UBports CE buggy and cellular issues

[FOSSagent0]

I have received my UBports edition phone this week and that up powering on and setting up that it is buggy. Cellular did not work for me and the menus where a bit slow, did not want to go to previous page and did not save settings for cellular apn and carrier. I notice too that the back of the phone gets too warm and quickly over this Quectel EG25-G component too, which is not a good sign. Another thing is that the auto update over wifi almost froze the phone up.

For cellular I use T-mobile here in the USA that uses a micro sim card. The sim card adapter that came with the Pinephone is flimsy and didn't work so I used one I got from T-mobile. Upon updating the UBports It did not fix the cellular issue as well.

If this is the current state of UBports is there an alternative OS that works close enough to be a daily driver? I heard of this Mobian os but what is it exactly and will it do better than what I have now with UBports?

[wibble]

Mobian is largely Debian with some extra packages, and some packages modified to work better on a phone. It's using (and contributing back to) Purism's Phosh and related phone apps. Given people's different requirements and deal breakers for a daily driver i can't say how you'd find it. you should be able to stick it on uSD and boot without overwriting your UBPorts install, although it'll run a little slower than it would from eMMC.

[FOSSagent0]

I have tried Mobian and so far I'm seeing a cellular issue there as well. I made a post for it. https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10797

[FOSSagent0]

I have shelved my phone for a for a short while and while I came back to try a new UBports system image I am still without working cellular. What is the deal with this issue? Is it only occurring on UBports edition Pinephones? Neither I had Mobian on my phone and that had no cellular working whatsoever. Is there any news on this or updates because so far my Phone cant be used in this state as a daily driver.

[pinionNut64]

The UB Ports phone unboxed was a pleasure just to see Linux booting on a phone.
Put my ATT SIM card in and was able to complete a call but volume issues failed that test (made at work with background noise a factor).
Battery charge was rapidly lost, not quickly recharged, so aggravating at best. Touch features seemed OK.

Am not an Ubuntu guy, so tried mobian and am pleased so far. Got a cricket wireless SIM card so will still be using ATT towers. Should have it authorized late today. Mobian works much faster and am finding everything seems to work. Looking forward to the project.

[wibble]

I have shelved my phone for a for a short while and while I came back to try a new UBports system image I am still without working cellular. What is the deal with this issue? Is it only occurring on UBports edition Pinephones? Neither I had Mobian on my phone and that had no cellular working whatsoever. Is there any news on this or updates because so far my Phone cant be used in this state as a daily driver.

This may be something network-specific since it seems to be working for others. Do you know what band your provider is using in your area, and that it's supported by the phone? What do you see if you run (on mobian):

Code:

mmcli -m 0

[FOSSagent0]

I have shelved my phone for a for a short while and while I came back to try a new UBports system image I am still without working cellular. What is the deal with this issue? Is it only occurring on UBports edition Pinephones? Neither I had Mobian on my phone and that had no cellular working whatsoever. Is there any news on this or updates because so far my Phone cant be used in this state as a daily driver.

This may be something network-specific since it seems to be working for others. Do you know what band your provider is using in your area, and that it's supported by the phone? What do you see if you run (on mobian):

Code:

mmcli -m 0

4G LTE, on my working android phone it uses this T-Mobile LTE APN. I ran the command and it shows that couldnt find the modem.

Update: I turned it off and turned it back on and ran the code this time I did get something. What exactly am I looking for. Does Mobian even have a screenshot feature? It does show my phone number and other details such as :
state: enabled ,power state: o ,Signal quality: 0 %

I ended up using the reset command mmcli -m 0 -r and running the command mmcli -m 0 with that resulting in error: couldn't find modem. It then shows up when running 1 instead of 0 with the following command mmcli -m 1

Resetting that once more ends up moving the number to 2.

[SwordfishII]

I have received my UBports edition phone this week and that up powering on and setting up that it is buggy. Cellular did not work for me and the menus where a bit slow, did not want to go to previous page and did not save settings for cellular apn and carrier. I notice too that the back of the phone gets too warm and quickly over this Quectel EG25-G component too, which is not a good sign. Another thing is that the auto update over wifi almost froze the phone up.

For cellular I use T-mobile here in the USA that uses a micro sim card. The sim card adapter that came with the Pinephone is flimsy and didn't work so I used one I got from T-mobile. Upon updating the UBports It did not fix the cellular issue as well.

If this is the current state of UBports is there an alternative OS that works close enough to be a daily driver? I heard of this Mobian os but what is it exactly and will it do better than what I have now with UBports?

Simply put this is a prototype and marketed as such.

Try other OSes but all have quirks. This is still an infant project.

4G LTE, on my working android phone it uses this T-Mobile LTE APN. I ran the command and it shows that couldnt find the modem.

4G LTE is not a band. Typical bands for tmobile however are 2, 4, 5, 12, 66 and 71.

[wibble]

I have shelved my phone for a for a short while and while I came back to try a new UBports system image I am still without working cellular. What is the deal with this issue? Is it only occurring on UBports edition Pinephones? Neither I had Mobian on my phone and that had no cellular working whatsoever. Is there any news on this or updates because so far my Phone cant be used in this state as a daily driver.

This may be something network-specific since it seems to be working for others. Do you know what band your provider is using in your area, and that it's supported by the phone? What do you see if you run (on mobian):

Code:

mmcli -m 0

4G LTE, on my working android phone it uses this T-Mobile LTE APN. I ran the command and it shows that couldnt find the modem.

Update: I turned it off and turned it back on and ran the code this time I did get something. What exactly am I looking for. Does Mobian even have a screenshot feature?  It does show my phone number and other details such as :
state: enabled ,power state: o  ,Signal quality: 0 %

I ended up using the reset command mmcli -m 0 -r and running the command mmcli -m 0  with that resulting in error: couldn't find modem.  It then shows up when running 1 instead of 0 with the following command mmcli -m 1 

Resetting that once more ends up moving the number to 2.

The changing number is expected - use this to find the current number:

Code:

mmcli -L

You should see something like:
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/1 [QUALCOMM INCORPORATED] QUECTEL Mobile Broadband Module

I've never tried screenshots - for cli stuff I usually ssh in from a pc so I can copy that way.

The 'mmcli -m <modem_number>' command gives you an overview of the modem status. The aim was to try to narrow down the details of your problem like whether it could talk to your SIM, whether it registers with the network, doesn't have any signal etc. For example the Status section on mine shows:

Code:

  Status   |                    lock: sim-pin2
           |          unlock retries: sim-pin (3), sim-puk (10), sim-pin2 (3), sim-puk2 (10)
           |                   state: registered
           |             power state: on
           |             access tech: lte
           |          signal quality: 84% (recent)

Since you say it's showing your number it is almost certainly able to access your SIM. The previous command should have shown the dbus path to it - something like:
SIM      |            dbus path: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SIM/3
Note the number on the end of the path, similar to the one for the modem. You can get more info on the sim using:

Code:

mmcli -i <modem_number>

My guess would be that t-mobile in your area is using one or other of bands 66 and 71 in your area, which I don't think the EG25-G in the PinePhone supports.You may be able to confirm this with another phone - there are apps for Android that will show details of the LTE connection including the band being used. I guess there are similar things for iPhone.

[FOSSagent0]

@wibble Your advice was helpful, I was able to see that it was band issue. On my Android phone I used LTE Discovery app and saw that most of the time my phone was connecting to band 2. But it did show that it was connecting for a little bit to band 66 which is not supported by the Quecetel EG-25g modem.

Is there a way to keep the Pinephone from trying to connect to band 66? Not sure how accurate LTE discovery is but it shows other bands in my area which are 2 and 4.