construct VS pinephone_modem_sdk

If that's the bar, then mobile Linux is simultaneously very fucking far, and dramatically closer than most people might think.

As far as messaging apps, they're all technically there - the best kind of there for the crowd that this would interest. Spinning up a Matrix server means maybe a days work for this crowd, which allows (and I currently use it for) Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, and more. Even better, due to constant improvements by Matrix, the server is only getting lighter and your options more varied with things like Construct [0].

Email is there - one only really needs to ensure geary is set to scale to the phone screen. As far as gMail, I'd question what the overlap is between "Privacy conscious enough to use a Pinephone" and "Uses gMail instead of anything IMAP".

That only leaves navigation and social media. For the former, I've used the mobile site in-browser on my Android phone that the Google Maps app was too heavy for. And for both on the Pinephone, especially the pro, Waydroid [1] is getting closer to closing the gap.

To be honest, I could see it being mainstream for geeks within two years. Though that's unlikely what you meant by mainstream - which I think we can agree is several more years away, if ever.

[0] https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct

[1] https://github.com/waydroid/waydroid

On its project GH roadmap, why then does it say:

It does - the point is that anyone can spin up their own Matrix server (or pick an existing one) and get involved; they don't have to use the fosdem.org one.

Separately, in terms of implementations: Dendrite is usable these days, albeit beta: https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/08/dendrite-is-entering-beta, and meanwhile Synapse is stable. Conduit (https://conduit.rs) is making progress on federation (and works for simple use cases), and Construct (https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct) exists too.

Hey, that looks really cool. I've been wanting to mess around with this stuff on PinePhone, which is in a unique position here since there are third-party images for the baseband which are mostly open source[1].

I've been especially interested in trying to reverse engineer what's going on with Google Fi on Android, but it is definitely a bit over my head, given that until recently I didn't even really know what an AT command was :) I'm guessing since it's Google the carrier stuff is mostly for fallback and all of the actually interesting stuff is done using protobufs over a data connection. (Fi is also interesting because you can make phone calls on the web over WebRTC. I wonder if that's some kind of gateway to SIP, or what.)

[1]: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk

Ironically modules made by Quectel are GPL compliant (https://www.quectel.com/quectel-open-source) and you can build custom firmwares for them (https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk) to strip out any OTA logic.

Fibocom, on the other hand, not so much.

I have a PinePhone Pro, and I'm trying to figure out a reasonable way to get more than one half of ten minutes of battery life out of it, while still receiving notifications. I figure the best route to go will be to create a service that holds ports open, while the CPU is completely asleep, and either run it on the modem's processor or, as an possibility for the PinePhone Pro, but not the original Pinephone, run it on the m0 core used for power management.

At this moment, Mobian on the PPP with the Modem SDK ( https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/releases ) and a few tweaks to the sound, the phone is great, the power is managed well, and the camera is usable. So I vote for Mobian Phosh as the current best. None of the OSs available are entirely stable on updates, so you still need to be careful.

I use this one with my Steam Deck. It uses the quectel eg25, same as pinephone, and can can be used with the fancy custom firmware.