Funny. :) I've learned much more using pinephone than I ever did using Androids or iPhones I had been lent for testing from a companies I did jobs for. Here's what I've learned for example: https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html
I just don't want to learn something that will be completely useless to me, because I'm not interested in commercial mobile apps development for Android, and that's about anything that learning android development will gain me, other than hobby points.
Learning general Linux programming and system design has cross-over effects into pretty much everything I do as a hobby or for my clients.
With pinephone (or any other GNU/Linux phone, for that matter), pretty much anything I wrote is portable to all other devices I have use for, incl. my desktop and I re-use code very often. Devices like e-book reader I've reverse engineered, which is not based on Android, or other weird little devices I have and like to mess around with that don't run Android.
I can learn some obscure Android API abstraction that works only on Android, or I can learn lower level Linux API (that it's using under the wraps anyway), that is fixed in stone, and usable everywhere Linux runs. I just choose what to learn based on what I can use more widely and will stay around longer.
If anything it's people who will not consider anything else but Android, and just handwavily reject anything else like many posters in the comments under this article, who seem resistant to learning something new.
"To me GNU/Linux is the simpler more familiar ecosystem. Android is big and complicated, with different tooling, different APIs, different everything."
And now also says:
"If anything it's people who will not consider anything else but Android, and just handwavily reject anything else like many posters in the comments under this article, who seem resistant to learning something new."
Honestly it takes quite the logical contortions. I look at it like that: do you want to target a platform that has proven tools and existing audience, your options are iOS and Android.
If you think you'll shame people into using PinePhone because it's something new, most people don't just go for "something new", they go for something new that also has a purpose. I'm not sure what's the purpose of PinePhone is. It seems like a niche within a niche within a niche.
If that's all it has going for it, that it appeals to people like you, because you're familiar with Linux, it'll fail. And all your investment in it will be for nothing. I don't say this because I want to be a dick, I say this because this is my prediction of what will happen. And I don't decide what happens.
I just don't want to learn something that will be completely useless to me, because I'm not interested in commercial mobile apps development for Android, and that's about anything that learning android development will gain me, other than hobby points.
Learning general Linux programming and system design has cross-over effects into pretty much everything I do as a hobby or for my clients.
With pinephone (or any other GNU/Linux phone, for that matter), pretty much anything I wrote is portable to all other devices I have use for, incl. my desktop and I re-use code very often. Devices like e-book reader I've reverse engineered, which is not based on Android, or other weird little devices I have and like to mess around with that don't run Android.
I can learn some obscure Android API abstraction that works only on Android, or I can learn lower level Linux API (that it's using under the wraps anyway), that is fixed in stone, and usable everywhere Linux runs. I just choose what to learn based on what I can use more widely and will stay around longer.
If anything it's people who will not consider anything else but Android, and just handwavily reject anything else like many posters in the comments under this article, who seem resistant to learning something new.