zlacker

Anecdote: i backed pine64's first-ever Kickstarter and got two of their A+ boards (i think they were called). They claimed high performance and full HD video. In the end i couldn't get a single Android game, no matter how primitive, to run at more than a couple of frames per second and Netflix was too jittery to watch. They've been on my poo-list ever since.

About 18 months ago i pulled them back out and ran XFCE on one of them. It crashed with the X11 error (i kid you not): "event arrived before it was sent (your hardware is too slow!)" (going from memory - it might have been phrased differently). i ended up giving them away to someone who wanted to use one for a pihole server, and i was glad to be rid of them. Utter garbage, they were.

>>sgbeal+(OP)
So you backed a developer-oriented project all about open source software and your test to see if it was garbage or not is to consume proprietary video content and play video games through virtualization?

>>sgbeal+(OP)
I ran openHAB on mine for three or four years until I replaced it with a Pi4.

It was fantastic for that purpose, and I only migrated because openhabian stopped supporting Pine64.

>>HidyBu+K3
These are things lots of people, even developers, do on their phones - play games and watch videos.

>>cridde+H9
Don't you think there's a difference between "it's annoying I can't watch full blown movies on this experimental phone" and "it's garbage because no Netflix"?

>>sgbeal+(OP)
It seems like your expectations were wrong - and if they're really promosed those things you can't even be blamed.

>>HidyBu+xa
It depends on what you were expecting. On their A64 Kickstarter they said the graphics capabilities are higher than the original XBox's level of performance. That might lead a person to expect it to play games well. The screenshot included a Netflix icon. The Kickstarter FAQ says it can play UHD 4K video. That might lead you to believe you could watch Netflix on it.

As I understand it, the phone is based on the A64 board.

On top of all this, on the PinePhone page they link to a video titled something like "This $200 phone can do ANYTHING!".

>>cridde+cf
It can play 4k videos and it can play games, but expecting it to play 4k videos through an unoptimized browser with DRM and play virtualized games is extremely disingenuous.

>>HidyBu+gg
Maybe they shouldn't include Netflix in their screenshot then.

>>cridde+H9
Yes, but they probably should not be buying experimental products for this purpose. Set your expectations according to your purchases. The Pine store makes it abundantly clear that this is not a device which you can expect to plug-and-play for whatever use-case you have.

>>HidyBu+K3
> So you backed a developer-oriented project all about open source software and your test to see if it was garbage or not is to consume proprietary video content and play video games through virtualization?

The referenced Kickstart was for the first pine64 boards, not the phones or laptops:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pine64/pine-a64-first-1...

They were marketed as being "high performance" for both Linux and Android. They weren't, plain and simple. They were next to useless for anything.

>>ddevau+Bl
> Yes, but they probably should not be buying experimental products for this purpose.

You misunderstand. i didn't back the phone/laptop. i backed the first pine64 boards, which were marketed as being much more capable than they turned out to be:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pine64/pine-a64-first-1...

>>HidyBu+gg
Are your feet sore from moving the goalposts that far?

>>sgbeal+tV
I have one of the original Kickstarter A64+, it has happily run low disk I/O tasks for years (on account of the uSDcard).

Right now it runs some services through Docker and is pretty dang solid.

I've never taken any manufacturer's performance claims too seriously, there's always an angle.

>>sgbeal+(OP)
Well, thechnically A64 supports FullHD video decoding acceleration, and can run Kodi (librelec) smoothly. It's just SW is there only since 1-2 years ago.

Supercomputer it certainly is not, though. :D If you mean this: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pine64/pine-a64-first-1...

Here's libreelec running on Pinephone (same A64 SoC) https://xnux.eu/log/videos/libreelec6.mp4

>>TylerE+751
Are you seriously telling me you expect an ARM board running mainline Linux to play virtualized Android games? This is beyond beyond disingenuous, is somebody paying you to write this or what?