What's stopping you from daily driving the PPP?

[gregb49]

...I can see you are on mobian. Have you tried danctnix arch linux arm? I have found that the most consistent and best for me and I have tried all the major ones including mobian...

I switched from Postmarket OS several days ago. Even though I had updated the modem firmware, under Postmarket my PPhone was still dropping the modem at some time every day, especially overnight.

I've been running danctnix for several days now, and this OS has not dropped the modem, once, so once again, I'm using my PPhone as my daily driver. I use it mainly as a 'phone with some internet usage, but I'm loving getting back to using an OS that doesn't treat me as a source of personal info for sale.

[teekay]

- I can't get the audio on calls working properly. I can hear them, but they can't hear me.

I had this when I first booted up Mobian, so while on a call, I opened Settings > Sound and and made sure to select the "Phone call" option for the device. This fixed it and from then on all calls worked even after reboots.

[konaphone]

For those who have a PPP gathering dust in a drawer somewhere, what's stopping you from daily driving it? When I got mine earlier this year, I tried it out and made a list of things that stopped me from ditching my Android for it, which was:

• Need physical protection (cover). I looked around for other phone covers that could work for the PPP, but eventually got the PPP TPU cover. I wish it had the corner bumpers as well as extending over the front screen for better protection, so I'll keep looking for alternative covers.
  
• The biggest issue was battery life. Using Mobian, suspend worked, which helped, but I could barely browse the web for 1 hour before the battery meter dropped from 100% to less than 30%. YouTube went from 100% to 5% in under 30 mins! Luckily I discovered this is a software problem rather than hardware, hence my efforts to patch the kernel to fix the battery meter (see other threads), which is now working quite reasonably for me.
  
• A semi-working camera so I can document things or scan QR codes (not worried too much about quality). This is working now.
  
• Less of an issue: an offline GPS app for my camping/hiking trips. There are some options now (not all mobile optimized yet) like Organic Maps.
  

After the battery fix (still WIP), I've been able to daily drive the PPP for more than 2 weeks now without once reaching for my Android. I am surprised at how many things I use that works great:

• Calls and SMS
  
• Bluetooth audio playback
  
• Bluetooth keyboard for some terminal usage
  
• Software updates (and some great apps on Flathub like Foliate, Cozy, Papers, Telegram, Delta Chat)
  
• Web browsing with Firefox + uBlock Origin
  
• Media playback (videos, audiobooks, podcasts)
  
• Reading e-books
  
• Contacts/Calendar sync with my Nextcloud
  
• Alarms work even when the phone is suspended
  
• General reliability, i.e. phone doesn't randomly reboot or heat up in my pocket, etc.
  

There are still a few bugs I'm logging and hoping to either file an issue or fix myself, but nothing too serious. So the PPP might be discontinued, but I feel like it's just come alive for me! I ordered a USB-C dock so I can try out the convergence feature (there's a YouTube video of a guy doing web dev on this PPP like this and it has me excited!)

So if you've got a PPP and you aren't using it, what's stopping you?

[biketool]

For a long time I have been daily driving, but for me when Trixie recently stopped daily updating I endedup with a bug where1- the wake button was not snesed by the OS and  2- the PPpro trixie mobian wouldget stuck in sleep even ifthe wake button was responding.

When the wake button problem occurred I had to hold it down(see it is a software issue) until the phone turned off and then reboot.  Using the battery savings kernel fixed this issue and the camera, but I still have to use the caffeine no-sleep button once the system sleeps I cannot bring it back without a reboot, a big problem.

[teekay]

I think it is a kernel regression, I too get the crash on suspend sometimes (and others have mentioned it in the chat). The phone gets a bit hot and does not wake up, requiring a hard reboot. This has definitely made it that I cannot daily the phone anymore. I might try going back to an earlier kernel version to see if it becomes stable again.

[biketool]

I think it is a kernel regression, I too get the crash on suspend sometimes (and others have mentioned it in the chat). The phone gets a bit hot and does not wake up, requiring a hard reboot. This has definitely made it that I cannot daily the phone anymore. I might try going back to an earlier kernel version to see if it becomes stable again.

Sadly the problem is hardware related see this thread with picture
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=20046
The problem seems to be that the RF shield, which covers some ICs above the square modem/CPU RF shield to the left of where Pinephonepro is silkscreened on the PCB, came loose and I dont think it can be fixed.  I ordered a replacement system board but I wish the soldering on this one had been done properly.

It also resultsin needing a good slap to get the Pinephone to boot as I assume it does something to the circuit through the RF shield to the solder.  In any case I have the RF shield shimmed down with a paper spacer and that is not enough to fix the issue.
I respect that Pine64 is providing us some very specialized hardware at an amazing price to a very niche purist market, they and Librem are driving the real fully private phone revolution alone.
You cant do real privacy on hardware based on a hacked/subverted android boot process or a system which shares RAM between the CPU and the modem's CPU and OS.

[drh]

Nothing. I use my PPP as my daily driver phone. It is sad that there isn't an alternative to PPP at a similar price point. For me, I will use it until it dies as long as there is a carrier that allows me to use it.