PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 12:55 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone by jebba
Parent article: PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

> But so far the only thing I see that is concerning is a wall of text by concern trolls.

More baseless assumptions of malice, despite my asking you to please stop.

At least I have evidence here that starred LWN supporters can still be damn unpleasant people.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 13:13 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (23 responses)

The trouble is that too many people have been programmed to think that "anecdote == lie".

An anecdote is a dat*um* point. And people who don't want to face their prejudices write it off "because it's only one". That way they can write off hundreds of anecdotes - "There's no demand for it, and you're the hundredth person I've had to tell that to so far today!!!"

Sorry to get on my hobby horse, but nobody's EVER claimed to me that they found relational was faster than Pick. But they still can't believe the difference is like a tortoise versus Formula 1. They just dismiss the claims as anecdotes.

If people have made their mind up, there's no point bothering them with facts.

Cheers,
Wol

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 16:32 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (22 responses)

I know the difference between an anecdote and a lie.

So far there is exactly one vague assertion that it is "REALLY hot". You've done all these posts, but no one has done anything to substantiate it. Nor have they shown any case of it catching fire or similar.

I still stand by this, stronger than ever:

> There is nothing in the librem5 that is an improvement on the N950.

Except for everything that can be measured.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 18:04 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (21 responses)

> Except for everything that can be measured.

You keep saying this, are you seriously saying that e.g. battery-life is parameter that cannot be measured?

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 18:16 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (1 responses)

OK, lets see some comparative measurements (e.g. doing the same thing--not one building a kernel the other idling).

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 18:37 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link]

I commented because a Librem 5 is something I might have wanted to buy, but not if it has a battery life of one to two hours.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 18:34 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (18 responses)

According to wikipedia the N950 has a 1320 mAh battery.

The Librem5 battery I have here (chestnut generation?) is 2000 mAh.

So that's a comparison that can be made, and again, the Librem5 is *measureably* better.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 19:01 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (15 responses)

> So that's a comparison that can be made, and again, the Librem5 is *measureably* better.

No. The parameter that is interesting to me is battery life, that is how long can I go before I need to charge the phone. Typically you'd
standardise on a procedure like this: https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/how-we-test-smart...

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 19:08 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

So if jebba wants *measurable*, what's the DRAW of those two phones.

After all, battery life keeps growing precisely because draw keeps growing. Some of the phones with the BEST battery life has some of the SMALLEST batteries. (Yes I know those phones don't do much except make calls, but surely that's the WHOLE POINT of a phone :-)

Cheers,
Wol

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 19:25 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link]

So later Nokia phones that have more mAh than the N950 are a regression?

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 19:52 UTC (Mon) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (3 responses)

Golly gosh, this thread is still going on... It's getting a bit silly, since all this info is a google away...

Anyway, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9#Battery, "The Nokia N9 has a BV-5JW 3.8V 1450mAh battery. According to Nokia, this provides from 7h to 11h of continuous talk time, from 16 to 19.5 days of standby, 4.5h of video playback and up to 50h of music playback."

My librem5 had a standby time of two, three hours. Google tells me "From a full charge, the mass production Librem 5 should last from 6 hours with screen on and all hardware-enabled up to 14 hours when idle with screen and WiFi off."

And like I said, I've given it away, to a postmarketos developer, so the postmarketos team now has a total of two librems to work on their OS port. They can make good use of it.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:01 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (2 responses)

How do the N9 and N950 batteries compare with each other in performance?

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:15 UTC (Mon) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't see why I should spoonfeed you information you could look up yourself, but here you go, I'm bored anyway tonight.

The n950's battery was a bit smaller, so maybe you'd only two weeks of standby time out of it, instead of sixteen days... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N950 says "N950 has a 1320 mAh battery, Nokia N9 has a 1450 mAh battery". )

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:21 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link]

So you got two weeks standby on the N950?

If so, that would be something *measureably* better than the Librem5. Seems to be the only plus though.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 19:21 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (8 responses)

Yes, battery life is interesting to me too. Do you have any measurements comparing it to N950?

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 19:42 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (5 responses)

Why would I? What makes you think I would even be interested in a N950?

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 19:46 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (4 responses)

I'm not interested in N950 either (is anyone except the few devs that worked on it?). This sub-thread started because the Librem5 was being compared to the N950.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:16 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (3 responses)

I believe you've misunderstood the point of the original commenter.

Speaking for myself, I will consider any phone which lasts a whole day better than a Librem 5 (assuming that the 2 hour allegation is true), no matter what other
specs it has.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:27 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (2 responses)

"It may be a spy phone, but look at the great battery life!" ?

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:38 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (1 responses)

I'll even consider "no phone" to be better than a Librem 5. At least that does not take any space in my pocket.

Maybe it's all been said now

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:41 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

I suspect I'm not the only one who is thinking that this thread had gone on a bit longer than was really necessary. Perhaps it's time to wind it down?

Thank you.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:16 UTC (Mon) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (1 responses)

The Nokia N9 (1450 mAh, from 2011) was advertised with 450 hours standby time on 3G, and 7 hours talk time [1]. Some testing confirmed the talk time [2] and reported 8h40 of video playback (i.e. screen on). I can't easily find numbers for the N950 (probably because it was a low-volume developer-only device so nobody bothered measuring it), but it had similar hardware and software to the N9 so it's reasonable to assume similar battery life.

Librem 5 (4500 mAh) claims "6 hours with screen on and all hardware-enabled" [3] and "a run time of about 13 hours with the screen and wifi off but data-enabled over 4G" [4]. So it's a 3x larger battery than the N9, but the N9 has slightly better screen-on time and 35x longer idle time (largely because Librem 5 hasn't got suspend-to-RAM working yet).

Not that this comparison is useful in any way. All that really matters is whether the battery lasts until you're in a convenient place to recharge it; for many people that probably means ~24 hours battery life under typical usage so they can recharge overnight and not worry about it dying in the evening when they need to e.g. call a taxi to get home. Librem 5 isn't there yet, and it's hard to tell if software improvements will be enough to get it there. (Other people may have lower requirements, of course, so it may still be okay for them.)

[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n9-3398.php
[2] http://blog.gsmarena.com/nokia-n9-full-battery-test-is-re...
[3] https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-4500mah-battery-upgrade/
[4] https://puri.sm/posts/charging-the-librem-5/

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 21, 2022 20:24 UTC (Mon) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link]

So it appears that the N9 has better battery life than the Librem5. And by extension, the N950 may have better battery life. So that is something where the N950 may be better than the Librem5.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 22, 2022 16:52 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

> According to wikipedia the N950 has a 1320 mAh battery.
>
> The Librem5 battery I have here (chestnut generation?) is 2000 mAh.

Seriously?! It's quite hard to find any Android phones that literally aren't bottom-of-barrel that have batteries under 3500mAh these days: I've just been shopping; went for a Fairphone (largely because the Pixel 6 has no SD card slot and its 256GiB model appears unavailable, and the Fairphone is repairable) -- and even that, known to be a phone that specializes in things other than battery life, has a 3905mAh battery. I didn't see one single phone under 3300mAh: even ultra-cheap phones like the Moto E20 have 4000mAh batteries these days.

2000 is hilariously small. No *wonder* the battery life is poor. It would be a miracle if it weren't.

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

Posted Feb 22, 2022 17:47 UTC (Tue) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link]

The current Librem5 has 4500mAh battery, mine was an earlier generation.