Since Linux can be installed on pretty much every laptop, I am not sure what is special about this one. Maybe the HN gang can enlighten me?
What fascinates me about Pine64 is that we might finally see Linux on phones and tablets.
I ordered a PinePhone a few days ago. Can't wait to try it. I wonder when they will ship it. I got an email "Your order has been received and is now being processed." but no info when they will send it out. Any idea how fast they will ship?
I don't know about the PinePhone in particular, but the time to shipment for my PineBook Pro was very long since it was done in batches after orders came in.
I’m not the person you replied to, but it’s definitely free of brain damaged bios junk that’s windows specific, and also unremovable enterprise malware, such as the Intel Management Engine.
x86 can go to lower clock speeds, but does that get them as low on power use? I was under the impression that Intel failed in the mobile space because they couldn't make x86 fit in a phone's power envelope.
I think not that they couldn't but as they say, you don't have be able to outrun the bear, just the guy with you.
Not that they couldn't, just they couldn't beat ARM. And ARM already had a solid footing in the dumb phone space.
I think four things. Two Technical and two business. 0x86's innate power consumption per bit of state change is higher than ARM's. Lack of experience with low power process. No one wants to pay the Intel Tax. And Intel isn't very nice to their customers.
If they spread their investment to compete against AMD in the current x86 niches and with ARM in the low-power spectrum, there won't be enough money to succeed in either.
If you like to play with OSs and how they allocate work, it's a very interesting machine.
Also, remember that Intel doesn't have asymmetric multi-core parts right now, but they already announced Lakefield, which has Tremont and Sunny Cove cores on a single package.
In a sense, it's like playing with Intel's future chip, but with an ARM ISA.
This is an ARM laptop. Since it isn't intel, that means you can have access to the MOBO schematics as well as the processor data sheet.
This means that the average person can design a computer around the processor without paying a couple million to intel in NDA agreements.
This is a being deal for the FOSS hardware community - I myself am actually working on a project to make an open processor with a GPU. https://systemeslibres.org
Well, my friend has a Pinebook Pro. He's capable of writing drivers himself and designing MOBOs for CPUs. He's actually designed a CPU and written a compiler for it.
Being able to get to the core of the system matters very much to him - being able to trust his hardware. Releasing MOBO files strengthens that trust. In addition, he can repair the MOBO himself if need be.
I suppose me and my friend represent a minority of users though.
Not the op, but I guess they meant the person with far more than average system design skills, but with an average 1 person budget for a hobby project.
How did they manage to screw that up? I mean, Chromebooks literally run Linux just with a weird userland on top, and even if they're using weird out-of-tree drivers, if they're in-kernel they still have to be released, so worst case you should be able to reuse their patches. Or has the joy of drivers running at least partially in userspace also hit ChromeOS?
I think the hardware is sold at a loss to recoup once budget laptop users are locked into the Google ecosystem. I don't think Linux was conspired against but compatibility with Linux was an afterthought or discouraged.
But that's what I don't understand; "compatibility with Linux" can't be an afterthought when the stock OS uses a Linux kernel. Even on Android, it's rare for the problem to be getting drivers for hardware; the drivers might be terrible and hard to rebase onto a newer kernel, but they're at least available.
Well the page you linked to says "Estimate to be dispatch in late May, 2020". Considering that it's the last day of May today, I can't say that tells me much.
Technically, but have you ever worked at a shell on an Android device? It feels alien, and all the interesting stuff is wrapped up in the JVM so the fact that it's wrapped in Linux doesn't gain you much.
You should give Termux a try. It's an honest to goodness "Linux environment" with a full package manager for many many popular tools and utilities, including the build essentials if you want to compile software directly on your device.
Android tends to use patched kernels, but the diffs are getting smaller (Google made it an explicit goal to bring their fork back to mainline). The bigger issue is the weird userland; a Linux kernel is one thing, but bionic is not a libc meant to run anything but Android, and toybox is no GNU coreutils.
Yes, Android uses a Linux kernel, but it's a worked example of why "GNU/Linux" actually does mean something. Linux is just a kernel; it gives you drivers and basic OS support, but it's just one part. Android/Linux (Android on a Linux kernel) is its own complete userland, with its own libc (bionic), own coreutils, some sort of drivers running in userspace, its own graphics stack (not X11 or Wayland based), etc. On the other hand, GNU/Linux (GNU-flavored system built on a Linux kernel) uses GNU's glibc, GNU coreutils, typically upstreamed drivers (or if not, at least reusable packaged out-of-tree drivers), Xorg or some Wayland compositor providing GUI, and usually some sort of package manager that owns the entire system (user apps, libraries, core OS). They're really different beasts.
I currently have an Acer B115m with Intel N2940, SSD and 8GB LDDR3.
I use this laptop mostly to work outdoors. I get somewhere nice, surrounded by nature, open the laptop, plug in my 4G modem and work from there. It gets me about 6h of real usage, but sometimes I can't charge it up to 100%. I'd also like to have a brighter scree so I deal better with sunlight.
Most of the times I go to places you can't reach by car, so I go on bike or walking, therefore I need to be careful with what I carry with me, be it weight or volume.
An ARM laptop would be a nice upgrade for my battery anxiety, but having everything soldered makes me uneasy, and 64 Gb HD + 4Gb Ram is not enough for me. Also, I wasn't able to find info about the screen brightness.
if you ordered before the 22nd may, it will be shipping soon and you'll get an email when it starts (they said shipping began on 28th, but i haven't received my email yet).
if it was after that date, you'll have to wait for the next batch - no idea when that is scheduled.
- It's an open device so you're not locked out of or into anything (Android devices don't cut it on this front)
- It's ARM-based
One thing they haven't:
- You don't pay for a Windows license you'll never use
That last thing has annoyed some of us for decades: funding (even in a minor way) a company that has been actively hostile to the platform we want to use. Plus it adds some amount of cost to the device. Believe what you will about their recent change of stance, some of us still don't want to send money their way unnecessarily.
It's a reasonable question. The main reason is a desire to support the "open" development model of the hardware.
I think most people interested in a device like this would be better served with a Chromebook, of which there are numerous, with much more diverse hardware options. They already run Coreboot and are about the most open laptop devices currently sold in large quantities.
This is pretty much my experience as well. The trackpad is my only complaint about the machine.
There is some ongoing work to reverse-engineer the trackpad firmware (which is apparently behaving badly) from this guy: https://github.com/akirakyle/pinebook-pro-keyboard-updater/t...
I'm the opposite. I hate being able to click anywhere on a trackpad for left-click. It results in SO many false clicks, that I revert to using a small travel mouse. I much prefer old trackpads where you had clearly defined 'button' areas[1] at the bottom. I 100% blame Apple for the shift to buttonless trackpads.
I've had a PineBook Pro for a few months. I added an NVMe drive for extra storage and overall I'm happy with it as a secondary machine since I usually use my desktop.
The one thing that I think is much worse than it should be is the trackpad and my view is much more negative than in this review. For me, it's terrible and often borders on unusable for anything that doesn't have a large clickable area. It is such a contrast to the keyboard that is much better than I expected and probably the best laptop keyboard I've used in a long time.
> The display resolution is 1920x1080, equivalent to about 100 dpi
Maybe a typo? Should be around 157dpi for a 14 inch screen. Though I absolutely agree with the general idea, high dpi screens (over 200 dpi) do make the experience much much better.
USB-C means that I get to use any charger I have and can trivially replace it; a barrel-connector is some one-off component that is precious: if I lose it or damage it I am _screwed_.
The article says the device also support some charging over USB-C... why even bother including a barrel-connector? It feels wrong.
universal PSUs with all of the few common barrel connector sizes are commonly and cheaply available. I personally prefer USB-C too, just because I have more devices with it, but barrel connectors aren't that weird.
It has USB-C charging as well. I think that's sort of the best of both worlds, it's not like a barrel connection adds much to the board, and it means you can run it from a much less complex power supply.
It does mean it has an extra port that you might find unnecessary, but at the kind of prices they're selling this at including a usb-c charger would actually add a fair bit to their costs, and you can buy an aftermarket one pretty easily.
> No one seems to complain about their 120/240 mains plugs not being "modern" either
Those plugs are standardized. I can use them with a Dell laptop, an Apple desktop, and a VIC-20 from 1982, with zero difficulty. If there were exactly one barrel plug (per country) that worked on everything, you'd see a lot less interest in ditching it.
You could add those same DRMs to a USB-C connection and 'manufacturer required' power supply.
Barrel connectors are not proprietary just because someone implemented theirs in some specific way to harm consumers.
In fact USB-C connectors are more likely to implement a DRM, given that the connector comes 'batteries-included' with a data channel that won't need to be re-imagined.
Barrel jacks offer no such boot-straps to would-be DRMers. That isn't to say it's impossible (as HP/Dell/Fujitsu have proven), but a 2 prong barrel jack is going to require a bit more effort.
If you are using proprietary to mean 'consumer-hostile', use a better phrase. Proprietary has specific context to IP/copyright/design.
> If you are using proprietary to mean 'consumer-hostile', use a better phrase.
I'm not - I'm using it to mean non-standard and specific to an individual vendor. I can use my Apple USB-C charger to charge anything accepting USB-C, which is most things these days. I can't use my Dell laptop charger to charge anything except a Dell laptop. That's what I mean by proprietary.
You realize a barrel jack is just some metal of a certain size right? Calling a barrel jack proprietary because dell added crazy things to their own power supplies is nonsense. Barrel jacks have been around and sold individually in bulk for half a century.
> You realize a barrel jack is just some metal of a certain size right?
The dimensions you use and the voltage you put across it and polarity you use all make the jacks incompatible. You have to use a Dell charger for a Dell laptop.
The jacks have nothing to do with voltage and polarity is standard. Dell puts extra electronics in that have nothing to do with barrel jacks. You are conflating two things that are orthogonal and could not be more separate, and you were already told this.
I think you're a bit confused about what we're talking about in this thread. It's not specifically about the jack on the end of the charger. The whole chargers aren't standardised. Things which aren't standardised about them include:
- the voltage they apply
- how much power they can deliver
- the dimensions of the barrel connector
- the polarity of the connector
- handshake protocols (DRM)
You can find laptop chargers with any one of hundreds of possible combinations of these. Each one may be individually standardised, but the charger is not. That's what makes them proprietary.
Compare this to manufacturers with some sense, like Apple, that use a standard USB connector for power. That's so much simpler and user-friendly.
All electronics say the voltage and amperage they need, it isn't really that big of a problem, especially on a $200 laptop. It isn't a big deal that a bare bones laptop doesn't negotiate its power over USB-C. Polarity on barrel jacks is pretty standard. You look at the voltage and make sure your ACDC adapter can supply enough amps. In a situation like this you could buy an ACDC adapter off of amazon from dozens of different places.
Not at all. That's part of the drawback of barrel jack connectors. There is no standard voltage output. You can undervoltage your product input, or overvoltage it and break something.
Before the whole USB-C thing, the majority of laptops had already settled on something like 18-20V (with some of the smaller ones at 10-12V). The input tolerances are relatively wide and you are highly unlikely to cause damage unless the polarity is reversed.
Here's some comments I made a few years ago explaining why that voltage:
There are tons of wall warts with barrel jack outputs that are the exact same case size and cable length. A quick search of digikey will confirm that. That's a big part of their flexibility - you can easily get an AC/DC converter spec'd for slightly more power in just about the exact same form factor. If you need a little more power, buy a wall wart with slightly higher rated amperage.
I would also suggest that the Pinebook volumes are nowhere near the scale where they can harness USB-C benefits. They're a small company, not an Apple.
I have a crate of probably 30-40 different power supplies. Almost no two are alike, there's 5v, 5.1v, 19v, 32v, 19v, at every amperage from .3 to 30. They all have different sizes of plug, different polarity, different shapes.
Conversely, I can walk around my apartment and charger my thinkpad from any of about 20 different USBC supplies. I can charge my phone in the car, or my laptop from the USBC output. There's a swathe of batteries on the mantle, all of which can charge my phone or my laptop for days or a week depending which size I pick up.
USB-C seems superior because it comes with a data link, and negotiates higher power ratings.
The tradeoff is that this comes with complexity. The Pinebook team, sensibly, decided they didn't want to fuck with building and verifying USB-C power negotiation subsystems.
Guarantee that everyone complaining about it here has never had to implement, or be accountable for the BOM cost of, a USB-C power negotiation system.
USB-C seems superior because every desk that I ever sit at already has a USB-C charger, plus another in my backpack, and compatibility with portable power banks.
Granted I haven’t ever had to implement it, but I think you’re underselling its benefits.
"Are you 12" is an internet insult trope. The comment clearly broke the site guidelines. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
>Guarantee that everyone complaining about it here has never had to implement, or be accountable for the BOM cost of, a USB-C power negotiation system.
Huh, evidently this hasn't been sufficiently abstracted into hardware/software modules? I find that sort of surprising given the maturity of the problem, though I guess some things just aren't that simple.
Most people would probably prefer USB-C, as yo can use any old power supply. Though in this case it looks like it supports USB-PD anyway, so doesn’t seem like an issue.
Yes, I would expect much more from a "Pro" model, at least 8GB, preferably 16-32GB personally.. Running VMs and containers is quite necessary for high security & software development work..
The RK3399 doesn't support more than 8GB RAM CMIIW. Also RK3399 seems very underpowered for software development work, you might want to wait for snapdragon Chromebook or Google's custom Exynos Chromebook.
I don't think it makes much sense to "pay a bit more and get 4k" on a device which costs $199. If people are looking to "pay a bit more" to get 4k then they should probably look at a device which can actually handle 4k decently not expect it as an upgrade option on one of the cheapest laptops available.
Careful what you wish for. The GPUs in the Pinebook Pro or RasPi 4 can drive a 4k display. But they don't have the pixel throughput to composite a real 4k graphics scene or even desktop. It would be misery.
The application for those resolutions in mobile chips is to take a picture from the hardware video decoder and display it.
> 1080p is pretty decent in a little laptop like this.
When did 1080 become regarded as acceptable, let alone decent? I remember running CRTs as high as 1440 about 20 years ago. What happened? Why hasn't resolution doubled a few times since then?
Because the display industry perpetuated the lie that resolution is more important and not pixel density. Apple's metric for retina displays is a lot more honest. Beyond a certain point at a particular distance your eyes would not be able to physically resolve the pixels. 1080p, 1440p, 4k, are all meaningless if you do not include pixel density. A 4k display 3 meters tall has a very different pixel density compared to a 3 inch 1080p device.
I personally am still fine with the ~100 ppi density. Being fine with it means using a UHD TV of slightly more than double the diagonal length of the 1080p 23-24" monitors is actually a cool way to get more real estate without multiple monitors. I think this really is a personal preference thing.
Pixel density isn't what matters either. It's the angular size of the pixels as you see them (not sure what the actual term for that is).
My phone has around 550 PPI but my computer monitor at 160 PPI looks damn near as sharp. Meanwhile I can clearly notice when the phone's resolution is reduced to get around 400 PPI, but I highly doubt I would be able to tell the difference between 200 and 250 on a computer monitor.
When a large subset of people compared it with higher resolutions on 14" screens and decided it was good enough for their personal needs? It's obviously a matter of taste, but on smaller screensizes I'd rather not spend money and battery budget on the small improvement 4K gives me.
Not the gp, but I'm just completely baffled by the high density obsession. 1920x1080 is just great for everything I do, every day. Messing around with hidpi settings is far more of a drain than just using a standard resolution. No app ignores 1920x1080. Everything works perfectly, every time.
And I’m not sure what you mean about settings. I’ve never seen a modern app not scale correctly, and in the worst case very old ones draw their interfaces at a lower resolution but the same size as other apps... which is no worse than what you’d get with a lower resolution screen.
I work with text primarily and I find old low resolution screens painfully blurry for this.
Because it is acceptable. Most of my machines are 1920x1080 but some are even lower than that and they're all fine for all of my uses; the only time I even notice that I'm on the thinkpad with only 1280x800 is when I'm on the web and hit a website that was clearly only tested on 4k. Like... is high-res nice? Sometimes. (And sometimes no; HiDPI is a pain on some systems.) But it's an acquired taste, and quite frankly my eyes don't appreciate me trying to actually use those pixels (smaller fonts -> higher text density is the main functional use I can see for more pixels). So yes, 1080 is decent.
I think you're possibly incorrectly conflating resolution with the size of things on screen. It doesn't make any sense to talk about a website being only tested at 4k - resolution doesn't change the size of things. In the same way, fonts don't get smaller with higher resolution. You can have larger fonts on a higher resolution screen if you want to, with crisper lines that are easier to read.
I suppose that is more precise, although when all the screens are within a couple inches of each other I think total pixels is a close enough proxy for dpi.
Xiaomi Notebook Air 12.5 fits this bill. An excellent all-Intel machine with really good build quality. Sadly, really hard to buy outside China in its latest iterations.
I have one. It seems to be a pretty nice machine with a good performance for buck ratio. However, the touchpad and keyboard make it completely unusable for me. The keyboard doesn't register some key combos at all, and I've never used a touchpad this bad...
In situations where I'd be comfortable using a Bluetooth mouse, I'd probably have my much more powerful amd64 laptop with me. But well, I don't even need a mouse to comfortably use that one :P
I wish the author expanded on how Midori is "really testing my patience" - kind of a showstopper if you can't browse with what is a very lightweight browser
> There are upgrade kits available, for example an adapter to add an NVMe disk instead of the eMMC. For the original Pinebook, there has been an upgrade kit with a better processor even.
I didn't know you could add nvme disk to the pinebook pro. The emmc storage was turning me off, but with this the machine seem to be more attractive to me. If it has upgradable cpu as well I would seriously consider using this laptop, just need to figure out shipping as international shipping is usually handled by the awful state-owned postal company here, which for some reason can't successfully deliver anything to my address.
I received pinebook pro last week and initially I was really disappointed with the trackpad, double tap was only working 30% of the time, laggy movement, urgh.
129 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadWhat fascinates me about Pine64 is that we might finally see Linux on phones and tablets.
I ordered a PinePhone a few days ago. Can't wait to try it. I wonder when they will ship it. I got an email "Your order has been received and is now being processed." but no info when they will send it out. Any idea how fast they will ship?
- It's fairly inexpensive, even when compared to cheaper build machines.
- It's very open and easy to hack
- It's fast to the point of being actually useful
- It has a six-core asymmetric CPU (two fast A72 cores, 4 low-power A53 ones). That's not available on any x86 based laptop.
- It's almost completely Windows-proof.
What does this mean? And why is that good?
Not that they couldn't, just they couldn't beat ARM. And ARM already had a solid footing in the dumb phone space.
I think four things. Two Technical and two business. 0x86's innate power consumption per bit of state change is higher than ARM's. Lack of experience with low power process. No one wants to pay the Intel Tax. And Intel isn't very nice to their customers.
Also, remember that Intel doesn't have asymmetric multi-core parts right now, but they already announced Lakefield, which has Tremont and Sunny Cove cores on a single package.
In a sense, it's like playing with Intel's future chip, but with an ARM ISA.
This means that the average person can design a computer around the processor without paying a couple million to intel in NDA agreements.
This is a being deal for the FOSS hardware community - I myself am actually working on a project to make an open processor with a GPU. https://systemeslibres.org
The main thing I see is that it enabled a $200 laptop which is amazing (except for the dodgy keyboard and trackpad undermining it)
Being able to get to the core of the system matters very much to him - being able to trust his hardware. Releasing MOBO files strengthens that trust. In addition, he can repair the MOBO himself if need be.
I suppose me and my friend represent a minority of users though.
I'm not quite sure that's the case...
I get what you mean, but to be clear -- this is not a computer for the average person (nor is it meant to be).
This is sad, because they were easy-to-buy and inexpensive Linux machines. Pixelbook Go is very nice, and the price is reasonable.
Shipping schedules for Pinebook Pro and Pinephone do fluctuate since they are produced and shipped in batches.
So it makes sense to use Linux if that's what you prioritize.
I use this laptop mostly to work outdoors. I get somewhere nice, surrounded by nature, open the laptop, plug in my 4G modem and work from there. It gets me about 6h of real usage, but sometimes I can't charge it up to 100%. I'd also like to have a brighter scree so I deal better with sunlight.
Most of the times I go to places you can't reach by car, so I go on bike or walking, therefore I need to be careful with what I carry with me, be it weight or volume.
An ARM laptop would be a nice upgrade for my battery anxiety, but having everything soldered makes me uneasy, and 64 Gb HD + 4Gb Ram is not enough for me. Also, I wasn't able to find info about the screen brightness.
Would pay more for 4K, smaller bezels and faster CPU/more dram, but only if it remained fanless, and kept the 8 hour battery life.
(I paid $189.)
if it was after that date, you'll have to wait for the next batch - no idea when that is scheduled.
- It's an open device so you're not locked out of or into anything (Android devices don't cut it on this front)
- It's ARM-based
One thing they haven't:
- You don't pay for a Windows license you'll never use
That last thing has annoyed some of us for decades: funding (even in a minor way) a company that has been actively hostile to the platform we want to use. Plus it adds some amount of cost to the device. Believe what you will about their recent change of stance, some of us still don't want to send money their way unnecessarily.
I think most people interested in a device like this would be better served with a Chromebook, of which there are numerous, with much more diverse hardware options. They already run Coreboot and are about the most open laptop devices currently sold in large quantities.
There's also apparently a bounty: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/88375235-reverse-enginee...
If there is a firmware solution, then I think I'll have no complaints left for the pinebook pro :)
Once I turned off the "click in this area for button x" stuff and turned on tap to click, it became 10x more usable.
(I'm not familiar with the pinebook trackpad, so it could be more that just configuration)
--
[1] Or even real buttons!
The one thing that I think is much worse than it should be is the trackpad and my view is much more negative than in this review. For me, it's terrible and often borders on unusable for anything that doesn't have a large clickable area. It is such a contrast to the keyboard that is much better than I expected and probably the best laptop keyboard I've used in a long time.
Maybe a typo? Should be around 157dpi for a 14 inch screen. Though I absolutely agree with the general idea, high dpi screens (over 200 dpi) do make the experience much much better.
What's wrong with this?
The article says the device also support some charging over USB-C... why even bother including a barrel-connector? It feels wrong.
It does mean it has an extra port that you might find unnecessary, but at the kind of prices they're selling this at including a usb-c charger would actually add a fair bit to their costs, and you can buy an aftermarket one pretty easily.
No one seems to complain about their 120/240 mains plugs not being "modern" either...
Those plugs are standardized. I can use them with a Dell laptop, an Apple desktop, and a VIC-20 from 1982, with zero difficulty. If there were exactly one barrel plug (per country) that worked on everything, you'd see a lot less interest in ditching it.
Try one of the hundreds USB-C hubs to see for yourself that they regularly ship USB-C ports that can only be used for charging, and not data.
The actual number of USB data ports is not related to what is used for charging, except maybe on some space-constrained devices.
Are they standardised? Can I use a Dell barrel charger on an HP?
Wikipedia says it's a mess and people aren't following any standards, with the same physical connector having different voltages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Standa....
You need a Dell charger for a Dell laptop. We call this 'proprietary'.
You can, if they didn't add any additional DRM on top of it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304194 ) and the polarity is correct (center-positive is most common.)
The voltage is basically irrelevant --- 18-20V is going to be 90% of all laptops, and the other range is 10-12V.
Right - this is what we mean by proprietary.
Barrel connectors are not proprietary just because someone implemented theirs in some specific way to harm consumers.
In fact USB-C connectors are more likely to implement a DRM, given that the connector comes 'batteries-included' with a data channel that won't need to be re-imagined.
Barrel jacks offer no such boot-straps to would-be DRMers. That isn't to say it's impossible (as HP/Dell/Fujitsu have proven), but a 2 prong barrel jack is going to require a bit more effort.
If you are using proprietary to mean 'consumer-hostile', use a better phrase. Proprietary has specific context to IP/copyright/design.
I'm not - I'm using it to mean non-standard and specific to an individual vendor. I can use my Apple USB-C charger to charge anything accepting USB-C, which is most things these days. I can't use my Dell laptop charger to charge anything except a Dell laptop. That's what I mean by proprietary.
And yet I know of exactly zero instances of this happening, probably because it'd be exceptionally silly to do.
The dimensions you use and the voltage you put across it and polarity you use all make the jacks incompatible. You have to use a Dell charger for a Dell laptop.
- the voltage they apply
- how much power they can deliver
- the dimensions of the barrel connector
- the polarity of the connector
- handshake protocols (DRM)
You can find laptop chargers with any one of hundreds of possible combinations of these. Each one may be individually standardised, but the charger is not. That's what makes them proprietary.
Compare this to manufacturers with some sense, like Apple, that use a standard USB connector for power. That's so much simpler and user-friendly.
Their commoditized nature means people are making smaller and lighter adapters.
Depending on the wattage you can use the same USB-C adapter for multiple devices.
There are many USB-C external batteries available.
Here's some comments I made a few years ago explaining why that voltage:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12618406
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7594383
There are tons of wall warts with barrel jack outputs that are the exact same case size and cable length. A quick search of digikey will confirm that. That's a big part of their flexibility - you can easily get an AC/DC converter spec'd for slightly more power in just about the exact same form factor. If you need a little more power, buy a wall wart with slightly higher rated amperage.
I would also suggest that the Pinebook volumes are nowhere near the scale where they can harness USB-C benefits. They're a small company, not an Apple.
Conversely, I can walk around my apartment and charger my thinkpad from any of about 20 different USBC supplies. I can charge my phone in the car, or my laptop from the USBC output. There's a swathe of batteries on the mantle, all of which can charge my phone or my laptop for days or a week depending which size I pick up.
USB-C seems superior because it comes with a data link, and negotiates higher power ratings.
The tradeoff is that this comes with complexity. The Pinebook team, sensibly, decided they didn't want to fuck with building and verifying USB-C power negotiation subsystems.
Guarantee that everyone complaining about it here has never had to implement, or be accountable for the BOM cost of, a USB-C power negotiation system.
Actually they did, as you can read in the OP or at https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/
Granted I haven’t ever had to implement it, but I think you’re underselling its benefits.
Think about the chronology then reinterpret my question.
When I was 12 I was very active. To only ever have seen USB-C this person might well be a prodigy.
Again, honest question. Calm down with the hate boys and girls, try not to assume everyone is malicious
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=wlesieutre. To have joined HN at the age of 3 would be quite the prodigy.
Huh, evidently this hasn't been sufficiently abstracted into hardware/software modules? I find that sort of surprising given the maturity of the problem, though I guess some things just aren't that simple.
The application for those resolutions in mobile chips is to take a picture from the hardware video decoder and display it.
When did 1080 become regarded as acceptable, let alone decent? I remember running CRTs as high as 1440 about 20 years ago. What happened? Why hasn't resolution doubled a few times since then?
My phone has around 550 PPI but my computer monitor at 160 PPI looks damn near as sharp. Meanwhile I can clearly notice when the phone's resolution is reduced to get around 400 PPI, but I highly doubt I would be able to tell the difference between 200 and 250 on a computer monitor.
And I’m not sure what you mean about settings. I’ve never seen a modern app not scale correctly, and in the worst case very old ones draw their interfaces at a lower resolution but the same size as other apps... which is no worse than what you’d get with a lower resolution screen.
I work with text primarily and I find old low resolution screens painfully blurry for this.
The only reason they’re not in my daily driver laptop is that I can’t get one with a decent display and a power efficient CPU.
There’s surely pent up demand for such machines. Hopefully someone will build one eventually.
In Linux, everything works out of the box.
I didn't know you could add nvme disk to the pinebook pro. The emmc storage was turning me off, but with this the machine seem to be more attractive to me. If it has upgradable cpu as well I would seriously consider using this laptop, just need to figure out shipping as international shipping is usually handled by the awful state-owned postal company here, which for some reason can't successfully deliver anything to my address.
After some experimentation and someone on the forums pointing me to https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro#X-Windows_.26... I am getting decent performance.
The keyboard is a cheap no-name, far worse than a Thinkpad keyboard or an Apple keyboard. I had trouble with the button S since the beginning.
But this is fine for such a cheap laptop.