Is Linux Mobile Ready?
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
- Today I talk about my first experiences with the PinePhone Pro and Linux on mobile.
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==== Special Thanks to Our Patrons! ====
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==== Referenced ====
www.pine64.org/pinephonepro/
==== Time Stamps ====
0:00 Intro
0:43 First Look and Lowering Expectations
1:47 The Hardware
3:58 Battery Life
6:20 The Software
8:58 Customizing the Home Screen...Yikes! Bugs!
10:46 Crashes
11:17 Overall Usage of the Software
12:06 Problems with the Camera
12:50 Is it Good as a Phone?
13:09 More Crashes...This time LIVE!
14:03 Back to the Phone as a Phone
15:30 Time for some Optomism
16:19 Manjaro as a Phone OS?
19:22 A Matter of Expectations
21:40 The Next Steps
22:23 Goodbyes
#pinephone #linuxmobile #thelinuxcast - Наука та технологія
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0:00 Intro
0:43 First Look and Lowering Expectations
1:47 The Hardware
3:58 Battery Life
6:20 The Software
8:58 Customizing the Home Screen...Yikes! Bugs!
10:46 Crashes
11:17 Overall Usage of the Software
12:06 Problems with the Camera
12:50 Is it Good as a Phone?
13:09 More Crashes...This time LIVE!
14:03 Back to the Phone as a Phone
15:30 Time for some Optomism
16:19 Manjaro as a Phone OS?
19:22 A Matter of Expectations
21:40 The Next Steps
22:23 Goodbyes
12:18 Even if that's the case, the expected behavior should be: the app loads completely, detects the camera is disabled, warns the user that the camera switch is off. At least that's what I'd expect as good app behavior, instead of just endless loading.
Camera not off. Camera covered with jb weld! Lol good luck
so.... it's a phone shaped object.
Phone shaped GNU/Linux personal computer. Yes. The intended way is actually to plug an external screen and keyboard/mouse for the perfect experience.
@@softwarelivre2389 I had an Ubuntu phone a few years ago, it was a nice device and very usable (after I learnt that `apt-get update && apt-get upgrade ` is a bad idea). Convergence didn't work though, but "probably next year" or so.
The fact that it still doesn't work and that this phone seems a step back makes me think that Linux on phones is not feasible.
It's a portable terminal
@@spicynoodle7419 people in the 70s would be going nuts rn
@@softwarelivre2389 "GNU/Linux" 🤡 unless you also call it Every/Software/Running/On/It/Linux you only look like a clown
Sorry, the Megapixels camera app doesn't work yet on the PinePhone Pro. I'm working on it :P
Ah no worries.
I thought you quit working with Pine64?
@@sanderhaskins2740 yeah I'm not. I'm just developing random stuff. Megapixels 2.0 not only runs on the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro but also the Librem 5 and a handful of random phones I have around here.
I hope you get it, i really like the pinephone concept and want it to be a good alternative to apple and android. But why not just make your own fork of android tho? The best part imo is the physical hardware switches, your own version of android could have all the privacy respecting features you could possibly want tho. Why does it have to be linux?
@@young-salt there is an adroid for pinephone project called glodroid
Linux on mobile has a promising future. But again it needs years and years of development at this point. Just like Android had a million bugs in the gingerbread era, Linux mobile will have the same. I just hope that developers don't abandon this project all together.
million bugs in gingerbread are u sure?? i think u wanted to say there were not so many features in gingerbread
Let's not forget Android is Linux.
@@biomorphicthey share a kernel but that's about it, Android is pretty much a whole set apart as far as user-space it goes so it is only fair to not consider it just another linux distribution
it's a neat idea, but it lacks incentive to build an actual ecosystem imho.. for enthusiasts it is definitely a viable platform, I just don't see how this will ever reach regular users
@@biomorphicAndroid shares very little with standard desktop distros.
Sure, it shares a kernel, albeit modified. Locks you out of superuser permissions, has an entirely different userspace, including the graphics stack and libc. Android is so different that developing for desktop Linux is closer to BSD than it is Android development. Hell, if you have a statically linked X11 app, FreeBSD will be able to run the same binary as desktop Linux but Android wouldn't, even if the CPU were the same architecture.
If we all drop our "expectations" you come to realization that everything in existence is awesome!
I have a Pine Phone, running it with Ubuntu Touch. I use it for basics, phone calls, texting, Email, and load up a map, when needed. I find It works better and uses less Battery with Ubuntu Touch.
can you tell us if the camera is any good? im thinking about getting one but i need a really good camera, like at least like iphone or pixel camera quality.
@@ISCARI0T it won't be as good as those phones
@@ISCARI0Tno its not very good, not even close to iphone and Pixel. I use a quality Canon Camera for taking photo's, no phone camera can even come close to this quality. You are paying for crap anyways.
what about battery drain?
manjaro and plasma are terrible, ubuntu touch is the only fairly compatible os for this
I hope linux mobile takes over so I can install it on my foldable phone and have a mini pocket pc ala PDA days
Once Calls and SMS work 100% of the time I will legitimately use it as my daily driver.
The "smart" part can come later.
SMS are dead and more and more people are doing calls through the internet.
@@gintokisakata7490 Yeah sure. Funny, 2 factor verification with my bank accounts requires SMS.
Bad power management during suspend is basically always the fault of the drivers. When they don't properly put all the hardware to sleep, that internal hardware will draw current unnecessarily and deplete your battery. There's one other mechanism that might be a problem, and that is wake-up interrupts (e.g. from the modem). If the OS doesn't quickly put the device back to sleep (after handling whatever has happened), it will needlessly stay up wasting battery for prolonged periods of time.
Windows laptops have a similar problem. You can sometimes find out that the device has woken up by itself to do an update (or worse yet: start indexing files, do Windows Defender stuff, etc.) and used up all of its battery. And Windows _does set_ timer interrupts to regularly wake up in contrast to most Linux OSes AFAIK.
The problem with the battery most likely stems from the fact that there's no proper support for it in the kernel for this SOC. This SOC is a modified version of one on Pinebook Pro (laptop) from the same company and there was downstream and old modified kernel that supports deep sleep, but the patch was not merged in all those years to upstream. In case of the mobile device the problem is worse, because you have 2 SOC inside basically - one for the whole device and one for the modem (which contains a separate Android installation by default, which is funny) and power management becomes even harder to do.
There is a project to de-blob and open source the modem software, but it's a legal and technical minefield
Also it may be the case that you have outdated system on the device and I advise to read before trying to update it, otherwise you will risk bricking it. You can recover from that in the end, but it may be more painful than having the knowledge of how to proceed ahead of time. Updating the bootloader firmware may be required, also there's a modem firmware that's apparently good.
The megapixels app may not work at all because the author dropped his focus and support of pine products. There was a string of controversies about their decision making Manjaro the default.
As a mild Linux Phone tinkerer myself, I'd advise Phosh as a DE for stability and functionality. Gnome-Mobile for a peak into the future of what Linux mobile may be like soon, but expect the odd few more bugs (Though certainly not as many bugs as Plasma mobile). Good luck, I'd be interested to see a few reviews on the progress of different projects on Linux mobile (i.e. more recent GTK/QT adaptations, DE adaptations, etc).
What distro would you recommend? I had postmarkedOS, but alpine has so few arm packages that I think I’d be better of with another distro
Maybe I go for arch next
@@foxonboard1 Much of the Linux mobile space is in its infancy, so regarding distro's with optimisations, you're kind of limited. I would say it depends on your favourite choice of package manager amongst other things. But most rely on the progress of PMOS to get their distro's to work on mobile.
Don't see as much coverage anymore of the PinePhone lately, this was a helpful update for it, thanks!
Did a good job with the phone shot, but if you want to make it easier on yourself, could mount your camera/phone your filming with on a tripod.
For phones, you can usually take the top off a cheap selfie stick, most I've found use a normal tripod thread, then just toss on a tripod.
Thanks for this detailed review man.. I've been thinking of picking one of these up just to play with.
Great Video! Thanks so much. I love how you explain this phone and dont go into weird Linux topics yet. You just look at it from a normal users perspective which is great.
I like your honesty, I like the revieww,, I like the coverage even going to details of implementation and distros, and your hypothesis. In a nutshell: you did a good job, and I will check other videos from you. Keep up the good work, at your pace.
I love your choice in trackballs!!! I love those HUGE models.
Funny and curious... I was recommended by UA-cam to watch a video of the "brand new" postmarketOS running in a Pinephone... And you are releasing this video.
Linux on mobile phones needs a lot of work and massive improvements. But I have faith about it. Someday it will be real. I hope to be alive to see that.
I’ve seen several reviews of these devices, and you are the first one that actually talks about using it as an actual phone - and in the U.S. definitely good to know about the SIM card situation. Who did you use, btw? Thanks, looking forward to more of this.
Would it be possible to install a regular linux distro on, say, a steam deck
and then using programs to simulate calling, texting etc?
I mean, all I really need is email to send my work time report and discord, cus my friends use that instead of sms..... idky.
And I hate voice calling, so that'd be nice to get rid of.
Hi!
I had the unfortunate scenario of needing to daily drive the OG pinephone for a few months a few years ago!
I still, so *very* badly, want to believe. I'm actually returning to school for a CS degree, hoping strongly I can contribute to projects like this at some point. I strongly believe that the linux mobile future IS out there.
I did a lot of distro-hopping while I had it. Of all the distros I used, manjaro had the most issues. I have *no idea* why pine64 decided to go with Manjaro as their default OS, but here we are.
My advice here is a few years out of date by now, but I had the best experience with Mobian - Debian's answer to linux mobile. I would recommend checking that out!
Really happy somebody is taking a deep dive into the linux mobile-verse.
Do you plan on making more mobile linux videos?
Dropping a subscribe regardless. Thank you for the video!
Yup. More is on the way. Probably in April.
It's not ready yet, but I really hope it is someday, Android has been getting more and more locked down and is becoming watered down ios at this point
Agree, as someone who used to advocate for Android cuz of how bogged down iOS is, I'm really not seeing much of a difference anymore. Even considered giving Harmony OS a shot just to not have Android anymore, like I'm getting annoyed now with ads in my music player of all places 🤷♂️ so far Rhino OS has been giving me a "close to Linux" experience on pinephone, but it's still new and not "there yet" either, and I feel like pinephone's processing power is still sub-par, but they also made sure you know that it's a development effort, not a polished product. Unfortunately the operating systems for it isn't where it could be, but it's at least a step into the right direction, and I really do hope that we'll see some major developments over the next couple of years to make it as viable as we'd like for it to be
GrapheneOS is the way
Should've fork Android instead of trying to modify desktop distribution.
I tried mobian, but found I preferred Ubuntu touch on my device. Ubuntu touch has worse app availability (although you can still install general desktop apps with libertine) but otherwise feels much smoother on underpowered hardware and overall felt much more polished to me.
The images are being actively developed by the maintainer for the Pine64 devices, better support for the hardware should be available very soon.
I'm not so sure about a rolling release distro on a phone, especially Manjaro with KDE. The combo can be a handful, even on desktop. Maybe something based on Ubuntu LTS with a stripped down version of GNOME would be a better option. After all, GNOME's 40 series design already looks like it's being primarily developed for mobile and touch screen devices.
I’ve always been a KDE Plasma fan, and I can’t wait to see Plasma (and the underlying mobile Linux flavors) fully mature. Truly, Linux is the ultimate open source success story. Mobile is pretty much the final arena in terms of devices Linux distros support.
Have you worked with Linux on ARM much? Not every Linux app can just run on ARM. Some apps have a something extra in the name for their ARM versions so installing through the terminal you would have to use the ARM name. Neofetch I believe works on ARM with the normal name so I’m not sure what issue you had.
I think one of the main features of Pine phone is the physical switch to turn off the mic and the camera. As a privacy matter, those features are a highlight and probably the main reason a lot of people would even consider making the switch to this kind of hardware/os combo. After watching this, it occurs to me a Raspberry Pi with a text app, voip, small screen and wifi as data connection could perform a similar function. But once a battery is added this proposed device would be quite thick and bulky and not slim like a phone. It could certainly perform as a desktop replacement, however, if that is important.
You may give Movian a try, but I don't know, if it's very complete. If not - maybe something else will be better.
I was hoping to see you explore some of the available apps - Calendar, ring alarm, battery and other system menus, maybe some messenger(s)...
would you be interested in reviewing this device again with something like BlendOS or postmarketOS which run Gnome? I wonder about the UI compatibility of gtk apps. they're meant to be adjustable to mobile by default.
I have seen people running SculptOS on the phinepone; feels like a good direction.
So if you were to make a phone call, what commands do you use in the terminal?
sudo pacman -Sy neofetch && neofetch
I love how you talk to the phone and ask it questions. "Why'd you do that?" had me rolling. 🤣
I had a Pinephone a while back and my greatest frustration was that (back then at least) it didn't perform very well as a phone. Outgoing calls worked fine, but incoming calls and texts were hit or miss. Speakerphone didn't work on any of the distros I tried, so I had to hold the phone to my head during calls which is something I normally don't do. It would have been nice if it at least did the telephone stuff well enough to EDC it.
you did a great job
i think the proplem you witl rum in to running as a pc . is it running on arm
5:08 yeah, familiar, happened to me on my Linux laptop, I thought I've hibernated it and it should be ok, but apparently not... the battery was dead the next time I've tried to use it :)))
Mobian was working pretty well for me with sometimes a few app scaling bugs but overall things worked(like the camera/calling/etc) but unfortunately the Mobian team stopped supporting the original Pinephone so now I'm trying to figure out where to start to switch to Ubuntu Touch or something.
Did mobian devs abandoned that project or they switch different phone for development?
ого, как ты сделал так, чтобы твои видео в мобильном приложении ютуба можно было выводить в режиме картинки при сворачивании?😮
I honestly like SXMO much more than manjaro. Daily drive the old OG pinephone for years (and have the keyboard addon). Having no other phone so its primary use daily without backup. Very productive tool for a programmer like me, but the keyboard addon is big selling point!
Good to see a video with a phone that uses something other than Android. However, I have to use a phone on Android with CDMA and 4gLTE or 5g speed data.
Gnome is more adaptable to touch interface gui.
KDE is more suited for desktop environment.
Where can i buy this phone?
So it has been in development phase for 4 years now. How long would it be in development phase in the future? Another 4 to 5 years? (if we are lucky?)
But TizenOS (from the Linux Foundation), like SailfishOS, are systems based in part on Fedora (and therefore use RPM), being quasi-natively compatible with Android applications. Why use ARM versions of distributions that are further behind in compatibility with smartphones? (I would understand if they at least worked with RISC-V.)
not ready!
I had the same experience with Ubuntu Touch on an older pixel phone. I don’t think it is ready for a daily driver for me, but I would like to use it when I go kayaking (when I need a phone but don’t want to lose my iPhone in the lake). I use Mint Mobile and am able to swap out my sim. I did have to request a physical sim for my main phone.
IPhone and Android batch schedule access to the radios during sleep to increase battery life. This extends life by reducing the amount of time the radios are powered on during sleep.
Why oh why did you go with plasma mobile? PostmarketOS Phosh is worked on a lot more.
I wonder if performance and battery life would be better with a more minimal distro, window manager, and desktop on it. There's a strong tendency nowadays to spend resources making it pretty in many expensive ways. Maybe an OS without systemd, a bare-bones window manager, and a desktop that doesn't demand the utmost in graphics hardware? I use devuan on a five-year-old laptop with so-called intel integrated graphics at home. I keep looking for less heavy software to use on it, not because of performance but because of a desire for simplicity.
I'd be very interested in knowing whether such software is available and viable on this phone, or whether all development efforts are in a different and incompatible direction.
-- hendrik boom 3
I have two PPP Camera apps. Megapixels never launches. The other camera app reliably loads, but only works for the selfie-camera. I've been using the phone for over a year and never seen the main camera run.
Would you be interested in showcasing different things on your phone?
I'm so curious how Fedora PHOSH runs, looks, and functions like on that phone.
wait do you live in portland?
Please share your experience on PinePhone with phosh and lomiri too.
Interesting that you couldn't get Megapixels to run. It does on mine but the image is so bad you can barely recognize it.
I'll be looking out for your future videos on this. Thanks and all the best for the rest of 2024!
Is the image still green?
I wonder if it would ever be ready for consumers. I would love a Linux focused phone.
And not an Android device that's heavily Googlized.
I think Gnome on mobile could be somewhat successful, especially if a way to run Android apps in a sandbox can be made to work. A main case for this is for banking apps, etc. The reason for Gnome is that the interface of Gnome desktop/mobile from what I can see is similar enough to stock Android.
Google will try NOT to make this happen.
They already trying to kill custom roms 'which are android' by encouraging to implement safety net,play integrity' into apps.
Imagine what they would do for a different OS than Android...
i don't think there ready and its got along ways to go, but i love this idea of a phone and i hope that it ends up being worth it even if i gotta wait a few years,
I hope rhis gets better, i am so sick of android and i really like kde plasma, i am wondering if waydroid would work with this
I'm actually daily using a Pixel3a on Droidian Phosh without waydroid. I'v begin on UbuntuTouch and was pretty good on Pixel3 but you need Waydroid a lot to do basic stuff. Will probably change for PostmarketOS Phosh if GPS and Camera are now suported. I'm pretty happy using Droidian those last months. The reason of change is that UBtouch and Droidian are not really completly android less so not really fully «Linux Phone» imo
I’m looking forward to a really good Linux smartphone in the future
please talk about difference between linux phone and andorid since android is based on linux not sure why do do something like manjaro what are benefits of pure linux on phone
Try to run an ssh server on your Android or try to add additional users or try to change the GUI (bar to the bottom maybe if anybody wants it) or try to uninstall preinstalled applications or just get a simple wallpaper changer based on a script. Android is garbage if it comes to more than just tapping on an icon and using a complete cut of program. And thats just the beginning. A lot of Linux users like to tinker here and there with their system to adapt it to their opersonal needs. Not possible with the usual Android and Android devices you get on the market.
@gintokisakata7490 if you tinker then you can root device to remove pre installed apps or you can install custom rom i once back then when i had galaxy S3 i setup like terminal no icons you need to type to start app and used only like 200mb of ram which was crazy when s3 was high end model dint have notifications bare minimum phone setup and was run on android 4.4 kitkat while official rom stuck at 4.1 i think so basically what you saying if need to run desktop programs then linux is good
you gotta use the gnome version i have been daily driving it for years on the non pro
2003?!? If I'm not mistaken, my very first Linux laptop was manufactured in 2003 (I got it in 2011 I think). That thing would only run Linux and Windows XP! Good times!! Lol
E-SIM aka DRM for phone hardware
Been meaning to pull my pinephone out of storage and see what's new
that's like in the old days on maemo where you could just install the Debian desktop applications
I like the idea of physical kill switches for the connectivity and location services, but those should be accessible without having to take the back case off.
It's good to see progress being made on a Linux phone, but this shows that there is some distance yet to go. For now, I'll stick to a deGoogled Android.
I understand that the whole point of a Pine is to run Linux distros. However, I was hoping that you'd at least attempt to put a secure phone OS on it. Something like Graphene on Pine would be interesting to see.
It's coming. This was a first look.
is this phone more secure than other phones?
Really good and popular Linux Mobile already exists, It's called Rooted Android
Android runs on a Linux kernel, however with Normal Android phones, due to security reasons, they are locked, You don't have sudo access etc. , However with Rooted Android, you basically have a full on great Android Mobile Device with full access, so if you know what you are doing it is basically Linux
You sound a bit like gabriel iglesias. Great Vid!
im gonna dig up my pinephone pro and try mobian and postmarketos
Esims sound awful. Why would I want to use a system that doesn't allow me to easily transfer it to a new phone or doesn't stay around if I do a factory reset...
Esim does stay around after a factory reset on android at least
Authentic Linux experience.
Let's show solidarity within the Linux community, make this happen and hope that AI helps us crush big companies.
While i am very interested in the future of this project. In the world of termuxs on Android and phones that can dual boot windows 11 with Android, every day i feel there is less and less of a point for these kind of devices...
If they could just get a good camera and good camera software I'd be sold.
My phone is a portable internet searcher, a texter, my camera, and ofc a phone.
I could live with crappy versions of web apps only and only SMS, but I don't want to carry around a separate digital camera.
You might be interested in Droidian then. Instead of using mainline Linux, it uses vendor-provided code to run Debian on a bunch of Android phones. These Android parts allow it to provide most of the functionality right now - without the need to re-implement everything from scratch. In contrast, Mobian uses upstream kernel and other Linux-first components. This means less stuff works right now, but in the long term we aren't stuck on old, unmaintained versions of everything.
Hey, please try mobian and postmarketos. Then compare. Make another video.
How is it still early? Pinephone exists for four years now...
megapixels doesn't support the Pinephone pro yet natively, it only supports the Pinephone and Librem V.
Whst mouse are you using
Elecom Huge
@@TheLinuxCast appreciate that
Yes, I do expect Linux phone to last whole day. I have had 3 Nokia N900. All lasted longer then a working day. If any phone today does not last whole day, then something is very very wrong (Samsung Galaxy S10 plus).
iPhone 15 and Galaxy S24 last about 10 hours of screen-on time. With normal usage, that's more than a day. The average screen-on time is about 4 hours and 30 minutes per day.
Manjaro on a phone sounds weird. Why not something Alphine based or something light weight like that? Manjaro is way too buggy. A phone that you can plug in and use as a full desktop computer does sound cool though.
install 0ad on it😇
Or SuperTuxKart 👀
Headphone jack? Pine64 lacks courage.
I miss Ubuntu Touch on my old Nexus 4 now
Hello wonderful person watching this wonderful video.
👍
So basically, it blows goats.
Thanks for the review, I am getting one soon as I am quite tired of Android ! I also used Gnome on desktop, KDE is bit heavy and too much of eye candies especially for low power devices.
The lack of developers is the issue.
Matt I wouldn't bother with a phone based on expectations! You will be better off by getting a pixel phone, rooting it and installing a custom ROM on it. It's just my opinion though...
But we should not support that crappy Googldroid world anymore.
Linux lleva desde el año 2008 en dipositivos moviles con android.
It's giving ideos... Maybe in a few years, it'll be great.
Or early adapters device, Plasma Mobile is lovely it looks almost like Android, I like it more than Phosh. Mobian is one of the most stable releases then you could install plasma GUI via terminal. I have a spare keyboard it needs a small repair resoldering I think the seller said they replaced the USB c connector. Another crazy one is SXMO.
I hear you wanting to like it but everything you point out is either a dealbreaker or underwhelming. It doesn’t even sound like you had fun tinkering with it. It’s interesting and I hope it succeeds but it’s hard to see this as a good choice even as a tinkerer for now.
But you can't get.
No contract service
Plasma Mobile has been wildly unpredictable for a while now (thanks QT!) That is more true for Arch based system - ALARM has it's teething issues there. pmOS is a great alternative as is Mobian.
When it comes to the design of the device - Pixel 4a is more cheap-feeling than the PinePhone.
What I do like the most - UART! 😄 I know it's silly but just having the visibility of what the device is doing while booting or just being able to use plain ssh is ridiculously good. We need more things like this 😁
Reminds me of Android from 2010
I am using Sailfish, Ubunto Touch, PureOS(expensive), I really like the privacy concept, but sacrifice too much on the convenience side. Too much configurations, not really suitable for majority none tech savvy people. Just my opinion
Isn’t android based on linux