Pyra as full mobile phone replacement?

[levi]

It's a valid question IMO. I'm following a lot more security hole stories now than I used to as a mere computer user, now I admin a small ${array} of linux machines. The Pyra will be no different for me. Remotely exploitable holes are kind of rare on linux if you're careful about javascript and flash, but I rarely check that my PNDs have been provably built, or even check the source that carefully, and I'm not sure if DBPs will be provably built either.

I do have a lot more trust in most Pandora devs than I do random people on the internet though, and believe their reputation would suffer if they added a priviledge escalation crack and installed a rootkit, and then got found out. So that's something. But maybe that's a weakness on my point, when looked at from a pure security pov.

 

[kabaiakh]

I'm following a lot more security hole stories now than I used to as a mere computer user.

Intel Management Engine and Active Management Technology still give me nightmares.

 

[gentux]

I preordered thursday, I dislike onscreen keyboards and my BlackBerry Priv is a good smartphone but as with all android phones it will not be supported forever and I don't know if TCL is any good in making keyboard-phones.

It would be great if I could combine a dumb Nokia phone with a prepaid SIM installed for phone calls and the Pyra as a smartphone for communications, research, navigation and entertainment.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

My plan for software is Linphone. To be fair, it's a bad plan but liblinphone seems to be the best option by far. I have been fighting the urge to put down money toward a fork of Linphone or an alternative LibLinphone front-end, which could easily be designed to accommodate smaller displays. If anyone here plans to work on this, send me a P.M. first.

In what ways are you dissatisfied with it?

 

[FBnil]

@gentux: Welcome to the Forums Gentux! Yes, Nokia has some cheap 1 week standby phones... I managed to buy a 40 euro one (the C2-06 slides open and is compact, not sure about current availability).

 

[scippie]

It would be great if I could combine a dumb Nokia phone with a prepaid SIM installed for phone calls and the Pyra as a smartphone for communications, research, navigation and entertainment.

I think that that will certainly not be a problem. That's actually how I see its current state.
But for me, knowing how I did with the Pandora, that will probably mean that I will never use it (after some time of over-enthousiasm), and if that's the case, I can't justify the cost

 

[rygD]

It would be great if I could combine a dumb Nokia phone with a prepaid SIM installed for phone calls and the Pyra as a smartphone for communications, research, navigation and entertainment.

I still wouldn't mind having one of these, even if it wasn't used much.

 

[Yuji Sakai]

there is a wire going from the 4g modem to the omap5 which can wake it up from suspend to ram mode or idle on incoming calls or SMS.

We do not know how low we can get power consumption in idle or suspend but the modem draws around 3-10 mA while staying connected to the network and being able to respond to incoming calls.

Regarding software, there are multiple options:
* Replicant
* QtMoko
* Debian + FSO
just to name some. They all need polishing to be adjusted to the Pyra hardware hooks (e.g. display resolution, hardware addresses of accelerometer/position detector).

What is FSO? is it a program to call from debian? if yes it will be great

 

[Askarus]

I don't doubt there will be some way to make/receive calls or SMS.

But nowadays even I'm using Whatsapp.
For me (and I guess for many people) it can only replace my phone if it can use Whatsapp as well.

It's a shame most people don't use Telegram but well, I have to live with it...

 

[sulu]

What is FSO? is it a program to call from debian? if yes it will be great

http://www.freesmartphone.org/

When the Neo900 project was started, I made some tests with fso (it's available in the official Debian repo), because Sebastian Krzyszkowiak (Openmoko/Neo900 team) hinted, he'd make sure fso worked on the Neo900 when it's released. (the Pyra uses the same modem btw.).
My experiences with fso from Debian were somewhat mixed though. The UI that comes with it looks quite polished, but crashes quite often. And fso-deviced seems not to work well with Systemd. It fails to start on Jessie while it was fine on Wheezy. This all applies to Debian's x86 architectures as well as armhf (which would be used on the Pyra).

So my bottom line would be right now, that fso has some potential, but it's not usable right away.

 

[kabaiakh]

What is FSO? is it a program to call from debian? if yes it will be great

FSO is FreeSmartphone.Org, a middleware to access modem functions independently from the hardware.
It is used by SHR (Stable Hybrid Release), a distribution made for smartphones.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm quite new in telephony world.

Debian packages are available for FSO, as well as some SHR.
We *could* use those to make phone calls, handle contacts ...
Not by running SHR fully, only its tools; on top of PyraOS.

Well, basically it's my hope.

Another available middleware broadly used in telephony is oFono.
It seems to lack Debian packages for UI.
We *could* use the ones from plasma mobile.

Then again, I'm new at this.
Only been glancing for informations for a few weeks.
And build an armhf Jessie to test a bit.

Didn't lead to a great achievement I expected.
Only managed to my offense ego ...

EDIT: ninja'a by Sulu ...
[doublepost=1483519338,1483519187][/doublepost]

http://www.freesmartphone.org/[/URL... right away.[/QUOTE] Thanks for your summary.

 

[sulu]

Debian packages are available for FSO, as well as some SHR.

Right! SHR is the name of the UI I was referring to.

 

[kabaiakh]

Right! SHR is the name of the UI I was referring to.

Sad to read it is not very stable. :=(

TODO: motivate myself && try again to play with oFono ...

 

[Haraldur]

I don't doubt there will be some way to make/receive calls or SMS.

But nowadays even I'm using Whatsapp.
For me (and I guess for many people) it can only replace my phone if it can use Whatsapp as well.

It's a shame most people don't use Telegram but well, I have to live with it...

Have you tried either WhatsApp or Telegram with the Shashlik compatibility layer for Android over GNU/Linux? If neither of them depend on native code (as far as I know, Shashlik has not been tested on an ARM machine with running native code) then they may run on an x86 computer.

 

[mclien]

My experiences with WhatsApp so far (my sons to be exactly) on a non android device:
they all gonna fail after a while.
First we tired pigeon on a debian maschine: after a while whatsApp blocked the phone number for that (forever, so that number is unusable forever)
happend on a cyanogenmod after a while, too IIRC
It works on cyanogenmods at the moment, I think, but it used p 2-3 numbers.

So I guess either you use WhatsApp with Adroid (ore a similar replacementOS) or not at all.
I (for now) keep my attitude up to be be way to important to be reachable at any time, let alone be bothered with insignificant text-swoosh by whatsapp

 

[levi]

Have you tried either WhatsApp or Telegram with the Shashlik compatibility layer for Android over GNU/Linux? If neither of them depend on native code (as far as I know, Shashlik has not been tested on an ARM machine with running native code) then they may run on an x86 computer.

Telegram is available as a PND as far as I remember, so no need to go dark side for that

From what I hear, telegram is quite widely used in the middle east, where people have really quite good reasons not to trust their governments. Me and my friends use slack to keep in touch, and we've set up a group that exposes the XMPP interface, so I can use that with Pidgin.

 

[comradekingu]

Telegram has a fully closed server, and wont let you do video on android without gapps if im not mistaken. Slack is fully closed I think.

Kontalk, Ring, Pep, matrix, mumble, XMPP / WebRTC. There are many alternatives that are fully free.

 

[FBnil]

I recommend Discord aswell https://discordapp.com/features
It uses opus as the codec (which means the audio degrades better than skype does...)

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Telegram is the most stable and user friendly IM I've ever used in my life. Once they open source the server it will be fully free too.

 

[second exodous]

It's probably the most realistic usecase for calls for me also. Obvious downsides are:
-you need to charge all this stuff every day so your wall plug will look like a cthulhu and you will look like a mad professor plugging all the wires before you go to sleep
-you need to assess how stable and power efficient bluetooth connection is before you throw out your main phone

Another interesting thing to consider when speaking about pyra phones is security. Debian publicity people describe their security as "we try, guys" https://www.debian.org/security/ but you need to maintain that (manually?). There also could be attacks executed through poorly written netwoking components in apps the community uses as well as hardware vulnerabilities, e.g. in wifi (not sure if it's possible to hijack bluetooth, but can't see a reason why not).

I consider pyra phone a very interesting hobby project with tons of fun things to explore and research, but I wouldn't use it as a real 100% replacement until there is at least somewhat decent assessment of security (so you won't become a moving proxy DDoS machine on wheels) and stability (you want to be able to call 911 asap when it's needed).

The charging thing isn't an issue for me, I have to change a bunch of crap nowadays anyway. And, I use a pebble which for now works fine, and it lasts a week. Hope pebble survives, I have my fingers crossed.

I've used Linux exclusively for around 17 years(?) I quit Windows when W2K was out for a few years, and have never had a problem with security. Just keep it updated and 99.9% of the time you'll be fine. I hope the Pyra team will ensure they push all the security patches.

I think this might be an important priority for the Pyra team, phone capabilities, because if they can definitively say 'phone capabilities' on the site then people might think of buying a Pyra over a new phone. Having videos of phone calls might sell almost as many units as videos of gameplay.