What Pine Phone Operating System For A Daily Driver?
#31
(03-13-2021, 10:06 AM)ncc Wrote:
(03-13-2021, 09:59 AM)Zebulon Walton Wrote: are you sure that you cant use your old phones to receive simple calls? because as far as i know, germany for example, providers keep 2g/gsm to cover basic needs, like sms and calls. data is a different story though

I've been receiving dire warnings from AT&T saying that 3G service will be shut down early next year and I will not be able to continue using my old phone when that happens.
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#32
(03-13-2021, 11:45 AM)neil_swann80 Wrote: Yeah, supports 4G.  Normally get around 35-40Mbs, which is good for my area.
LTE (FDD): Bands 1(2100), 3(1800), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 20(800 DD)

I think the One Plus One (Bacon) is well supported by UBPorts also and far newer device than the Nexus 5.  That being said, the Nexus 5 feels like a new phone again when running UBPorts.

Interesting, might be something else to play around with. They seem to be generally available on eBay at pretty decent prices. I'm also seeing a Nexus 5x - a little newer but may be different enough that it wouldn't work with UBPorts.

I'm happy with the Pinephone's prospects as my primary phone but a Nexus 5 might be a good backup in case something happens to the Pinephone since there are long periods of time when replacement phones and parts are unavailable. (Downsides of the Nexus from what I can see would include battery not easily removable and no switches to turn off unwanted features if just using it as a Linux computer.)
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#33
(01-13-2021, 09:17 PM)K_Research Wrote: Hello just checking in I need to find a distro for my Pine Phone that is working so I can make a daily driver out of it, my requirements right now is to make calls and use texting and a functional camera for pictures I can live without taking videos.

1. Phone working make receive calls
2. Texting
3. Camera

Be nice to have mp3 player and a video player.

Suggestions ? I need a daily driver as my current phone will no longer work at the end of February so its either get my Pine Phone working or buy a De-Googled Android.

Thanks in advance.
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
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#34
(03-13-2021, 08:50 PM)Zebulon Walton Wrote: Interesting, might be something else to play around with. They seem to be generally available on eBay at pretty decent prices. I'm also seeing a Nexus 5x - a little newer but may be different enough that it wouldn't work with UBPorts.

I'm happy with the Pinephone's prospects as my primary phone but a Nexus 5 might be a good backup in case something happens to the Pinephone since there are long periods of time when replacement phones and parts are unavailable. (Downsides of the Nexus from what I can see would include battery not easily removable and no switches to turn off unwanted features if just using it as a Linux computer.)

The 5X isn't supported by UBPorts.

You can view the supported devices here: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io (use scroll bar to peruse full list, closest to the top should be most functional)

There's currently 58 at varying levels of completion, the ones listed as "Promoted" being best for daily drivers.  You should be able to click on each one for an overview of what works, what is only partially working or not working, being worked on etc.

I don't think any will have hardware buttons like the Pinephone, but the Fairphone 2 (Promoted device) has a removeable battery being a modular phone.
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#35
(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"! Sad)
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." Cry

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)!
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#36
Hi! Did we have any full functional OS yet.
I really like Ubuntu, but it still not work like it must be..
I can`t export even contacts yet..
Any other stable/ or almost full developed OS ?
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#37
(04-02-2021, 07:23 PM)7horns7eye Wrote: I can`t export even contacts yet..
Any other stable/ or almost full developed OS ?
I'm back on Mobian stable and it has been running better than ever lately. I have not had any phosh crashes for over a week and the last time I went into town (where my cell service works) I made several phone calls and successfully sent an SMS text. The only problem I had was when I had less than four bars of cell signal strength showing and every time I placed a phone call it would ring until the call was answered and then immediately drop the call. After I rebooted my PinePhone, my next call was successful. Based on my experience in this geographic area, I think Mobian is optimistically displaying signal strength bars.

The GPS even worked. It usually doesn't work for me at all with any OS. I'm running OSM Scout Server and Pure Maps (OSM serves downloaded maps to Pure Maps so I can download maps at home and I don't have to spend a fortune on LTE data when driving). The GPS still doesn't work at my home, because of surrounding terrain and I don't expect it to ever work, but every other cell phone I've tried and my GPS receivers that are 10+ and 20+ years old all work at home. All but the oldest GPS have tiny antennas too, so I'm not buying that excuse for the PinePhone's GPS!

I wish Mobian would make MTP available again, because SFTP and Samba connections to my my MX-Linux laptop are flaky and usually require several tries to make a connection. Also, the USB ip address on Mobian keeps changing and I'm not about to run dnsmasq or some other DHCP server just for occasional file transfers. Overall, every other method of file transfer is a PITA, compared to the former Mobian's MTP. It was very simple and quick to use. The uMTP Responder security issues are completely moot and of no concern to me, given my PinePhone usage model. I tried to get uMTP Responder back up and running, but I've been unsuccessful in resurrecting it so far.

Mobian has the best desktop/laptop substitute functionality and stability of all the PinePhone Operating Systems I've tried. I don't know if contacts export works but Mobian is getting better, on the whole, despite occasional regressions. In fact, I think I'd better make an image "restore point" of my current Mobian system before I risk any more apt-get dist-upgrades!
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#38
I have not updated for a few months now.... Have been looking into what has changed in that time.
Will have to look at why the change with mtp after imaging an SD card with the latest build.
Perhaps NFS would work better than samba/sftp if getting mtp working is struggle?
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#39
I have Mobian up to the current patch level as of today and still am finding that making calls is a hit-or-miss proposition. Same problem I've been experiencing lately, the dialer display never changes over to the call display. The call briefly gets made but immediately terminates with no audio. Dialing from the address book works a little bit better but still buggy, frequently requiring several attempts. Frustrating since making calls was solid a few months ago.

As far as MTP, I was wondering what happened. Previously if the Pinephone's USB cable was plugged into a Linux computer files could easily be copied back and forth. (Files copied to the phone would be owned and accessible only by root but "sudo chown -R" easily fixed that.) Today I had some files to transfer and thought I'd do it that way but of course it didn't work. (I used sshfs instead.)

Hopefully these regressions will be fixed in the near future.
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#40
(04-04-2021, 10:26 PM)Zebulon Walton Wrote: I have Mobian up to the current patch level as of today and still am finding that making calls is a hit-or-miss proposition. Same problem I've been experiencing lately, the dialer display never changes over to the call display. The call briefly gets made but immediately terminates with no audio. Dialing from the address book works a little bit better but still buggy, frequently requiring several attempts. Frustrating since making calls was solid a few months ago.

As far as MTP, I was wondering what happened. Previously if the Pinephone's USB cable was plugged into a Linux computer files could easily be copied back and forth. (Files copied to the phone would be owned and accessible only by root but "sudo chown -R" easily fixed that.) Today I had some files to transfer and thought I'd do it that way but of course it didn't work. (I used sshfs instead.)

Hopefully these regressions will be fixed in the near future.
I'm going to say this and you may not like it. What it sounds like you are experiencing is an AT&T VoLTE problem. It's a problem you have when you are on band 12 AT&T. You would have data but can only make calls with VoLTE. AT&T has VoLTE turned off for you or is not supporting your device on its back end. Band 12 has no legacy 2G and 3G fallback for calling like AT&T LTE bands 2,4,17. If you are on LTE band 12, and that is the primary band now outside of the big cities due to its long range and its roaming agreements with T-Mobile, calls will only go through on VoLTE so your calls would fail like you are describing. The bad news is it's only going to get worse as time goes on as all calls will eventually go through VoLTE (with all carriers) as they switch over to VoLTE only over the next year. You might want to consider trying another carrier to make sure. Buy a cheap prepaid T-Mobile sim and see if that works and that will confirm it. I will say I have had no problems with T-Mobile on the Pinephone but have experience with what you are going through when T-Mobile switched to band 12 three years ago and devices I owned were not certified by T-Mobile on their network for band 12 even though they had band 12 radios. Google Pixels, Nexus 5X and 6P using Fi (a T-Mobile MVNO). Eventually Google worked it out and they did get certified and T-Mobile turned on VoLTE on the back end and they worked but it took a year. AT&T is very controlling of devices on their network. More so than any other carrier right now.
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