In 2017, only the top of the line flagship phones would have 4, 6 or 8gb of RAM. 3GB was used in a lot of "flagship killer" phones because Android still ran well with 2GB and 3GB would give you 80% of the benefit of a $1200 phone for $250.
The amount of RAM is not the weakness of this device. The issue is the very outdated chipset (Allwinner A64) and its Mali 400 GPU (no GLES 3 support for instance).
Not really? Librem 5 easily beats the PinePhone when it comes to active usage time on battery (although it does have a battery with higher capacity). Where PinePhone currently wins is suspend time with the CPU completely turned off, as Librem 5 does not use suspend at all right now and just relies on cpuidle.
I don't know. If I'd buy a phone which I really could make mine, I'd love it to have a hardware which would still be well usable in about 5 years from now, even with my increased demand for resources as I expand my possibilities with the device.
At least 8GB RAM for all this stuff to remain in memory. Fat Python processes collecting GPS and mobile connectivity data (like RSSI, which cell towers are nearby), storing this in a MongoDB instance on the device, collecting accelerometer data and processing+storing it, there's a lot I'd like to do.
