My Daily QA - 2020-09-02

[klick]

My issues stem from forcing 4G as far as calls are concerned. Since both of my carriers support LTE calling in my area it gets set as the preferred. Chances are, you are being downgraded on the fly, as far as the texting goes though; it is interesting to see the outbound issues on 3G. Could be carrier specific, I'm not sure. At this point in time I am just hoping to get more confirmation out of the development group.

The camera has seen improvements. I have noticed subtle improvements over time, although those notes are not often captured in my test cases.  It is really hard to describe 'less laggy' four times in a row and retain some meaning that differentiates the results from the last week.
Ive had my calls data and text on 4G over a month. Im on freedom mobile in canada though. Ive seen other people having problems with both T-mobile and verizon across a few distros, though it looks like some other distros are fairing better with the issues a bit more intermittent. Not sure why its these 2 carriers exactly, but even within the 4g spectrum there are different bandwidths different carriers use. Might be that. Or it might be about other telecom signaling stuff that devs need to tailor for these specific companies

This is very true, I have a rudimentary understanding of mobile telecom at best. Those two providers unfortunately are the only ones I am able to obtain service from at the moment, due to limitations from other providers (phone activations, etc. etc.)

I think it comes down to how the individual carriers manage VOLTE at this point. Based on one of the Ubuntu Touch Q&A sessions (https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blogs-n...-a-82-3715) they do not fully support it yet.

Excerpt from above site:
"VOLTE news

Florian reported on discussions about VOLTE with Jolla, which took place at the beginning of the year. In some countries 2g networks have not been maintained alongside newer networks, so VOLTE technology is relatively more important to users. PinePhone can support it in principle but we are not there yet with implementation. Jolla had a guy from Sony at the meeting. The position at the moment is that all of the alternative mobile operating systems lack it. That is mainly because it is highly proprietary. Jolla are part of the Sony open device programme so there is potentially a way forward for Sony devices, in the first instance. We already have a few Sony devices that run Ubuntu Touch, so they might provide an option for those in our community who are struggling. In addition, we need to think about the necessary middleware for the PinePhone. There is no timeline for this but we have not forgotten about the issue. We are listening and there are some promising strands emerging."

Currently I am able to connect to Mobile Mint (T-Mobile's network) and have incoming and outgoing calls work as well as sending and receiving texts/SMS using both Mobian and Manjaro Phosh running from a SD in a UBports CE PinePhone. This is with the phone settings at 2G/3G/4G. I still cannot make outbound calls using the UT OS but I can send and receive texts and receive phone calls. Running Manjaro Plasma from a SD, it did show a connection to the network but I could not make or receive calls.