[HN Gopher] Pinephone first steps
___________________________________________________________________
Pinephone first steps
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 132 points
Date : 2020-05-10 04:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (scattered-thoughts.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (scattered-thoughts.net)
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I haven't had a lot of time to invest in working with my
| PinePhone yet, though I've heard a ton of improvements have been
| made since the last build I tested.
|
| It's still kinda crazy to me that you can just now finally buy a
| phone that you can just... install a bunch of different OSes on,
| and not encumbered out of the box by Android. It's an exciting
| future for phones again for the first time in nearly a decade.
| api wrote:
| I've argued that so far we've been in an era with smart phones
| that resembles early name brand closed PCs like the Commodore
| 64, Apple II, TI/99, etc.
|
| We may be about to enter an era more reminiscent of the PC
| clone era, which was more boring from an aesthetic point of
| view but far more exciting in terms of innovation and
| opportunity.
|
| New platforms usually start closed and then open over time.
|
| I think a similar transformation is slowly building in the
| cloud space, but it's very quiet and nowhere near critical
| mass. I'd keep an eye on cheap bare metal hosts like packet.net
| and OVH, things that make it really easy to self-host and self-
| manage K8S clusters, and truly RAIN (redundant array of
| inexpensive nodes) ready databases like CockroachDB. Pretty
| soon you'll be able to combine those things and host at roughly
| 1/10th the cost of AWS or less, with absolutely zero lock-in.
| At the very least it will kick off a price war in conventional
| cloud.
|
| Alternately if Starlink brings much faster connectivity to the
| edge while simultaneously kicking terrestrial broadband in the
| butt to offer competitive offerings, we could see a move of
| some hosting back to the edge where 99.9%+ uptime is not really
| needed. That could include batch processing, model training,
| analytics, and other stuff that doesn't directly power real-
| time customer API or UI interactions.
| jandrese wrote:
| I have been waiting forever for phone manufacturers to
| finally standardize the booting process, hardware detection,
| and driver support for phone hardware. It's a decade overdue
| now. I would have thought the nightmare of supporting dozens
| of different phone models would push manufacturers to do
| this, but instead they just said "fuck supporting older
| models" and let them die young.
|
| The old excuse that the hardware was too limited to support
| that kind of functionality is long since over. There is
| really no excuse anymore.
| api wrote:
| It's a problem on the whole ARM architecture and is one
| reason that ARM servers have not taken off. Every ARM board
| and chip is a special snowflake with its own weird boot and
| driver and hardware setup incantations. There's a bit of
| de-facto standardization but it's rough and not dependable
| at all.
| g_p wrote:
| The lack of proper boot and hardware standardisation is a
| huge issue. DTB tries to solve the fact different people
| put different peripherals on different ports, and there's
| no real hardware enumeration process to get around this.
|
| But beneath this, one of the root issues at least in
| mobile devices is the system on chip nature of the design
| meaning you're at the mercy of the chipmaker to maintain
| appropriate drivers. These are invariably very very
| closed source on phones, as some areas like imaging and
| camera support were (and are now still, I guess) being
| bought in as super expensive IP blocks with serious NDAs
| and restrictions on what can be made available.
|
| One reason Android is as fragmented as it was, was that
| they kept changing the system HAL, and chipset makers
| weren't providing upgraded drivers to support the new HAL
| as, from their perspective, the chip was end-of-life, old
| news, last year's model not making them any more money. I
| assume it isn't quite as bad on server, but single board
| computers running mainline Linux without patches, and
| with all peripheral and SoC component support are very
| rare, and noteworthy when they are found. Most still have
| pretty closed GPUs.
|
| But when it's all on one chip, and you don't have any
| hardware discovery process, or even a standard way to
| boot the CPU, it's hard to see much of a generic future,
| as much as one would be great!
| pvg wrote:
| How were these early PCs any more closed than the IBM PC
| clones that followed? Some shipped with schematics and ROM
| listings. Smartphones have now been around longer than the
| entire pre-IBM PC era with no obvious movement towards any
| kind of opening outside of hobbyist devices. Game consoles
| have been around for decades without any such shift either.
| api wrote:
| > Some shipped with schematics and ROM listings.
|
| They were more open than an iPhone, but they were not
| particularly open to anyone with less than a CE/EE level of
| computer and electronics expertise. They certainly were not
| designed to be modular and open like the clone PCs that
| came later.
| pvg wrote:
| I don't think that's accurate, just google up an Apple
| ][. But even if it were true, it wouldn't be strong
| evidence for your 'consumer hardware platforms become
| more open' theory given the reality of the longer-lasting
| smartphone era we live in now. Both the theory and the
| example used to support it seem starkly at odds with that
| reality, to me.
| qchris wrote:
| Really neat to see an application in the wild written in Zig, but
| it makes a lot of sense why it would be used for a cross-platform
| target. I've got my PinePhone on pre-order, I'll have to give
| doing something similar a shot when it gets arrives!
| imprettycool wrote:
| This is the future. If you're doing iOS or Android dev
| professionally, your days are numbered.
| joemazerino wrote:
| Imagine a board meeting at JP Morgan and the CEO pulls out a
| Pinephone. iOS and Android make up the vast majority of mobile
| devices and will for the forseeable future.
| ipnon wrote:
| Think longer. Apple Inc. was founded 44 years ago. They were
| a PC company until 11 years ago. Can we be confident that in
| 2031 the libre phone will have gained no market share to the
| iPhone? What about in 2064?
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| If the UX does not vastly improve even beyond what is
| currently good by Linux standards I don't see a reason for
| most people to switch.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| I can see Linux on the smartphone becoming about as popular
| als Linux on desktop. Appreciated and used by relatively few
| but enthusiastic people.
| ipnon wrote:
| I'm going to have a hard time looking in the mirror and calling
| myself a hacker if I don't get one of these.
| ferzul wrote:
| i just ordered one. i have wanted to for so long but buying
| luxuries isn't me thing. looking forward to it!
| mikece wrote:
| Would there be anything illegal about modifying a phone such that
| the location data it submits looks like some random person in
| Sheboygan, Wisconsin, instead of reporting where I actually am?
| Pretty much all I want in a phone is the ability to spoof
| location data and act as a hotspot for a smarter device (that
| doesn't have location awareness built in) so I can access richer
| apps over a VPN in greater privacy.
| chewz wrote:
| Fake GPS does it.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blogspot.n...
| mikece wrote:
| Perhaps.... but Google would still know your real location,
| no?
| chipperyman573 wrote:
| And your carrier, and anyone who does location based on IP,
| and anyone who does location based on inaudable noises only
| your phone can hear (https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-th...), and...
|
| But, this would still help protect against the simplest way
| to steal your location data, which is what a lot of
| services do
| openfuture wrote:
| There's a hardware switch for the mic but yeah it's
| pretty hopeless to hide your location in those threat
| models.
| mindslight wrote:
| If you're talking about GPS location, then don't use
| application software that reports your location.
| MicroG+LineageOS will suffice.
|
| If you're talking about tower based location, there is no way
| to significantly spoof your location since you can only connect
| to local cell towers.
|
| To mitigate the latter, what you actually want is a phone with
| smarter software that will communicate over Wifi most of the
| time (rotating macaddr of course), perhaps with the option to
| turn on a cell radio in case you really need to communicate out
| of wifi connectivity. Hopefully the freshly built software
| stack inspired by new platforms will end up being conducive to
| this usage.
| Jaygles wrote:
| Not sure if it would be easy to determine the legality, but you
| might be able to check EULAs and TOS of the services you plan
| to use to see if they have a clause establishing their ok-ness
| with false data.
|
| Tangent - Sheboygan has excellent brats
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Does anyone know if the pinephone WiFi supports ad-hoc/mesh mode
| 802.11?
| rjeli wrote:
| well, the driver seems to support ibss and p2p. hardmac though,
| with a blob
|
| https://github.com/Icenowy/rtl8723cs/blob/master/core/rtw_io...
| m4rtink wrote:
| So I'm a bit confused how to get a Pine Phone at the moment -
| looking to the Pine store, I only see this:
|
| https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinephone-community-editio...
|
| It seems to be some Ubuports related edition of the Pine Phone &
| that's seems to be the only Pine Phone in their store.
|
| Still the price matches (~150$) and while I don't have much
| interest in UbuPorts, I guess nothing should prevent me from
| flashing the Sailfish OS port, Fedora port or something else I'm
| interested in on the device.
|
| And the UbuPorts logo on the back can be fixed by the ~5$ plain
| back cover (or a Sailfish OS or Fedora sticker).:)
| pengaru wrote:
| Yeah, that seems to be the case, and I just ordered one even
| though I don't care about ubports.
|
| Looking forward to leaving gps, camera, and microphone switches
| in the permanently off position and retiring the existing phone
| lacking such switches.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Agreed. I ordered mine, but with all the excitement, the
| shipping is not going to happen until late May anyway. Still,
| it will be fun to play with.
| floren wrote:
| Yes, at the moment that's your only option, but as you
| correctly call out there's no reason you can't install your own
| OS.
| megous wrote:
| I guess this is a good opportunity for a pinephone related
| project self-promotion. :)
|
| A few days ago I've published my custom bootloader for PinePhone:
| https://megous.com/git/p-boot/about/
|
| It's the one I use for a quick booting to Linux:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxqdF7H_It8
|
| Something to try if you have a pinephone and want to experience
| sub-second boot times.
|
| Anyway, if you like bringing up new hardware, or optimizing
| things, this is as good an opportunity as it gets to get
| pinephone and have fun. There are lots and lots of areas that can
| be optimized and improved in usersapce and in the kernel and you
| can do whatever you fancy or want to learn about. It's all being
| developed by random people on the internet. ;)
| nmstoker wrote:
| Wow, that is fast! I was just getting over how messed up the
| screen protector looks and realised I'd have to restart the
| video because you'd finished!
| jamii wrote:
| Wow, definitely going to try that out. It takes that long for
| my android phone just to unlock sometimes.
| wiz21c wrote:
| I've already asked the question here and there but so far no good
| answer. I'm an old hacked : that is, I use a phone 99% of the
| time to send SMS and 1% of the time to give voice calls.
|
| Everybody test various things : youtube, browser, camera,
| consoles, various OS'es, etc.
|
| But does this pine _phone_ can actually make phone calls (and
| receive phone calls) in a reliable way ? That 's the only thing
| that prevents me from buying one.
|
| (if you look on the web, you'll find a handful of comments about
| actually receiving phone calls and they are worrying at best)
| megous wrote:
| Yes, the HW can do that, and I've made them personally. Ubports
| will be able to make/receive calls soon if it does not already.
|
| Though if you just want a phone for calling, you can get a
| dumbphone. I have that and it beats any smartphone anytime,
| including pinephone. "Charge and forget about for a month" is
| an unbeatable feature for people who don't call much or receive
| many calls.
|
| I also developed a routing configuration for pinephone audio
| https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html#toc-voice-call...
| that will eventually make this a very fascinating device and
| allow features (https://xnux.eu/ui/voice-calls-app.html) that
| no iPhone or Android will ever give you. So PinePhone has a
| potential to be a much more interesting phone device.
| panpanna wrote:
| Quick question:
|
| How is the pinephone software development coordinated and how
| did you get into it?
| trixie_ wrote:
| +1 for a cool name.
| acheron wrote:
| Having been reading Greek myths recently, I initially
| pronounced it to rhyme with "Persephone". I guess it's supposed
| to be "Pine" "Phone" though.
|
| Why Pine? Like the email client?
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| The company is Pine64. They also make PineBook and a bunch of
| single board computers.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| This right here is what excites me the most about Linux phones
| freedomben wrote:
| I bought the Braveheart edition of the PinePhone and have played
| with various builds on it. I didn't try mobile nix, but I may
| give it a shot (though I've not used a Nix before so it might be
| a learning curve).
|
| The PinePhone has a lot of potential IMHO. It's nowhere near
| ready to be your primary phone, but it's neat and at $150 it's a
| fun little toy.
|
| IME, Fedora worked the best out of the box. I had issues with the
| battery not being recognized by postmarketOS (along with a few
| other things) though from what I've heard from others in chat
| rooms that's atypical (usually pmOS works great).
|
| I'm super impressed with the PinePhone hardware wise. It looks
| and feels like a decent phone, and it's easy to remove the back
| and tinker or flip the hardware switches. You can tell they put a
| lot of thought and attention to getting it right. My only hope is
| that once things are working, I can buy one with specs comparable
| to the OnePlus 8 Pro (with similar price tag of course).
| pixxel wrote:
| "It's nowhere near ready to be your primary phone"
|
| May I ask why? I was about to look into the project and
| potentially purchase one.
| ta17711771 wrote:
| No verified boot.
|
| If security (which is necessary for ensuring privacy) is of
| value to you, get a Pixel 3a, possibly with GrapheneOS.
|
| Get both to support free software, the idea of free hardware,
| but don't compromise your phone security model just yet.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Please. Commercial phones "security model" is to protect
| themselves _from_ the user, and that 's about it. The
| baseband itself is the main backdoor.
| ta17711771 wrote:
| The chips are built to mitigate this now.
|
| And upon reboot, a proper verified boot, as well as
| Auditor &or Attestation, lets you know, with
| cryptographic proof, whether your phone's firmware has
| been compromised by such a piece of hardware.
| kop316 wrote:
| Plainly put, none of the OSes do the basic features of a
| phone. Ubuntu Ports is the closest to being daily driver
| ready, and it cannot do MMS[0] (so group texts and picture
| texts are out). I cannot comment on the state of other OSes.
|
| Even with that, most of them do not have a lot of basic
| features of what a vanilla smartphone would have either.
|
| That isn't to say it will stay that way. I try out a few of
| the OSes about once a month or so, and the difference from
| when I first got it to now is astounding. I think (hope) that
| by the end of the year that I can use a Pinephone as my daily
| driver.
|
| [0]https://gitlab.com/ubports/community-ports/pinephone
| solarkraft wrote:
| It doesn't run Android apps (well ... yet!), native apps are
| "meh", the UI quality is questionable and the battery life
| miserable. That's my last state of knowledge. Does anybody
| know how the power management stuff is going? I'm planning to
| build a mobile device with the very related SOPINE and think
| that project might profit from some lessons on that front.
|
| And oh yeah, I'm totally planning to buy a PinePhone because
| because it's cool as hell.
| megous wrote:
| Suspend to ram is working these days with crust firmware.
| It consumes some 150mW in suspend I think. So that should
| get a ~70h suspend time. That's most probably without a
| modem.
|
| I still have to measure it a bit and play with it more.
| I've made a fake battery recently to measure power
| consumption in suspend independently:
| https://megous.com/dl/tmp/IMG_0047.JPG
| MayeulC wrote:
| Last I looked into that, most distros were able to run
| Crust on the embedded microcontroller, shutting down all
| cores and leaving it up to the uC to wake up the main CPU.
| This saves a substantial amount of power, and it seems that
| the device can now last around a full day.
|
| So I'd say it can be used as a daily driver, unless you
| have strict requirements on app compatibility.
|
| Speaking of which, I wonder how an emulated Android device
| (or even a real one) streaming video on my pinephone trough
| LTE would fare :)
| freedomben wrote:
| In addition to the issues like MMS not working, there are
| lots of papercuts that collectively add up to a really
| annoying experience. I kept having issues with the battery
| being recognized one minute and not the next. The touch
| detection needs some polishing, as does the keyboard. They
| are usable but have some metaphorical rough edges that need
| metaphorical sanding. Battery life isn't great yet either, I
| assume because it's not optimized yet.
|
| That said, go ahead and get one. They're cheap enough that
| they are fun toys, and it's a way to vote with some dollars.
| Even tho it's not ready for daily driving, I think it will be
| in a few months, or sooner given how fast things are moving
| in the community now that there's real hardware people can
| buy. You can help with development by reporting bugs and
| such. Also you get to be a part of history!
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-05-11 23:00 UTC)