I have some standards for my toys though. If it’s sold as a phone, it should actually work as a phone (even a shitty one).
If they were selling it as a mini linux computer with integrated screen I wouldn’t mind so much.
But that's not what you mean when you say "phone" is it? The word "phone" is synonymous at this point with "mini computer."
What if it were sold as a phone with a big caveat, loudly announced, that said "this thing is for tinkerers and developers and is not ready for causal daily use"? That's the thing, it is marketed that way. You bought something you didn't want, you want what it is going to be, and we are all very excited about it and a bit impatient, but we cannot blame the product for ourselves being impatient.
https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/?v=0446c16e2e6...
You go into beta when your shit works to work out the last bugs, not when you have a barely functional MVP.
> This is the Beta Edition of the PinePhone. The pre-installed Manjaro with Plasma Mobile OS, that ships with this edition of the PinePhone, is a beta software build. This effectively means that while core functionality of the PinePhone still an ongoing effort. Thus, the device cannot considered a consumer-ready product.
Just a linux computer with a cellular modem sounds amazing to me, tbh.
Is that a guess, or a fact?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.xnano.andr...
> I can't write little python scripts
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.iiec.pydroi...
And those don't even require an unlocked bootloader. If you do unlock, sky's the limit - it really is a general purpose portable computer then.
It is sold as Phone hardware with explicit remarks about software being a community effort and that you load it with whatever you like.
Does someone who sells you a PC (HW) promise you that the software you load on it later will be bug-free? Of course not. That’s not a hardware-matter.
Same here with Pine64 and the PinePhone. They’re selling you hardware. And that’s it.
No, but if someone was selling PCs with super buggy software that regularly crashes your OS or prevents everyday functionality from working, people would be returning those PCs en masse, even if the hardware maker wasn't responsible for the software at all.[0] Even if you only "sell" the hardware, customers expect the full package to work.
That's not to say I agree with all the complaints here, though; this case is different because Pine64 has numerous disclaimers and warnings on the website, and they are very up front and honest about the viability of the PinePhone as a daily driver.
[0]: Whenever I hear non-techy friends complain about system instability, they pretty consistently blame the computer itself, not Windows or whatever software is likely actually causing their frustration.
What you’re clearing missing is that they are not selling you software.
They are selling you open, unlocked hardware to run software on, with no promises/liabilities about the software. Just like Intel, AMD, ARM, MSI, Asus, Kingston and a lot of other hardware suppliers. They even explicitly state this when you buy the phone.
They are explicitly not selling you a combined hardware/software package like Apple does with the iPhone or OEMs are doing with Android.
How can you then complain about this later?
Edit: You might even say that this combined HW/SW appliance-model applied by the rest of the smartphone market is the exact thing they are fighting against.
They are selling HW as HW, leaving users free to run the software they prefer.