[HN Gopher] PINE64 December Update
___________________________________________________________________
PINE64 December Update
Author : Confiks
Score : 134 points
Date : 2020-12-15 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pine64.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pine64.org)
| shirakawasuna wrote:
| Very impressive updates. So glad to see this project have wings.
| jepper wrote:
| An incredible project pushing for open hardware.
|
| Very happy with my pinebook pro and rockpro. The pinebook pro has
| amazing build quality and usability for the price. When my
| oneplus dies hopefully there will be a pinephone 2!
| fsflover wrote:
| There is already Pinephone 2 and it's called Librem 5 :)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| They are so good, and so humble. Virtually every update talks
| about tons of issues, and yet they are best in class.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Indeed, they are many times ahead any previous take on open
| source hardware exactly because they are pragmatic, without big
| nebulous plans to attract the crowd, and money.
|
| The later proves to be _too easy_ , and actually doing
| something with the money raised is much harder that "go to the
| first ODM behind the corner"
|
| Too many Kickstarter crowd people chose the "go to the first
| ODM behind the corner" route, and get burned over, and over,
| and over again.
| tenkabuto wrote:
| There's a good video version of this update:
| https://youtu.be/ULs5gOiLrfY
| anderspitman wrote:
| Am I crazy, or has pine64 actually managed to build a sustainable
| ARM Linux company? There have been a hundred of these projects
| over the years. I feel like they tend to launch with a lot of
| fanfare, and eventually lose steam and die.
|
| But pine64 seems to have started humbly and slowly be _building_
| momentum.
|
| Their margins have to be tiny though, judging by the impressive
| build quality of my $150 PinePhone.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Apple pwned them, though.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| From what I have read, their margins are non existent. They are
| not aiming to turn a profit right now.
| thepete2 wrote:
| They plan on making a keyboard for the Pinephone which
| effectively gives you a ~$250 phone-sized linux computer with a
| cell phone modem. That's seriously cool
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Where and when can I get a decent laptop with a cell phone
| modem built in, so I can just use that for messaging apps, and
| only own a dumb phone.
| cle wrote:
| I have an HP EliteBook which has a built-in modem and a
| micro-SIM slot.
| pengaru wrote:
| Lenovo has offered WWAN options for ages, continuing what was
| already an established IBM ThinkPad option.
| pimeys wrote:
| I have an old ThinkPad X230 with a WWAN modem. Installed
| OpenBSD to it and it just works as a nice small travel
| laptop.
|
| The model is from year 2013.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| How do you use the WWAN? How could I install, say Whatsapp
| or Signal, on my laptop?
| nvrspyx wrote:
| You'd have to activate it with a cell provider that
| supports WWAN and then you can just use the desktop (or
| web) versions of WhatsApp or Signal.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| The WhatsApp desktop app (or web version) actually
| communicates with your smart phone to do the actual
| sending/receiving/communications.
|
| If you turn off your cell phone and attempt to use
| WhatsApp web it will fail.
| danielheath wrote:
| Signal has a desktop app; you might need to put the sim
| into an android/iOS device for initial setup.
| tartoran wrote:
| And it will be a very usable keyboard with additional power
| underneath.
| thepete2 wrote:
| Oh and btw. for the price of an iPhone charger [0] you can
| literally buy 3 extra batteries plus charger ... [1]
|
| [0] https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MHXH3AM/A/magsafe-
| charger
|
| [1] https://pine64.com/product-category/smartphone-spare-parts
| baybal2 wrote:
| Those 65W Navitas based chargers are actually all exact
| copies of the reference design, and most are made by a single
| factory.
|
| GaNFETs are there mostly for the marketing, and don't make
| any much more difference than few percents efficiency at such
| power level.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'd have to look at the numbers, but a few percent points
| of efficiency can be a big difference in the power (and
| thus heat) dissipation of the device; going from 90% to 92%
| efficiency reduces the power dissipated in the device by
| 20%.
| voltagex_ wrote:
| They won't let you buy those batteries in non-US locations.
| The "suggested alternative" is to _file down_ a Samsung
| battery.
| anderspitman wrote:
| I love that the battery is replaceable. Though I wish mobile
| devices included tiny backup batteries that give you ~1min to
| swap the battery without having to reboot the device. This
| would especially be useful for my gopro which I often use for
| long captures that I don't want to interrupt. But it would
| also be nice on my PinePhone.
| [deleted]
| blackbear_ wrote:
| They are doing great things, looking forward to receiving my
| pinephone sometime next year!
| akudha wrote:
| I see 4 phones here https://pine64.com/product-
| category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...
|
| For someone with limited linux (I know basic commands etc, but
| never tinkered at the OS level), which model should I get?
| thinkmassive wrote:
| The convergence package increases the internal flash (eMMC)
| storage from 16GB to 32GB, and the RAM from 2GB to 3GB. That
| leaves two hardware configurations, each available with Manjaro
| or KDE pre-loaded.
|
| It looks like the Manjaro version may only be available in the
| EU, so that might simplify your decision.
|
| The PinePhone is awesome--I love my Braveheart edition--but you
| should probably have a decent understanding of Linux and/or
| embedded systems (at least replacing an Android bootloader) in
| order to appreciate it at this point. If your goal is to learn
| then it certainly could be fun, although you might want to
| supplement with something a little more beginner friendly like
| a Raspberry Pi or a laptop/desktop you can boot from USB.
| Personally I would only advise someone to purchase a PinePhone
| now if they're totally comfortable replacing the OS, in which
| case the edition it ships with doesn't really matter (other
| than the branding).
| akudha wrote:
| Do you use it as your main phone? Or is it just for
| tinkering?
|
| It is not that expensive, I wouldn't be upset even if I
| somehow brick/break it
| W-Stool wrote:
| I bought a Pinebook Pro when they were last available and I was
| really pleasantly surprised at how good the build quality was and
| the display quality was excellent. Unfortunately they are not
| currently available - their LCD supplier bailed on them
| (according to the December news). Once they become available
| again I could easily imagine worse things to do with US$200.
| robotmay wrote:
| Aah I was wondering what happened to the Pinebook Pro order
| option. I regret not getting in on the previous order as
| there's basically nothing comparable on the market from what I
| can find.
| apricot wrote:
| I love everything about my Pinebook Pro except the trackpad,
| which suffers from lag. Not much, just enough to be really
| annoying.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I don't think they even have a real supplier bound by contract.
|
| Anybody making less than 100k+ devices a year is much more
| likely just to buy from a small distributor who can only vouch
| for availability of inventory on hand.
| anderspitman wrote:
| Agreed. Very impressed by the hardware build quality of my
| PinePhone.
| Klasiaster wrote:
| While not mentioned in the blog post: A huge thanks to the Mobian
| folks for making a really good mobile OS on top of Debian with
| only a few packages in a custom repo while still using the
| standard Debian repo for the rest.
|
| As for the PinePhone keyboard: It would be nice to have a
| ThinkPad-like TrackPoint to not rely on the touch screen and also
| for external monitors that don't have touch support.
| anderspitman wrote:
| I think the touchscreen is fine on a screen that small. It
| would be cool to be able to use the touchscreen as a touchpad
| when using an external monitor though. Obviously that's doable
| purely in software.
| swiley wrote:
| If you're on X11 I think that's a configuration change.
| baybal2 wrote:
| It has I2C connectivity. Any i2c joystick/trackpoint should
| work.
|
| Splice in TCA8424, or SK5210, and that's it.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I'm not into over-powered phones, but do like a good camera.
| Anyone have one of the pine phones?
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| The PinePhone camera is not good, blurry at high light, noisy
| at medium to low light levels. The Megapixels app is an attempt
| to create the best software possible for the PinePhone
| hardware, and looks less bad than the default camera used
| before.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The camera is acceptable but not great. TBH the main thing
| blocking me from getting one to use as a daily driver is lack
| of MMS support
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| whoah. that is kind of a big one, I agree.
| fsflover wrote:
| Librem 5 has a better camera, but it's driver is not ready yet,
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.
| kop316 wrote:
| I don't use the camera really, but here's some pictures from
| the camera app dev:
|
| https://blog.brixit.nl/camera-on-the-pinephone/
|
| https://blog.brixit.nl/pinephone-camera-part-2/
|
| https://blog.brixit.nl/pinephone-camera-adventures-part-3/
|
| https://blog.brixit.nl/pinephone-camera-pt4/
| 1-6 wrote:
| Yikes, those photos aren't so great. There's a decent amount
| of noise. I guess it's hard to compete at the level of some
| phone manufacturers. I do love the elegance of taking photos
| with commands:
|
| $ camera.py still rear.raw -c rear -r 1080p1 --raw --pixfmt $
| bayer2rgb -i rear.raw -w 1920 -v 1080 -b 8 -f BGGR -t -o
| rear.tiff $ darktable rear.tiff
| MartijnBraam wrote:
| Yeah the sensor really needs daylight to get acceptable
| picture quality, ideally a cloudy day because it doesn't
| have the latitude to deal with the highlight/shadows of
| direct sunlight. It might be possible to get slightly more
| from the sensor for static scenes using astrophotography
| techniques like stacking but in most cases that won't be
| practical.
| kop316 wrote:
| For the record, thank you for the camera app! You do
| awesome work.
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| I'm so excited about this - I'm looking forward to picking up a
| pinephone after the next round of updates.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-12-15 23:00 UTC)