I find it interesting how big of a leap the PinePhone just took in power management, whereas the improvements in the Librem 5’s power management have been many small incremental steps in many different areas. I wonder what explains this difference.
@dos said on Reddit that there are a bunch of things like USB in the Librem 5 that still haven’t been power optimized. I understand that the Linux drivers for the Allwinner A64 are older and have already worked out must of the bugs and the chip is pretty power efficient. In contrast, the mainline Linux drivers for the i.MX 8M Quad are still being developed and the SoC still has some power management issues in the silicon. I wonder how much of a difference there is in power draw between the soldered-down Quectel modem and the Broadmobi BM818 on an M.2 card.
As I recall, it took Google years to get good power management in Android, so I guess that we shouldn’t be surprised that Linux phones will also have problems.