Mobile internet via cellular network mostly not working

[anonymous]

Be careful, it may ruin your battery life.

I haven't measured it yet.

But battery life has always been bad (I don't go out without a 10,000 mAh power bank and a charger) and depends heavily on usage: When the phone is on standby, it works for almost two days and when in use, it lasts not much more than two hours (guesstimate) - so I really would have to do a controlled experiment to gauge the impact.

But at least battery life has not become so much worse that I would have noticed an obvious difference during the ten days since I made the change. The crashing modem had made the phone completely unreliable; now the phone is usable. So it's definitely a good trade from my perspective.

Have you enabled any power saving options?

[Anna]

Have you enabled any power saving options?

Not conciously, no. Are there any (besides the "Settings" menu)?

[arno_nuehm]

Have you enabled any power saving options?

Not conciously, no. Are there any (besides the "Settings" menu)?

Not that I know...

[Anna]

A recent update seems to have brought an additional problem that prevents mobile Internet connections.

This can, however, apparently be fixed fairly easily; two solutions are described in the thread DNS Problems with Mobile Data .

What worked for me was the solution by Zebulon Walton as summarised by arno_nuehm:

Code:

sudo apt install resolvconf

sudo nano /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head

In that Document add the line

Code:

nameserver 9.9.9.9

(or "nameserver 1.1.1.1" or whichever DNS server you like) at the bottom of the text. Then save, close and go:

Code:

sudo systemctl restart resolvconf.service

sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved.service

That's all.

Any sustainable solutions to the other problems are still welcome.

[Anna]

The battery drainage is extreme indeed. According to a little test I did, the Pinephone can remain in standby for only five to six hours with ATTR set to "on" and more than 34 hours with "auto" (see below).

Of course you won't notice the difference as much if you actually use the phone because that will drain the battery in no time with both settings.
Unfortunately, I will have to stick to the "on" setting since otherwise the modem will crash so often that the phone is actually unusable.

Or does anybody have a fix for BOTH problems so that I would not have to choose between short battery life and a permanently defunct modem?

        ATTR{power/control}=     



hours  "auto"  "on"



0        100%   100%

1          93      82


2          91      60

3          88      42


4          85      26

5          83      15%

6          80    OFF   

11        54%

15        43

23        41

28        19

30        14

31        11

32          8

33          6 

34          4%

35        OFF

[arno_nuehm]

The battery drainage is extreme indeed. According to a little test I did, the Pinephone can remain in standby for only five to six hours with ATTR set to "on" and more than 34 hours with "auto" (see below).

Of course you won't notice the difference as much if you actually use the phone because that will drain the battery in no time with both settings.

Unfortunately, I will have to stick to the "on" setting since otherwise the modem will crash so often that the phone is actually unusable.

Or does anybody have a fix for BOTH problems so that I would not have to choose between short battery life and a permanently defunct modem?

        ATTR{power/control}=     

hours  "auto"  "on"

0        100%   100%

1          93      82
2          91      60
3          88      42
4          85      26
5          83      15%
6          80    OFF   
11        54%
15        43
23        41
28        19
30        14
31        11
32          8
33          6 
34          4%
35        OFF

Nice work! Thanks for the effort.

[grump_fiddle_reinstall]

For some time now (since Bookworm? Or only a few weeks? I actually don't know) I usually don't have internet access via the mobile network.

Sometimes it works, mostly it does not. A restart usually helps, but of course that's not what you want to do when you need to quickly look something up or when you or wait for a Signal/Telegram message while on the move. The problem occurs with two different providers.

Is there anything I can do?

I noticed tonight that my 4G data is no longer working. The 4G connection seems to be up and there is plenty of data on my plan. Rebooting and updating have not helped.

Prior to this 4G data has been pretty solid with only the occasional reboot to get it up and running again.

Edit ; I will try the resolvconf fix above as the modem is reported to be working but nothing resolves.

[TRS-80]

Or does anybody have a fix for BOTH problems so that I would not have to choose between short battery life and a permanently defunct modem?

Stay near to a wall outlet?

I kid but, power and reliability issues are deep in firmware and kernel stuff, and will take time to sort out. So all we can do in meantime is try and cheer each other up.

[anonymous]

I finally found out how to make the mobile internet work on my phone, I hope you can make any use of it:

For some reason there are two APNs from my provider (O2 Germany) in Settings/Mobile Network/Access Point Names: There is "pinternet.interkom.de" and there is "internet". When I don't have a data connection, I have to switch to the respective other APN and everything works. I have no idea what it depends on and of course this workaround is not ideal, but it's at least less tedious than restarting the phone and hoping that it will work.

I found that out after I had followed zetabeta's advice to set ATTR{power/control}="on" instead of ATTR{power/control}="auto" in the first line of /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/80-modem-eg25.rules (reboot afterwards or make udev load the new rules). This minimises the notorious modem crashes (in fact I hardly had any crashes since changing it), which is great in itself; I'm not sure whether it contributed to the fact that I have mobile internet.

Anyway: My pinephone is now perfectly usable.

Hello Anna

Happy new year. Does zetabeta's advise still work on Mobian Trixie? It helped me a lot under Mobian Bookworm despite the high energy consumption.