The PinePhone Pro (PPP) is going to have significantly better CPU performance than the L5, due to its two extra Cortex-A72 cores. The T860MP4 GPU in the RK3399 lacks Vulkan, but the L5 can’t support Vulkan either due to the lack of support in the free Etnaviv driver, and the two GPUs should have roughly similar graphics performance. The LPDDR4-3200 DRAM in the L5 is twice as fast as the LPDDR4-1600 DRAM in the PPP, but other than that, the PPP is going to equal or better the L5 in terms of performance, and it is going to be 4.4 mm thinner and 45 grams lighter.
The RK3399S has hardware video encode (although not in H.265) and an image signal processor, which are both features that the i.MX 8M Quad in the L5 lacks. I expect that the PPP will be significantly faster than the L5 at capturing images and video and run cooler and use less battery when filming, since it doesn’t have to process video in software.
The RK3399 is a power hog that generates a lot of heat and I thought that it was impossible to make a phone with it, but Rockchip created a special power efficient version of the chip for PINE64, which surprises me, because I didn’t think that PINE64 has enough volume to make custom chip orders. Apparently PINE64 thinks that it only needs a 3000mAh battery, which also surprises me, but they are downclocking the CPU from 2.0 to 1.5 GHz, downclocking the GPU from 600 to 500 MHz, and downclocking the RAM from 933 to 800 MHz, so it may be possible to keep the PPP inside the same power envelope as the PinePhone.
Another thing that surprises me is that PINE64 managed to cram the RK3399 which is 21x21 mm (441 mm2) inside the same size of PCB as the A64, which is half the size at 15x15 mm (225 mm2). Looking at the PinePhone’s main PCB, I don’t see a lot of empty space to stick a 21x21 mm chip, so they probably had to do a full redesign of the board to make space, and that probably means that PINE64 did things like switching to BGA packages and using smaller 0201 and 0402 packages which make it harder to tinker with the hardware. Of course, the L5 already did many of these tricks to cram 1200 components on its two boards.
My take after a quick glance at the specs is that the PinePhone Pro (PPP) is bad news for the Purism, because it will match or exceed the L5 in almost every area. I thought that Purism would have a couple years where it could justify its high prices until the PinePhone 2 with the RK3566 arrived, but now it is going to be very hard for Purism to market the L5 at $899, much less the planned increase to $1199 on Nov 1, 2021 and $1299 in March 2022.
I really think that that Purism needs to rethink its pricing strategy, because the PPP is going to offer better convergence as a desktop PC (due to better CPU performance, more RAM and more Flash storage). Many of the areas where the L5 was better than the PinePhone (cameras, CPU/GPU/VPU performance, USB port speed), the PPP will be equal to or better than the L5, and the RK3399 has very good Linux support, so it is going to be very hard for consumers to justify paying a premium for the L5.
I assume that the AMPAK/Broadcom WiFi in the PPP will need proprietary firmware stored in the Linux file system (in /lib/firmware), since all 802.11ac chips on the market need it, and I doubt that PINE64 is willing to go to the extreme of adding an extra SPI NOR Flash chip to store blobs just to meet RYF requirements like Purism. The last I read, it was possible to boot the RK3399 with only FOSS, but it doesn’t run well, so I assume that the PPP will include some blobs like the other RK3399 devices that PINE64 sells.
In other words, Purism will have to sell the $800/$900 difference between the PPP and L5, based on free software and better hardware kill switches that are accessible and can turn off all sensors. I assume that PINE64 is planning to sell a retail version of the PPP for $100 more, just like the PinePhone, with a 1 year warranty and software support from Manjaro, so even that advantage of the L5 is going to disappear.
There are some free software and security/privacy diehards who are going to look at the L5 at $1299 and the PPP Retail at $499, and decide to pay the $800 difference. There are also a few like me who really want to support Purism’s software development and will also pay the difference, but the L5 is going to be a very hard sell for Purism in the future.
My recommendation to Purism is that it not increase its prices, or if it must increase its prices, it has to match the PPP by including 4GB RAM and 128GB Flash storage. We are probably talking about a $25 increase in its bill of materials, so this is entirely doable on Purism’s part, but really I think that Purism should increase the storage to 256GB, so that it can market the L5 as a better convergent PC than the PPP.
This situation annoys me. Purism needs to be able to charge high prices to be able to pay for its software development. In my opinion, Phosh has the best chance out of all the available Linux interfaces of actually getting mobile Linux to mainstream users. The software development that Purism is doing is vitally important for the future of mobile Linux, and it needs to be supported. PINE64 could have given Purism a couple years to market to the higher end of the market before it released the PinePhone 2 with the RK3566, but now it has taken away a large portion of Purism’s market. I wouldn’t mind if PINE64 was paying for software development to get mobile Linux good enough to reach the mainstream, but PINE64 isn’t paying for software development in any meaningful way.
Maybe PINE64’s hardware will attract enough volunteers to the Plasma Mobile project, that it will start improving at the same rate as Phosh has, but I am skeptical that Plasma Mobile is the vehicle to take mobile Linux to mainstream users, for the reasons that I laid out in this blog post. I wish that PINE64 would charge a higher price for its hardware and use the profits to pay developers, or at least leave the higher end of the market for companies that are willing to pay developers.
Nonetheless, I can’t get too mad at PINE64, because it is just taking advantage of the fact that Purism has been pricing itself out of the market and taken so long to deliver. PINE64 is going to bring a performant phone to market at a mid-range price that many more people can afford, and will dramatically grow the total number of mobile Linux users, which will help bring more volunteers to Phosh, Plasma Mobile, UBports, etc.
Experience has shown that volunteer labor only gets FOSS so far, and rarely produces software that appeals to mainstream users. Most of the heavy lifting at projects like the Linux kernel, LibreOffice, Firefox, Chromium, PHP, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Apache, GNOME, etc. are actually done by people whose work is paid by an employer. A good example is how many of the chief contributors to PostgreSQL are employees of EnterpriseDB, Crunchy Data, Microsoft, NTT and VMware.
If PINE64 gobbles up the entire Linux phone market, then we are left with just volunteer labor to develop mobile Linux. However, I have to admit that KDE is one of the projects that has managed to flourish with almost exclusively volunteer labor (aside from a few paid devs from Blue Systems and Qt being provided by the Qt Company). It is my honest belief that Plasma Mobile is not as good of a vehicle as Phosh to bring mobile Linux to the mass market, however, if Plasma Mobile can manage to do it with only volunteer labor, then I will be the first to cheer.
The long-term success of mobile Linux isn’t just some vanity project for geeks. The kind of Surveillance Capitalism being promoted by Google may end up laying the seeds for a dark Orwellian future, and it is certainly destroying the concept of personal privacy as we know it. Planned obsolescence is hastening climate change and the depletion of vital natural resources. The current mobile industry is promoting a dark future based on locked-down spy devices that we don’t control and eroding digital rights, and the most effective means to prevent that dark future is to create an alternative in mobile Linux that eventually gets good enough that it can appeal to ordinary people without technical skills.
The question is whether we can create that alternative based solely on volunteer labor and devices like the PinePhone, Volla Phone and Pro1 X, which don’t pay for the development of mobile Linux. I think that we have much better probability of success if we have some paid software developers, which means the Purism has to be able to make profits, because I don’t see any other company willing to pay developers except Jolla, and it is clear to me that the community will never adopt Sailfish OS and its proprietary Silica interface, nor will it ever make it to the mainstream.