Mobian screen dims

[JustineSmithies]

I have flashed versions from 20200615 to the latest nightly and they all have the same issue on my Braveheart Pinephone. On booting and entering 1234 the ap drawer is presented and then 2 seconds later the screen goes off . I then no longer have access to the phone. I can unlock it again but to a blank screen. Help ?????

[bcnaz]

Do you have enough power, such as battery charged enough or the charger connected ?
    Some others have had problems attempting to power their phone from their laptop USB port.

Perhaps there is a problem with your SD card, or possibly the image on your card...
      Though if you are able to 'log-in'  it would more likely be a power problem.

(Personally I use Balena Etcher to flash my SD cards (all new cards) and I have not had a bad image yet)

I have the Brave Heart Edition phone as well,  running Mobian also.

[JustineSmithies]

Do you have enough power, such as battery charged enough or the charger connected ?
    Some others have had problems attempting to power their phone from their laptop USB port.

Perhaps there is a problem with your SD card, or possibly the image on your card...
      Though if you are able to 'log-in'  it would more likely be a power problem.

(Personally I use Balena Etcher to flash my SD cards (all new cards) and I have not had a bad image yet)

I have the Brave Heart Edition phone as well,  running Mobian also.

Phone is fully charged. I've used dd and belana and various cards plus todays nightly. Everytime I get the swipe up to login and enter 1234 and i briefly see the ap drawer and recently it looks like a quick flash of a language page and the screen is still lit but very grey near black. I can push the power button to lock and then unlock but the lock screen loks slightly dimmer each time allowing me to enter 1234 but to the blank page.
I can easily flash Manjaro, PmOs using Pmbuild and UB no issues. Just cannot seem to get Mobian to work. I'm game for any way of turning off screen dimming if its possible to access via usb as i have no sim card in and obvs the wifi hasnt been setup yet.

[a-wai]

Can you try with the today's nightly and check if the problem is still here?

If that doesn't work, edit the file /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/90_mobian.gschema.override AFTER you have flashed the image and BEFORE you first boot into it (by mounting the SD card on you PC) and add the following line right after "sleep-inactive-ac....":

Code:

ambient-enabled=false

[JustineSmithies]

Can you try with the today's nightly and check if the problem is still here?

If that doesn't work, edit the file /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/90_mobian.gschema.override AFTER you have flashed the image and BEFORE you first boot into it (by mounting the SD card on you PC) and add the following line right after "sleep-inactive-ac....":

Code:

ambient-enabled=false

Just using the nightly https://images.mobian-project.org/pineph...627.img.gz didn't make a difference. I tried the following by editing that file before putting the sdcard into the phone and it doesn't dim any more but after unlocking the screen is backlit but a grey colour no images . Really strange. I'm definately willing to try other things as I really want to try Mobian.

[a-wai]

Right, so last idea that comes to my mind: remove /etc/udev/rules.d/10-proximity.rules
Maybe your proximity sensor is acting up, it happened before...

[JustineSmithies]

hmm....
I have had my best results with :   first Debian/Phosh    and now with Mobian.

If you have time on the app drawer screen, go to settings  >  power  > 'automatic brightness' and turn automatic 'off'

You say you have 'no issues' with the other  OSes ?    just Mobian ?

  I am sorry to hear you are have such a frustrating problem just starting up your new phone.

It doesn't give me enough time to get to the settings. I have noticed if i re edit that file and set ambient mode to true that i briefly after unlocking see the app draw before the screen goes grey. If it is set to false i don't briefly see the app drawer. Does that help ???

---

Right, so last idea that comes to my mind: remove /etc/udev/rules.d/10-proximity.rules
Maybe your proximity sensor is acting up, it happened before...

Bingo ! The above fixed the issue thank you so much.

---

Spoke too soon.  

Screen has dimmed now so i'll go back and add the ambient line and test.

---

Right I seem to have got it now. I ad to remove the proximity rule and set the ambient mode to false. Then quickly go to settings and turn off auto brightness as the screen started dimming every second. Now the display stays on.

[a-wai]

good

can you tell me what's the output of the following command when putting your hand at various distances from the phone (top left area, just above the 4G/wifi icons), say 1, 2, 5 and 10cm:

Code:

cat /sys/devices/platform/soc/1c2b000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0048/iio:device1/in_proximity_raw

(just so we can confirm it's the proximity sensor)

[JustineSmithies]

good

can you tell me what's the output of the following command when putting your hand at various distances from the phone (top left area, just above the 4G/wifi icons), say 1, 2, 5 and 10cm:

Code:

cat /sys/devices/platform/soc/1c2b000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0048/iio:device1/in_proximity_raw

(just so we can confirm it's the proximity sensor)

1 - 3109
2 - 3024
5 - 2978
10 - 2972

[a-wai]

Ok thanks! When you have time, could you please read through https://gitlab.com/mobian1/issues/-/issues/3 and replicate the measurements other people did?
(basically, every in_proximity_* files, both with the stock and custom kernel mentioned in the thread)

This would be helpful in trying to understand what's going on here (no hurry, it won't be solved overnight anyway).