Can you make reliable calls yet?

[Eugo]

Just caught it do
mmcli -L
    /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/1 [QUALCOMM INCORPORATED] QUECTEL Mobile Broadband Module
and then, 10 minutes (and one suspend) later
sudo mmcli -L
    /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/2 [QUALCOMM INCORPORATED] QUECTEL Mobile Broadband Module

What's going on, why is the modem being moved?

Hi and welcome to the Pinephone world

My kindly advice is that please understand that there are lot of things that require quite tinkering and 99,99% of people who can help you are volunteers. This community is friendly and willing to help but most of the times you get answer easier and faster if you search it from internet - there is quite high change that you are not the first one with same problem (at least if you install some default OS image or even use the factory image from Pine64)

Do you have PP or PP Pro?
Most of the times best places to find help are:
OS of your choice project page - I am not using KDE but I guess this is the page in your scenario https://github.com/manjaro-pinephone/pla...ile/issues

The site where OS of your choice does announcements - and I guess that in your scenario it is this page: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-arm-...pro/116373

And most of the times best place is Matrix / Telegram channels.
This is the largest Pinephone Telegram channel https://t.me/pinephone

Just a PP, namely a Pine64, manjaro ARM, bought in july.
I'm an old IT hand, a retired programmer, enjoying my retirement finally free from M$ . And I'm online for some 30 years now, so I know the ropes, and I've spent the previous three days reading everything I could find, because I was also bored on my professional forum when some newbie comes with a question which was answered twenty times already  .

So I'm trying to do things bit by bit. Presently I'm stuck with

Code:

Eugo@zmycheck14:~/Downloads$ ssh Eugo@192.168.1.15
Eugo@192.168.1.15's password:
Welcome to Manjaro-ARM
~~Website: https://manjaro.org
~~Forum:   https://forum.manjaro.org/c/arm
~~Matrix:  #manjaro-arm-public:matrix.org
Last login: Mon Aug 15 14:49:13 2022 from 192.168.1.13
[Eugo@plasma-mobile ~]$ mmcli -L
No modems were found

So... where are the config files to fix this and how do I edit them? That would be something I'd like to have fixed first.

Meanwhile, I've installed etcher and will try other distros, se how it goes.

[alaraajavamma]

First things first:

Pinephone is quite easy device to test and tinker things because if you mess up something you can just flash fresh image to it.

It is nearly impossible to brick it. So if there are lot of things broken I suggest just to flash new image to PP
And regarding to flashing I suggest to take a look this Tow-Boot



If Nano is not working for try vim. It will work.

This quote is from here

Frequent disconnects and reconnects (Modem vanishes and reappears a few seconds later during operation or after waking up from suspend)

Sometimes the kernel is too aggressive trying to suspend the USB port when it's actually in use. Disabling runtime suspend for the port usually helps a lot.

Edit /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/80-modem-eg25.rules
    Look at the first line where it says ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2c7c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0125", ATTR{power/control}="auto"
    And change it to ON ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2c7c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0125", ATTR{power/control}="on"

It is officially meant for that Biktorgjs nearly FOSS modem firmware but it will help also with the stock modem firmware.
If you choose to try Biktorgjs modem firmware please make your homework before flashing it - most likely it will works better than stock firmware but there are so many variables with different carriers.

If mobile broadband is not working please check your APN settings because some of them you have to set up manually.

Edit. And I am quite sure that with Manjaro Plasma Mobile all basic functions should work out of the box - so did they work at the beginning?
Pinephone is developing so fast that even few months ago written instructions or experiences might be totally different today - but hey that is only good thing . Many times you just have to dig deeper when you found some instruction or issue etc.

[cone99]

I'm new to the PP and came with the basic expectation of making calls and sending SMS (not even MMS). I was very disappointed in this regard!

THE most frustrating and head scratching part of this is the carrier. I was with Virgin Mobile (UK, Vodaphone piggyback) and no matter what combination of firmware (original or Biktorgj's) and ADSP I used, most calls failed and SMS was 50-50. This includes having the correct APN settings. Needless to say mobile data didn't work either.

I've since changed my SIM to Smarty (three.co.uk) and everything magically works!  Including MMS. Two APN settings automatically appeared (ADSP 004 at the time), as well, for me to choose from, although I have set the APN differently as recommended by Smarty.

I'm currently using Biktorgj firmware 0.6.8 and ADSP 003 (004 works as well). I do love tinkering (Arch), have set up SSH etc. and with Waydroid (no Google apps obviously) I can view all my security cams locally and remotely (this kills the battery though, even whilst on mains).

My Bluetooth earbuds work pretty reliably. The camera's very poor (also no video) and it's really hard to find decent basic software. I've currently settled on Otter Browser as the best of a bad bunch (speed & usability) and Goggles Music Manager (fiddly but fast and usable). I would love to use DeaDBeeF as my music player instead though, as potentially with "design mode" a UI could be constructed for the phone which would be perfect. I couldn't get it to cross compile though.

My one absolutely missed bit of software is Signal - doesn't work on Waydroid and nothing Linux-wise for the phone (that I could get working anyway). I was hopeful to sort of replace it with Jami after reading a thread on here but I just cannot get it to work. It doesn't even work on my desktop! Otherwise I love the phone

Bottom line: Expect the worst and hopefully you can use it as a very basic phone and something fun to tinker with.

[mikehenson]

"My one absolutely missed bit of software is Signal - doesn't work on Waydroid and nothing Linux-wise for the phone (that I could get working anyway). I was hopeful to sort of replace it with Jami after reading a thread on here but I just cannot get it to work. It doesn't even work on my desktop! Otherwise I love the phone Smile"

Use axolotl
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/axolotl-bin

I also wrote up a guide to help in get a PinePhone up and running.
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/User:Mikehenson

[cone99]

Use axolotl
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/axolotl-bin

Thanks for that. Installed but unable to enter registration code, input boxes unresponsive apart from flashing cursor. Tried on phone and via VNC. Copy and Paste wouldn't work either. Very odd. Will investigate.

[Eugo]

First things first:

Pinephone is quite easy device to test and tinker things because if you mess up something you can just flash fresh image to it.

It is nearly impossible to brick it. So if there are lot of things broken I suggest just to flash new image to PP
And regarding to flashing I suggest to take a look this Tow-Boot



If Nano is not working for try vim. It will work.

This quote is from here

Frequent disconnects and reconnects (Modem vanishes and reappears a few seconds later during operation or after waking up from suspend)

Sometimes the kernel is too aggressive trying to suspend the USB port when it's actually in use. Disabling runtime suspend for the port usually helps a lot.

Edit /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/80-modem-eg25.rules
    Look at the first line where it says ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2c7c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0125", ATTR{power/control}="auto"
    And change it to ON ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2c7c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0125", ATTR{power/control}="on"

It is officially meant for that Biktorgjs nearly FOSS modem firmware but it will help also with the stock modem firmware.
If you choose to try Biktorgjs modem firmware please make your homework before flashing it - most likely it will works better than stock firmware but there are so many variables with different carriers.

If mobile broadband is not working please check your APN settings because some of them you have to set up manually.

Edit. And I am quite sure that with Manjaro Plasma Mobile all basic functions should work out of the box - so did they work at the beginning?
Pinephone is developing so fast that even few months ago written instructions or experiences might be totally different today - but hey that is only good thing . Many times you just have to dig deeper when you found some instruction or issue etc.

Thanks - the quoted commands were exactly what I couldn't find the second time.
And now I don't need it, I flashed megi's 15-in-1 on a 16G microSD and tried Mobian so far, and there it all works - haven't seen modems turning off etc. There's one very annoying thing so far, that the keyboard app doesn't actually switch layouts. It does say serbian was selected (either cyrillic or latinic), but still draws the qwerty layout. To me that's practically a showstopper. But everything else I tried just works. Will try others, when I find (again) the trick no not lose all of /home folder when I switch distros.

The things which worked out of the box:
- calling (for about a day or two, then lost it)
- phone book (but not „add this as contact“ from the previous calls; also it had import of phone book, but then didn't know in what format would that be, because export wasn't written yet
- sound recording
- megapixels, such as is, it does have funny notions about rotating the display
- wifi, and ssh through it
- clock and specially stopwatch, something I wished I had back on my previous Nokia E5
- browser was kind of funny but worked
- web over APN I didn't even try, stayed at home and it used wifi
- keyboard layout worked flawlessly
- messaging from terminal window (via ssh), using mmcli

[alaraajavamma]

Nice to hear .

Please notice that everything is developing fast - if you try distros with Megis multi-distro the actual situation with that distro might be quite different. Megi(s multi-distro) is genious but the actual distro will use some different settings than in that multi-distro image.

For me only stable enough distro is PMOS Stable Phosh.
I can get things working with every distro I have tried but one update might break basic phone functions which are essential for me.

If you want to have fun and tinker things PMOS Stable is not best distro - it might be even the most worse
But if you are trying to replace daily driver phone (aka. in case of emergency you must be able to call the emergency services) the PMOS Stable Phosh is my recommendations.

[Eugo]

For me only stable enough distro is PMOS Stable Phosh.
I can get things working with every distro I have tried but one update might break basic phone functions which are essential for me.

Actually the original, but from megi's distro, which is something 5.17 instead of 5.15, not so much newer (despite about 2G of updates that the original applied) but more stable and almost everything works.

I've discovered (mostly by searching the forum and confirming live) that in most of the distros the keyboard layouts are just listed but not really included. Now since these work fine in Manjaro, but in some others the input app is better... perhaps I'll find the actual layout files and copy them to where they should go.

Tested only nine so far... and most things work in most of them.

[alaraajavamma]

Actually the original, but from megi's distro, which is something 5.17 instead of 5.15, not so much newer (despite about 2G of updates that the original applied) but more stable and almost everything works.

I've discovered (mostly by searching the forum and confirming live) that in most of the distros the keyboard layouts are just listed but not really included. Now since these work fine in Manjaro, but in some others the input app is better... perhaps I'll find the actual layout files and copy them to where they should go.

Tested only nine so far... and most things work in most of them.

/home/user/local/share/squeekboard/keyboards/

https://developer.puri.sm/projects/squee...orial.html

[mikehenson]

I've discovered (mostly by searching the forum and confirming live) that in most of the distros the keyboard layouts are just listed but not really included. Now since these work fine in Manjaro, but in some others the input app is better... perhaps I'll find the actual layout files and copy them to where they should go.

I like to have the same keyboard layout ANY screen. I did not like that "number" and "terminal" keyboard layouts keep changing. I also wanted to set my own presets like "Heading Home" or my email address. So... I created my own.
https://github.com/mikeshenson/Phosh-Squ...d-Keyboard

Thanks for that. Installed but unable to enter registration code, input boxes unresponsive apart from flashing cursor. Tried on phone and via VNC. Copy and Paste wouldn't work either. Very odd. Will investigate.

Try pressing the TAB button. I have found some apps will not let you focus on them.