PinePhone Pro Announced As New Linux Smartphone

[tuxd3v]

Who the hell still uses SMS in 2021?

More than half of this world at least, including me,
Its my second way of communication being the first the phone call..
And the chat applications I use them with some regularity, but no way close to the SMS..

[Developer12]

the problem is the price

Have you seen how much a phone costs these days?

[NateHubbard]

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.

That point was already made, and still isn't true everywhere.
I'm sorry, but in this tiny little country called USA, you need SMS.

Besides, I have no intention of switching to some companies proprietary way of doing something when I don't have to. I'm also not going to try to convince everyone in the entire nation to choose one of those non-standards.

Anyway, I'm now sorry I brought this up because it gives people something that doesn't matter to argue about. My point was that when I last used any of these linux phone operating systems, MMS was partially broken, which is something I do in fact need.
Just as importantly, none of them support VoLTE, which they are working on, but hadn't gotten anywhere with yet. This is also something you're going to need to use a phone in the US, very soon.

[Grawp]

It's funny.. the regional differences in usage of MMS. I honestly had to think for a few seconds what the abbrievation means. I've been living in central Europe all my life (Slovakia, then Czech republic) and since late 90s when I got my first phone I've never ever used MMS or heard about anyone from my wider social circle of using it. For many years now I've not even seen it marketed. If it is supported still then I guess it's somewhere in the bottom of operators' pricing lists with a horrible price in whole euros, not cents.

But almost nobody around here used voice mails on cellphones either even though they were certainly available at least in 90s and early 00s, maybe still are.

It is fun learning all these technosocietal differences between various countries.

[tildearrow]

Every smartphone (with a working number) can use MMS. Not everyone has Telegram and/or WhatsApp and/or Messenger and/or Telegram and/or Viber and/or VK and/or WeChat and so forth... Those are pretty much regional.
I get both unlimited SMS and MMS as do most people in my country, so it's used a lot still.

I'm surprised to see that in your country SMS is still prevalent, because in mine nobody uses SMS anymore. Everyone, even companies and the government prefer WhatsApp for everything, to the point the "cellphone number" in nearly every small store has been replaced with a WhatsApp number.

[jaxa]

I could see the price for the Explorer Edition or whatever comes after dropping to $300, because it's made with many of the same parts as the previous PinePhone. $400 could just be the developer and early adopter price. Or this thought of mine could be a cope.

[mdedetrich]

That point was already made, and still isn't true everywhere.
I'm sorry, but in this tiny little country called USA, you need SMS.

Well that is true, USA is quite backwards in this respect where people still rely on SMS even though whatsapp/telegram/signal exist (and are MUCH better than SMS).

[darkbasic]

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.

I gave up years ago with my personal Jabber server because I ended up being the only one using it.

[darkbasic]

I'm surprised to see that in your country SMS is still prevalent

In Italy nobody ever used MMS. SMS are used only for two factor authentication and nobody uses them as well (despite having unlimited amount).

[arQon]

the problem is the price

How so? The specs seem more than reasonable to me, plus some very welcome sanity wrt things like the headphone jack, plus, yknow, the whole *it's a phone running open software* thing.

There are plenty of faster phones, or ones with more storage, or better vanity accessories, or whatever unspecified thing it is that floats your boat and somehow makes this "too expensive", but that throwaway comment of yours is either just simple trolling or an indication that you aren't part of the potential market for this anyway, so in either case your opinion isn't really worth anything.

For $400, this is an absolute bargain if what you want is a phone you can have any degree of trust in at all. If that's worth $0 to you, you're in the wrong place to begin with.