03-20-2021, 02:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-20-2021, 02:18 PM by calinb.
Edit Reason: formatting
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(03-14-2021, 12:18 AM)Pam_Hyde Wrote: Mobian is the most functional distro that I have used so far. Calling and texting have worked fine for me. I have the camera dip switch turned off so I can't comment on that. I would recommend buying a pack of micro sd cards and put a different distro on each of them. Then you can try each distro for a couple days and see what works best for you.
The biggest problem I have had with any distro on the pinephone is the short battery life. I bought a flip phone as a backup and a couple battery packs.
Good luck
Mobian has been my choice since I acquired my Manjaro Community Convergence addition late last year, but so many bugs and annoyances have crept-in to Mobian that I have my fingers crossed for Manjaro Plasma Beta 3, which was released today (just downloaded it). Mobian has gone backwards with the following problems:
1. MTP was disabled. The loss of this feature is very problematic for me, because all other file sharing methods are way buggier or way more hassle than just plugging in a USB cable and dragging and dropping files immediately with no authentication required. My next best method is Samba, but it's flaky and usually requires several tries to get Nemo client to connect to my MX Linux server. Any connection involving touch screen terminals or even scripts is a royal pain!
Disabling MTP was a deliberate action due to security concerns. Given that most users are not running disk encryption and the phone eMMC can be immediately accessed by anyone with physical possession of the device and a bootable (JumpDrive or an OS) SD card, I find the security issue to be moot. Anyone who is running encryption can surely also disable MTP themselves so I believe that MTP should be enabled by default. I have unsuccessfully wasted far more time than I'd like trying to re-enable it myself and given up for now.
2. Phosh crashes (taking all running GUI aps with it too, of course). Phosh has never been completely stable on any OS I have run, but lately the problem has become quite severe in Mobian.
3. Unstable phone voice and SMS messaging. Sometimes I can make or receive calls and texts but far too often they fail repeatedly. SMS is a bit more reliable. I also get fake bars and 4G annunciation in regions where I know there are no towers or signal. (I live in rural Idaho, USA.) When this happens, I usually must reboot my PinePhone to make a call and obtain valid annunciation when I re-enter a service area (if I'm lucky). When I first started to use Mobian as my daily driver, it was generally reliable as a phone. Now it's pretty unreliable--so much so that I don't bother to loan it to my wife when she visits town where. (We have no cellular service at home.)
4. GPS. It's never worked acceptably well with any OS I've used, even with the proof of concept AGPS preloading of the database (which requires wifi, because the process shuts down the modem and 4G data) but now it's impossible to to ever obtain a GPS position. 3gpp position still works (if you consider putting my position in N. Central Idaho as far away as Los Angeles, California to be "working"!
)All of the above Mobian shortcomings have either been created or worsened over the last couple months of updates or so. If Manjaro Plasma Beta 3 doesn't enable better functionality for me, I'll try to find the best backdated Mobian image. Someone posted their suggestion here in these forums.
I was disappointed to read that PinePhone isn't supported by the latest Ubports UT OTA and, based on the current PinePhone UT rev it's not acceptable either.
"PinePhone is supported in general by Ubuntu Touch but not by this release."
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/18/u...t_release/
As soon as my Handbrake job finishes (other than the Phosh crashes, Mobian works great for media aps--especially when docked), I'm plugging in my Manjaro Plasma Beta 3 SD card. Fingers crossed (once again)!