Why do these things (pine, librem) have so much trouble producing audio? It seems like that would have been one of the first things to have got working.
In the case of the PinePhone, they aren't doing any OS/application development. So it will be up to distro spinners and upstream developers to solve the software problem.
Part of what Pine64 is trying to do is kickstart an ecosystem that gets people working on these sorts of things. It's a chicken and egg problem: there aren't currently any widely available Linux smartphones so no one is working on drivers/applications, there is minimal driver support so there are no widely available Linux smartphones. By just shipping a reasonably priced, reasonably open (as much as it can be given the cellular modem situation) phone they are solving one of the biggest problems. 2020 should be a fun and interesting year for Open Source on mobile...
The Linux platform is really really really not famous for the convenience, ease of use, stability and reliability of its audio stack. Or of its stack of audio stacks, actually...
Part of what Pine64 is trying to do is kickstart an ecosystem that gets people working on these sorts of things. It's a chicken and egg problem: there aren't currently any widely available Linux smartphones so no one is working on drivers/applications, there is minimal driver support so there are no widely available Linux smartphones. By just shipping a reasonably priced, reasonably open (as much as it can be given the cellular modem situation) phone they are solving one of the biggest problems. 2020 should be a fun and interesting year for Open Source on mobile...