess if you're really into tinkering and you view these issues as fun problems to be solved it's fine, but I want to think about my phone as little as possible. Someone texts me, I read it, reply, and shut it back down. I don't want to potentially wait through a reboot because I bumped it wrong, or concern myself about photo backups.
There are plenty of ways to back up your photos? Syncthing, Nextcloud, rclone, GNOME Online Accounts (Supports Google and Nextcloud). I personally use rclone and it works very well.
> - Photo of the leaflet which I assume was taken with the PinePhone looks like it's from a 2008 smartphone
ok and?
> - Seemingly case options are so limited he went straight to 3D printing one? Perhaps that was just for fun
https://pine64.com/product-category/smartphone-accessories/
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-soft-tpu-protective-cas...
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-hard-protective-case/
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-back-cover/
> - Had to use a glass screen protector made for an iPhone that works good enough but doesn't fit exactly
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-tempered-glass-screen-p...
I seem to recall I got a glass protector with my PP, but I can't recall for sure.
> - The phone shuts down on impact(!!!)
I had a Pixel 3a that hard broke and would no longer turn on after I dropped it. I know someone else that even with gently handling, the Pixel 3a's display just broke. I on the other hand have dropped my PP a few times with only scratches on the surface.
The PinePhone isn't popular enough for an after-market case and screen protector industry to pop up yet.
But, yes, if all you want is a rock-solid experience with a smart phone, the PinePhone is not (yet?) for you.
Why dont you get yourself one of supported sailfish os phones and install sailfish?
It works for me without issues for 2 years now and I can run android apps in lxc container (without them having access to any relevant data).
Sailfish gives a Linux experience. It is mostly, but not completely, FOSS. It is more privacy oriented than both main platforms from Google and Apple. For me it is a good compromise for now. For you, that might be different.
Actually from all my experience, as a long time rom cooker, who was running angstrom on blueangel, before the android existed, sailfish is our best bet to dethrone google and apple. A small one, but there is at least a chance.
Everything else is lagging too far behind on the verge of useless, as PinePhone has demonstrated.
Just an example, my xperia 10 II phone is running sailfish without any hardware deficiencies, f.i.: bluetooth and fingerprint reader are running fine, working as expected. Battery life is excellent. There are maybe a few android ROM projects that can brag about that and quite frankly they are not very far from the AOSP.
Overall based on the author's commentary I get why they might like something like the PinePhone as it's less about what it is and more what it represents. Hopefully these phones get to a more stable space in some years.
The phone arrived in a week or two but the keyboard case was the big selling factor for me so I've barely used it while I await the keyboard.
It shipped in June and still hasn't arrived. I contacted support and they said it seems to be wedged in US customs. The tracking number I have only shows China Post info and so I can't really confirm or deny that info. Rather unfortunate...
Many online applications are increasingly available only as native apps for the iOS/Android systems. Even governments are guilty of this.
Without the ability to run my banking app or do basic interactions with postal services and government institutions, using a Linux phone is a no-go.
If you want to use a banking app without Google or Apple dominating your device, look at something which defangs Android like GrapheneOS or LineageOS.
You can already do this with a web browser (in Linux, no less)
I played with the PinePhone for a few days, but it really is still a development phone. It has promise but it'll be sitting in a box until the ecosystem matures. I'm really hoping more serious work gets done in making it a daily driver for someone like me, who is very technical but doesn't have the time to figure out why the screen stays dim or how to load in a game that works.
It seems to not do a great job of staying connected to the cell network. And it also often doesn't wakeup for new SMS messages.
I thought buying dedicated hardware that is designed to send and receive SMS would be better than buying a raspberry pi and an lte dongle, but I now regret that decision.
I've not tried to use the PhinePhone as an actual phone, but from the little time I've been forced to interact with it, the UI is basically unusable. Its incredibly slow and unresponsive. Often times it will just lock up for no apparent reason. SSH'ing into the phone has been the only reliable way of interacting with it.
‡ For the handful of services that refuse to work with Google Voice.
It has been marginally more stable though. It has 9 days of uptime so far.
They claim to be getting T-Mob compliance certified. Although I'd check that if it's relevant.
13MP camera is nice. Specs are certainly much improved. Probably enough for daily driver.
My next phone though:
Next battery tech, solid state?
88mp front cam as this is the threshold for beating film.
depth cam that can 3d scan things for me.
Sure sounds like iphone will get there first, pine could beat them to it.
Pine64 doesn't make any of those components. High end components are also generally from manufacturers that don't share documentation, so entirely useless for Pine64's goals.
Most of those 'high MP' cameras are also not really useful anymore without an ISP and those aren't available open-source (except perhaps with camera emulation and a fake CSI interface to the application processor cores).
But to clarify: it's not really as much about "any ISP" as it is about a good ISP that can do multi-camera composition. The ISP in the RockChip SoC can't even do one, it mostly just does basic cropping/rotation/resizing and controls the PHY. While technically an ISP, it's more like an interface driver at this stage. The driver is open source, but the hardware isn't. That's not always a bad thing, as in this case the hardware doesn't run on any RT blob, it's mostly just a bunch of registers for (image) stream processing.
I think in the android rom hacking world, most ISPs are used with their binary blobs (both firmware and kernel modules) but without the configuration and user land blobs, resulting in working cameras (at high pixel counts) but really bad image quality.
It's still a bit basic, I'd like more, but there much more color and image correction controls than you're acknowledging https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/userspace-api/media/v...
There's also no firmware. It can be used as is without one.
Lack of documentation is also not a huge issue, since rockchip manuals for all/most parameters of the ISP are findable on the net.
What's missing are calibration tools. But those can be re-created from scratch. It's not terribly difficult.
Just saying that there are FOSS supported ISPs available. RKISP10 is fully supported in mainline Linux. You can just use it via v4l2.
It does indeed not need firmware, but higher end IPS blocks often do, especially when you get much higher bandwidth sensors per CSI channel.
What I am wondering now about those calibration tools is if however they are built or reverse-engineered, they could read the pre-existing calibration payload.
Preexisting calibration data are just XML files with params to load to the ISP and params to use to determine which set of params to load based on statistics collected from ISP (like after detecting what kind of light the scene has, you have to load params calibrated for that light type).
(I do rotation via RGA, so maybe you mean that? That's a separate HW block, not part of ISP.)
edit: wow, did not realise how far phone cameras had come!
The upcoming Moto X30 Pro has a 200 MP camera in it.
edit: these are all rear cameras
[1]: https://www.smartprix.com/bytes/best-108mp-camera-phones/
Motorola Moto X30 Pro is 200 mp.
Could you explain to me why I'm unhinged? I didn't feel like I had posted anything controversial or whatever.
I feel like I wasn't being unrealistic at all.
solid state batteries exist today and can be bought. Obviously early in the commercialization but they do exist. Still unclear how safe they are.
88mp camera is less than what I can go buy from costco right now.
3d scanners totally fit in your pocket. I don't mean photogrammetry neither. The newer iphones have lidar that can scan. Newer androids have depth sensors or TOF sensors.
I believe I understand why you feel I am unhinged.
I said, "Sure sounds like iphone will get there first, pine could beat them to it."
Obviously I said iphone will win, I optimistically or enthusiastically said pine could put in the work and get there first.
You feel I am unhinged because of optimism?
For me. My love for webOS is so great it’s all I want