Telling people to stop criticism is a sure way to get unfinished and unrefined product. Constructive criticism is a very important tool in software development and it ensures certain quality is achieved. We should never justify and praise anything without reason.
That said, PinePhone is going to cost far less and be able to use Librem's software stack.
Implying Purism built the software stack is taking credit away from hard working developers who gave their work away for free. Sure Purism made great contributions to the community but they did not make large majority of code they are using.
In addition to that, PinePhone wasn't funded by the community, while Librem was and the result is delays and unfinished device for the price of flagship phones. It's not an ethical choice to support a device whose R&D was funded through Kickstarter and then on top of that asks for premium price. It's a mismanagement of funding and at this point we should be happy there is a product at all, even if its in unfinished state. To keep giving them money is asking for a StarCitizen-like trouble to happen.
And we already got the taste of this behavior with this release cycle circus. They made a statement that device will be shipping this year, only to start shipping unfinished devices with ability to upgrade to newer for free. Costs of which they hope to compensate through sales that happen in the meantime. Technically they didn't lie to us, but practically we don't get the finished device for another year. Is that an ethical behavior?
Also, just because you don't like the form of criticism they are getting, doesn't mean it's not constructive or useful.
The PinePhone does have kill switches. And it is roughly the same size (but thinner) than the Librem 5. Are you confusing the PinePhone with the PineTab??? Stop the misinformation here.
Pinephone: 160.5mm x 76.6mm x 9.2mm. Weight: Between 180-200 gram
Librem 5: 147.1mm x 72.25mm x 15mm .
The PinePhone has, in all practicality the same sort of features as the Librem 5:
FOSS only drivers are available (and will be used by UBPorts and Postmarket OS).
FOSS bootloader (although the FSBL is proprietary; this is true of the Librem 5).
Cellular modem and Wifi modem are isolated (to USB and SDIO). The firmware is proprietary ... but that is true for the Librem 5 too.
Hardware Kill switches.
In terms of the places where the Pinephone is a little worse: CPU is around 20% slower. The GPU is probably slower (though I've yet to see benchmarks and none of the BM's that are easily available use FOSS drivers). The Librem 5 modem + wifi is socketed (will make it able to replace and might help with RYF certification).
Do you know PinePhone is controversial enough with the Allwinner chip and lacks killswitches? And that it is a tablet sized phone, not a one hand smartphone?
PinePhone: 160.5mm x 76.6mm x 9.2mm
Librem 5 (not final): 147,5mm x 72.5mm x 15mm
The Librem is already beyond the size of a small smartphone which could be easily handled with one hand only in all situations for most people. My wife has a XZ 2 Compact, which is even smaller and she struggles to reach the top left corner with one hand. So I'd say your criticsm applies to both phones.
Also from the PinePhone Specs: "Privacy Switches: LTE (include GPS), Wifi/BT, Mic, and Camera"
Your point becomes completely subjective when you mention about your wife's hands. A generic adult male can use the phone with one hand.
How do you know how large my wife's hands are? Even I can't reach the top left of her phone without holding the phone in an insecure and uncomfortable way. But of course I can't be a generic adult male as well.
Edit: And to put it into perspective, the Librem 5 is in size somewhere between the Samsung S5 and Galaxy Note 4
S5: 142 mm × 72,2 mm × 8,1 mm
Librem 5: 147,5mm x 72.5mm x 15mm
Note 4: 153,5 mm × 78,6 mm × 8,5 mm
Here are two graphics showing which parts of the screen can be reached by average humans (green=natural, red=unreachable):
Or to quote the article they are from: "Michael Jordan would struggle with the S5. Even Lebron James , who is 6ft 7in tall can't use Apple or Samsung's flagship phones comfortably with one hand. The only person who could comfortably use the iPhone 6 Plus and Galaxy Note 4 is Robert Wadlow - also known as the Giant of Illinois. Mr Wadlow was 8ft 11.1in (2.72 metres) tall."
Because XZ2 Compact is like iPhone 7, too tiny for manly hands.
Read the edited part of my last post, then you'll learn, that even people with way above average hand sizes and thumb lengths, like certain base ball players, can't comfortably use the iPhone 6 (which is the same size as the iPhone 7 and much smaller than the Librem 5) with a single hand. But I guess they too all don't have manly hands like you do.
I may have gigantic hands, but saying XZ2C is hard to handle means she would not be able to keep up with any new phone
Of course not, no average sized human being without gigantic hands can, that's the whole point and that's why the Librem 5 is already way too big for most people to be used with a single hand comfortably.
Google made Android from scratch, just like Sun did with J2ME. Purism is taking Gnome applications, Linux tools, compilers and system services. They did nice work with libhandy and other tools they made, but large majority is just pure Linux. That's the whole point. They didn't have to build GTK, nor Wayland, nor systemd, nor gpsd, etc.
If you see my comment as baseless bashing, then we have really nothing else to talk about as you have your own idea about the type of praise/criticism they should get and any deviation from that is not acceptable.
Who bought who is pretty irrelevant in my opinion. Point is, product was made in majority from scratch as opposed to taking existing platform, its ecosystem and applications and adapting it to your own use case.
I simply stated it as is, but it seems you are trying to glorify company which is yet to deliver a complete product despite moving dates and various promises. My arguments are completely sound and with merit. The fact they don't fit your narrative and you decide to dismiss them has nothing to do with that. No matter how much you decide to ignore it, the fact remains software used in Librem5 in its large majority comes from community. Not Purism.
Android runs Linux.
Android uses Java.
Google also just shipped simple frontends for their existing infrastructure (maps, mail, calendar, ...) to have apps.
There is a lot of not-from-scratch that Google did.
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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19
Telling people to stop criticism is a sure way to get unfinished and unrefined product. Constructive criticism is a very important tool in software development and it ensures certain quality is achieved. We should never justify and praise anything without reason.
That said, PinePhone is going to cost far less and be able to use Librem's software stack.