I was going through Pine64’s page again after I found the latest KFE announcement. With that said, I seem to see a lot of issues with firmware on the Pine, whilst the Librem is just plain out of budget for me. Was interested in how many people here run a Linux mobile as a daily driver, and how has your experience been?

I’m considering purchasing the Pine but I’d like a better screen, more RAM and a better CPU. Don’t know if I should wait for a new model to be released (are they even planning to do that? Is the company active?). I will only really use it to browse the Web, and might even look to desolder a couple of parts that I know I won’t use.

Thanks.

Edit: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?

Edit 2: overall, I am much saddened about the state of affairs regarding private computing on the go. I desperately hope that Linux on mobile takes off, even though its incubation looks disheartening at the moment. Thank you everyone for your comments.

  • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
    28·
    11 months ago

    I’ve bought a Nexus 4 to play around with Ubuntu Touch many years ago, but I really don’t think I could daily drive even a more powerful Linux phone. Many apps from messengers to banking apps are Android/iOS only, so it’d be really inconvenient to use — not to mention problems with calling and a not-so-great camera.

    Almost all things I want to do on a phone are possible with a Pixel + GrapheneOS, which also makes an open source, secure and private phone OS.

    Usually ssh’ing into a server through termux is all I need, altough it’d be cool to be able to plug my phone into a monitor and have a desktop with me all the time. But it being “cool” is the problem, as it’s not useful day to fay for me. If I need a pc I’ll take my laptop. I’ll probably try it at some point, but that’s many years into the future.

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
      13·
      11 months ago

      Man, the call problems are a dealbreaker for any phone at all, imo. Maybe not for a toy, but it’s bonkers that they’d release a phone OS that isn’t 100% call stable.

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
        4·
        11 months ago

        There has to be a device to develop support for calling. Since there’re multiple open source phone projects it’s also not simple to just write an implementation for them. Additionally carriers don’t work all the same (different bands, …), so it’s really not easy to solve with the few resources available. As far as I know much of the development on these phone OS is done by volunteers and pine64 isn’t a big established company either.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      11 months ago

      Copying my edit here: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
        2·
        11 months ago

        Performance and bugs might still be a problem with these relatively young projects. But if all you need is a browser I do believe it might be worth a shot.

        In the EU 2FA for banking is required by law which usually comes down to either an Android/iOS app or a chipTAN device. That’s why browser isn’t an option for me. Sadly I don’t think waydroid passes the basicIntegrity check of AOSP [1], so emulation is out of the picture too.

        [1] https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps

        • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
          1·
          11 months ago

          Banking 2FA can be done by SMS too, which is secure enough.

          A world in which banking requires us to install spyware on our mobile computers is not a world we should accept.