[pablo1]

Does anyone have first-hand experience with the pinephone as daily driver? I'm thinking about getting it, but I'm worried I wont be able to do my usual stuff, including using things like Signal or WhatsApp.

Would be very interesting to hear some practital experiences!

[blihp]

I've had one since July and unless your needs and expectations are very low, it still has a long way to go to achieve daily driver status for me. If you only need it to replace a very low end smartphone (i.e. just making phone calls and text messages with very low expectations for apps/web as you might use a sub-$100 smartphone for) then it might work for that definition of daily driver. What it is right now is an excellent mobile Linux device that is perfect for me in many situations that I'd previously consider using a SBC or don't want to lug a laptop around for a few minute task. It will get there eventually, but the software still needs a lot of work and the hardware probably needs to advance a generation or two.

For a daily driver, I literally just went out and picked up a new Android device this weekend because I can't see the Pinephone being able to take on that role for me from a software standpoint for quite some time or with this generation of hardware.

[kop316]

I have it and I like it (Convergence edition on Mobian). My issue is MMS has been non-functional, and because of that, I can't use it as a daily driver.

Mobian has Anbox functional (though it is still experimental), so you can install apps on that. WhatsApp and Signal with without play services so that shouldn't be an issue.

[BuildTheRobots]

Slightly off topic, but I'm curious why the lack of MMS is a show-stopper for you. Personally I've always found it to be a waste of time and money; there's better and cheaper ways of transferring both text and images (especially images due to the compression).

Obviously you do have a use-case; please don't think I'm trying to say it's invalid, I just honestly don't understand what it would be and would really like to be enlightened.

[cjbconnor]

I'm from the U.S. and everyone I know uses SMS/MMS to communicate, including a few MMS group messages. Practically no one I know uses whatsapp/telegram/etc.

[CameronNemo]

I am from the US and my family uses iMessage. I do not have iOS so they just exclude me from the family group chat. Feels good man.

[BuildTheRobots]

Three followup questions if you don't mind:

Does MMS make it easy to have a group conversation, or does everyone have to remember to do the equiv or "reply-all" (add everyone's number in) when sending a message to the group?

Do you get free SMS/MMS included in your plan? (My American Aunt has always insisted SMS was obscenely expensive and refused to use it to communicate.)

Do you get Data as standard with the plan? (Eg is it that people can't easily use WhatsApp because they don't have data when out and about or is it that people just won't agree which IP product to use in the first place?)

Really appreciated; thank you :)

[easton]

- Most MMS/SMS apps treat a MMS group as a threaded conversation, so you only have to set it up once (or it’ll automatically populate all the numbers when someone sends you a text from a mms group)

- MMS has been free and unlimited for the last decade or so on most major carriers (maybe more like ~7 years but we got it waaay before unlimited data made a comeback).

- Data comes standard most of the time, most people have at least a gig or two a month, going all the way up to unlimited. It’s not a problem of data use (since you’d be hard pressed to burn through two gigs of text and meh resolution images), but it’s that MMS is a lowest common denominator. Everyone has it, so you know you can reach them (except for the 10% of the time a message doesn’t go through and you don’t know about it :P). I’m in the US, and I don’t know anyone who uses something other than MMS or iMessage (which is invisible and acts exactly the same) for most of their communication. Some of us have Discord but we only use it on desktop. I think my parents may use Facebook Messenger for something.

[BuildTheRobots]

Really appreciate the reply - thank you. It's always intriguing to see how the other half lives, as it were.

MMS never seemed to catch on in the UK and never seems to be included in the free allowances which probably doesn't help (eg I have unlimited calls, sms, >100gb data but MMS still costs me 50p each). I think the only time I've seen it used in years is very occasionally when I ask an iPhone user to send me a photo and they don't realise I'm on Android and won't automatically have it funnelled via Apple, so instead I get badly compressed unreadable photos of printed letters.

[senkora]

I think most people my age (22) in the US use Facebook Messenger. It’s certainly how I do most of my communication.

Facebook Messenger is like iMessage except you can generally assume everyone is on it. The main caveat is that you get the best experience if everyone is friends on Facebook, so it works great for friend/family convos but poorly for stuff like online dating (mostly SMS, Snapchat, and iMessage) and coordinating loosely attached groups of people (GroupMe used to be popular for this, but I haven’t seen it in awhile, iMessage also gets used for this but strongly excludes half of all people).

[kop316]

> Does MMS make it easy to have a group conversation, or does everyone have to remember to do the equiv or "reply-all" (add everyone's number in) when sending a message to the group?

It depends on the client, but yes, MMS makes it pretty easy to go.

> Do you get free SMS/MMS included in your plan? (My American Aunt has always insisted SMS was obscenely expensive and refused to use it to communicate.)

Most common plans that I know of have unlimited SMS/MMS/Phone calls (unless you get a really cheap one).

> Do you get Data as standard with the plan? (Eg is it that people can't easily use WhatsApp because they don't have data when out and about or is it that people just won't agree which IP product to use in the first place?)

Data is generally standard with a plan. SOme only give you a limited allotment, and some give you some version of "unlimited" (i.e. if you use too much they will start to throttle you).

[fuzxi]

>Do you get free SMS/MMS included in your plan? (My American Aunt has always insisted SMS was obscenely expensive and refused to use it to communicate.)

I have a phone plan with a Sprint reseller that costs $6/month and still have unlimited texts. It's really rare for a plan to not include unlimited SMS, unless maybe it's prepaid.

MMS uses data though, and that can get expensive.

[aidenn0]

When I got my first phone, SMS was 0.25USD per message. A few years later, a friend's daughter ran up a $800 bill in a single month.

These days it's less than a penny per message for SMS, or just unlimited depending on the plan.

[Shared404]

> Do you get free SMS/MMS included in your plan? (My American Aunt has always insisted SMS was obscenely expensive and refused to use it to communicate.)

It was for a long time, and still is with some services. I used a tracphone flip-phone for a while, and a single SMS is like half a minute of phone time IIRC.

[0_____0]

No MMS means you can't do group texts at all unless everyone you're messaging has decided to use a different app. Certainly a show-stopper for myself.

[igetspam]

Because I'm a grump, I stuck with google voice for years specifically because it didn't support MMS. It cut down on a lot of spam from my family. I did manage to push people to email for group conversations. SMS/MMS are interrupts where email has a some what built in understanding that replies will not be immediate.

[kop316]

Like the other reply said, it's the only way I can do group texts with most of my friends/family.

[cortesoft]

It is a classic network effect scenario; if your friends and family are using MMS, then that is what you need to use, regardless of quality.

[ryukafalz]

>WhatsApp and Signal with without play services so that shouldn't be an issue.

I know Signal can now, but can WhatsApp notify you of incoming messages without Play Services?

[kop316]

Yep it does.

[hutzlibu]

How do WhatsApp and Signal run at all? It is not a Android OS. Through a android vm? I thought that does not really work yet, at least not on the pinephone.

[kop316]

They run through Anbox:

https://anbox.io/

[hutzlibu]

Stable?

[OneLeggedCat]

I've been waiting on Librem 5 for years, and had hope for Pinephone too. Broken MMS is a big deal, because it is widespread in the U.S., and I can't communicate with family without it. It looks like MMS is still a long way out, and is not really being developed. I finally gave up and ordered my first iPhone last week.

[fsflover]

MMS is being developed: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11994

[kop316]

Yeah it is honestly frsutrating for me too. I did a bit of work to figure out how feasible it is to get MMS to work (all of the pieces are there, but the actual framework to get it to work with Chatty is missing).

I really wish Pine64 would step in to help with these sort of base issues, or have a bug bounty for it.

[silly-silly]

I never knew MMS was a big deal in the US. I don't know why it just feels so, quaint.

[8bitsrule]

Here's a first-person report from someone who just got his. Heavily-commented post.

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/jl6q6w/pinephone_arr...

[novia]

> Does anyone have first-hand experience with the pinephone as daily driver? I'm thinking about getting it, but I'm worried I wont be able to do my usual stuff, including using things like Signal or WhatsApp.

I don't have the first hand experience, but I was doing research on this very topic earlier today. https://www.github.com/nanu-c/axolotl looked promising. (ubuntu touch only)

As others have mentioned, anbox is another alternative.

I ended up going with the xcover pro instead, but I'm still highly considering getting a pinephone to do dev work on. There's exciting stuff to reinvent over here!

[frzj]

I guess you could setup a matrix bridge[1] and search for a sane client[2].

[1] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/mautrix-whatsapp [2] https://fluffychat.im