PinePhone Pro Display Support Nearing The Mainline Linux Kernel

[rabcor]

I don't understand what's taking so long in getting these devices ready for the masses. android is largely open source so a lot of the work done on android can be reused for a mobile compatible linux kernel no doubt, supporting the hardware shouldn't be very hard almost regardless of what they choose for said hardware.

Is it just a matter of streamlining the UI and such? What exactly is the roadblock that's keeping linux phones off the market? From the outside glancing in it looks like a linux phone should be easy to make, why has it proven to be just the opposite? I have little doubt that if a linux phone that could rival flagship phones in things such as camera and display quality and performance was released, it'd really just take off, I mean there's a lot to like about a linux phone (such as having basically a full fledged mobile PC in your pocket where if you have a keyboard and mouse you can do virtually anything you could on a PC within the limits of the hardware capabilities; something android and ios go out of their way to avoid providing users with, you can't really say your phone is yours to do with as you please when the os on it does everything in it's power to keep you locked in it's little jail cell, and even rooting it doesn't really solve particularly much of that.)

This is a highly viable product if it gets to market, like insanely viable, it has the potential to overtake iOS and Android phones if it's done right.

So what's keeping the linux phones? What's really keeping them?

[Quackdoc]

Beside that, if you want a end user ready experience, this is not it yet. It may even be overwhelming for many of the more experienced Linux users. It is a outlook into a potential future for those who want to help shape this future.

this may have been true in the past, but waydroid has made a lot of progress thanks to developer aleasto. so much so that it was actually recently approved for inclusion into fedora official repos. there is a gui, automatic detection for nvidia (needed for software rendering) vulkan support, GAPPS (optional), no need to use CLI for 90% of things, there is even an overlay that should be merged soon to make system and vendor modifications super easy (I have a few scripts waiting for that to drop).

the end user experience is getting there, it's not 100% of the way there yet, but it is pretty damn close.

How good is Anbox working on this devices? Also or over Anbox how well Telegram especially voice chat and video chat?

My problem I have with this devices is they are for me expensive I otherwise use 2 used Sony XA2 one with iodeos (similar to lineageos) and the other with SailfishOS, which is as OS great, yet the Telegram APP is echoing and I did not spend the 50 Dollar to get the full version of Sailfishos which means I can't use Anbox on it.

Another central tool is my german Postoffice / Paketdelivery DHL App. So for just a fun phone that can't replace really a normal phone this prices are to expensive, even if it can replace other phones it can be expensive, the fuckin keyboard case costs more than my sony phones (sure 2nd hand but that does not really matter to me).

Ohh and yes occasionally it should also work as navigation system. Can it do that more or less perfectly? And I hope I don't have to use the keyboard to do this daily on the run tasks?

It's just to expensive if it's just a additional phone and can't replace the limited task I do over the android phone. It should either be able to replace that or as more a toy, it should be cheaper.

Anbox is trash, Waydroid on the otherhand is very, very good. telegram works, no vaapi yet sadly.

though there is someone working on a flutter telegram app so good chance that might be the best route to go.

[NotMine999]

year after year, web site need more resource and the 1440 x 720 resolution of the pinephone pro is already a big issue

Web sites need more resources because web sites BE BLOATED with auto-run video, auto-run music, heavily scripted thematic crap, and so on.

Yeah ya gotta luv those "oh-gee-wizz SHINY STUFF" marketing types & project managers...and devs that wanna play with the latest toys...

...all with a "User Be D*MNED" attitude.

[caligula]

I have the cheaper model with 3GB RAM and it's enough for web browsing. I have not noticed issues because of insufficient RAM.

One should always expect better hardware. Less than 16 GB is just lame. Rpi has 8 GB, Orange Pi 5 has up to 16, some phones have 16, laptops 32 to 64 these days. Soon we'll have lpddr6. Expect phones with 32+ of ram. You simply need more than 3.

[caligula]

I really doubt that it's needed.
It's not a hi-res display, and you don't have all the bloat of Android, and planned obsoletion.
Think back some years, and remember how well phones with lower specs used to fare, when they were new.
The most resource hungry app on a Linux-phone, is most likely the web-browser, and the camera. These things used to work just fine on previous phones with less specs than the pro has. I do believe that slow phones, with similar specs, are slow because of bloat. This is why older phones can feel almost on par with new ones, if you install postmarket OS, or the likes.

Modern web sites use tons of features that simply won't run on these lower end phones. Overall I think Reactjs requires a certain minimum speed to be usable. React + fullhd display ain't gonna be cheap. Webassembly jit and emscripten ported apps (e.g. pyscript), webgpu, webusb. So many new standards.

[gosh000]

I don't understand what's taking so long in getting these devices ready for the masses. android is largely open source so a lot of the work done on android can be reused for a mobile compatible linux kernel no doubt, supporting the hardware shouldn't be very hard almost regardless of what they choose for said hardware.

Hey,

I'm not an expert in mobile devices but this what I have read on Internet during the years.

I don't understand what's taking so long in getting these devices ready for the masses

man-hours - someone has to invest in this business

android is largely open source so a lot of the work done on android can be reused

not exactly. First, Android Linux kernel was heavy patched and far behind vanilla kernels. As for device drivers' side - mobile phone manufacturers have said that they have no enough time to mainline their drivers. On the other hand _as_far_as_i_know_, Android uses different stack so my understanding is that from this billions dollars industry the only benefit from Android is good supported architecture (arm64/Aarch64).

[blackiwid]

Beside that, if you want a end user ready experience, this is not it yet. It may even be overwhelming for many of the more experienced Linux users. It is a outlook into a potential future for those who want to help shape this future.

Well if somebody buys the phone it's the end user of the phone, except he want's to sell it, so I am a bit confused about that term. But it sounds like you are supposed to pay a high price just to 99% develop stuff and upload to make it better and only 1% to get something.

Also how is that "end user" requirement if I did not even expect calling support just telegram support, a phone that can't use telegram is basically completely useless I am sorry. And if it's not a phone at all just a thin client then I think it's to expensive or as toy.

But I agree that it's not usable for even linux developers probably, I just don't see how it's ready for anybody, I just hear that it's not good for nobody. While it's nice to give a big warning out, this get's old after many many years of development and if you are not a typical mainstream user and you get said, your extremely low expectations can't be fullfilled and probably that stays the same for the next at least 3 if not 5 years... then maybe tell websites like phoronix to not cover it if it's pretty much useless for everybody.

[Quackdoc]

I don't understand what's taking so long in getting these devices ready for the masses. android is largely open source so a lot of the work done on android can be reused for a mobile compatible linux kernel no doubt, supporting the hardware shouldn't be very hard almost regardless of what they choose for said hardware.

Is it just a matter of streamlining the UI and such? What exactly is the roadblock that's keeping linux phones off the market?
...
So what's keeping the linux phones? What's really keeping them?

the UI/UX, linux phones right now has a terrible user experience, poor app selection, the apps look fairly bad, there is next to no uniformity. (not even a universal back button, home button and app switcher IMO minimums and needs to be availible)

not exactly. First, Android Linux kernel was heavy patched and far behind vanilla kernels. As for device drivers' side - mobile phone manufacturers have said that they have no enough time to mainline their drivers. On the other hand _as_far_as_i_know_, Android uses different stack so my understanding is that from this billions dollars industry the only benefit from Android is good supported architecture (arm64/Aarch64).

android runs on mainline linux, most distros even ship a kernel compatible with linux with a few minor config changes, in fact at bliss and waydroid, already running on the steamdeck natively and working on DG2. As for using an android device's linux kernel, look up hallium, because that is what that project does.