Comment by swebs
4 years ago
Well it can make calls, transfer data over cellular networks, and access a web browser. For some people, that's all they need. For maps, I use Nextcloud Maps through Firefox. You can also use Google Maps that way or whatever OSM provider. It comes with a Telegram client and Matrix client.
>no powerful browser beyond the clunky Desktop-Firefox-for-Postmarket-OS hack, etc.
I don't really know what you mean by this. It's the exact same Firefox that's in desktop Linux. You can install all the add-ons and such. Do note that Manjaro is not PostmarketOS.
The biggest problems are the weak CPU as you've mentioned, and the fact that the entire OS is in a very alpha (or even pre-alpha) state right now.
> For some people, that's all they need.
History tells us that when you have a device that does a few things that only for a tiny minority of people – within already a tiny minority of nerds – are "all that they need", and the dev community is so small, there is no future to the device. For someone who was around in the OpenMoko and Nokia N900 days, it is hard not to see the PinePhone as a stillborn device, which will never progress beyond "pre-alpha" state. A year after I got my PinePhone, it remains just as disappointing an experience as in the beginning.
> You can also use Google Maps that way or whatever OSM provider.
Browsing Google Maps is a joke on the PinePhone's weak processor. And again, OSM on the PinePhone is vastly inferior to the OSM choices on Android. Merely showing OSM tiles does not a good map app make.
> It's the exact same Firefox that's in desktop Linux
And that is the problem. Desktop Firefox was never designed to work at those screen dimensions. Many features of the Firefox UI do not actually work on the PinePhone. (They might possibly work if you dock the PinePhone with a monitor and mouse – I haven’t checked – but they don’t work on the PinePhone as a phone.)
> Browsing Google Maps is a joke on the PinePhone's weak processor.
So you probably need Librem 5 for more performance. There is also OpenStreetMap, which is much faster.
> Desktop Firefox was never designed to work at those screen dimensions.
It already mostly works. Software updates make it more usable every week.
> So you probably need Librem 5 for more performance
Librem has its own set of problems and does not change my opinion that this iteration of the free Linux mobile ecosystem is stillborn. My feeling is that we'll have to wait another decade for new players to appear and try everything all over again.
> There is also OpenStreetMap, which is much faster.
The OpenStreetMap.org website is a tech demo, it isn’t really meant to be used for one's map needs. For that, apps are out there. However, as I said, the PinePhone's OSM-based apps are also little more than tech demos that just serve OSM tiles.
> Software updates make it more usable every week.
The Desktop-Firefox-for-PinePhone hack doesn’t get updated often (or possibly at all).
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