PinePhone Pro Announced As New Linux Smartphone

[jntesteves]

I don't exactly trust Telegram, but it's open source, not proprietary. The rest I do agree with.

Only Telegram's client apps are open-source. The backend is proprietary and controlled by a single company, so not really open-source, the important parts are proprietary.

Signal is open-source and ran by a nonprofit organization.

Matrix is open-source and decentralized.

[tuxd3v]

I have never heard of Ampak before. According to Linux-Sunxi it is just a single chip that combines a Broadcom wifi and bluetooth module. Has Broadcom hardware been playing well with FOSS drivers lately? My last Broadcom wifi chipset (something from the 43xx family) needed a proprietary driver to work well.

Ampak is a Chinese company, they do ship Broadcom + Bluetooth+ FM Radio( I don't know if all chips have FM Radio.. ) inside the chips, using usually the same antenna for both..
Broadcom WIreless division from some years now was sold to cypress( the business ended in the hands of German Infineon ), but in Linux it uses same mainline drivers, and they do work ok.
But you need firmware to be present, that firmware is uploaded to the chip itself, so that the chip work properly..

At least the WIFI works nice, never really tested Bluetooth( even tough that I see all available devices around with it in Bluetooth discovery more with bluez package..).
I don't know about 802.11ac, I only tested 802.11bgn, but I assume the same behaviour.

[tuxd3v]

Only Telegram's client apps are open-source. The backend is proprietary and controlled by a single company, so not really open-source, the important parts are proprietary.

Signal is open-source and ran by a nonprofit organization.

Matrix is open-source and decentralized.

more or less, but signal has the NSA hands on it, so its a no go for me..

[Quackdoc]

Good price, what I need from it is a smooth experience and vulkan support. waydroid will hopefully get me the rest of the way until better support comes.

[mdedetrich]

the problem is the price

You will always have this problem for products that are not mass produced due to economies of scale.

[tuxd3v]

SMS are still the second way of communication..
MMs not so..
Chat applications start to make its market presence, but its not a so important feature as SMS.

One feature that I cannot miss is FM Radio.. I am always on it..
And those Ampak Wireless modules does include FM Radio, so Pine64 can implement it too!

EDIT: Unfortunately, I am being searching the Ampak module( AMPAK AP6255 ) documentation, and it doesn't advertise FM Radio..
I have some ampak modules that also have FM Radio, the one for Pine PRO will not it seems..

[eltomito]

I know what I what for Xmas: it's a phone with a cone and I'm pining for it!

[szymon_g]

Who the hell still uses MMS in 2021?
You can send anything you would include in a MMS via whatsapp, Telegram, Messenger and the likes. Even old people (often the last to switch) have moved on.

Who the hell still uses SMS in 2021?
You can send anything you would include in a MMS via whatsapp, Telegram, Messenger and the likes. Even old people (often the last to switch) have moved on.

[blackiwid]

Sorry no. Pine64 does not have a stack of phones sitting around to sell of discounted. Only way old version can be come down in price is if it can be made cheaper. With current chip shortages that going to be unlikely for a while.

The question would be why they don't have a stack of phones sitting around, did they get till this day the 5 phones per day they selling not delivered? Ordering bigger amounts results in better prices. Also I would argue that still electronics get's cheaper shortage or not. It's not like all Electrotic products are super rare and explode in prices.

Price development other brands compared to last year:
Fairphone 3+ : -10%
Pixel 5: +20%
Pixel 4a: 0%
Pixel 4a 5G : -10%
Pixel 3 XL: -40%
Samsung S10+ duos : 0%
Samsung S10e: - 10%
S9+ : -30%
S9: -10%
Sony Xperia 5: -20%
XZ3: -20%
10 II: 0%
1: -50%
HTC Desire 20 Pro: 0%
LG G7: 0%
Apple XR 64GB: -20%
128GB: -20%
Iphone 11: -20%
12 mini: -10%
12: -20%
Huawei P9 Lite: -35%
P20 Lite: -30%
P40 Lite: -20%
20 lite: -20%
P20 Pro: -40%

Maybe I skipped over 1 2 phones that got much more expensive because of no availability or with my attempt to search for the higher quality modell I cherry picked. Or you could argue that many of the models were very very overpriced 1 year ago for some marketing reasons, a few modell got more expensive the last 1-2months, this reddit post is older, but still generally speaking Smartphone vendors manage to reduce prices on average, and that with a mostly stable or the same Dollar course like 1 year ago.

But again with new Editions more modules and probably advancements in software support they could try to sell more volumes of phones and increase their orders, which would give them probably a lot of rabatt because economy of scale kicks in especially hard on this low levels. Just picking random numbers ordering 5000 instead of 1000 per year by a chinese vendor or parts vendor probably could get you a lot cheaper unit price. Becasue it's maybe worth now to automate one or two processes more than before.

And remember I didn't ask for big price reductions... Just a small difference, it's normal with electronics that if you wait long you get a better deal, at least that was normal the last what 50 years?

[ThoreauHD]

$150 Cheaper then my mid tier Sansung A52. Would have gotten this instead if it launched earlier.