My list of noticed driver issues
#1
So obviously things aren't complete, but I thought I'd post a list of the bugs I'm seeing with PinePhone drivers right now, since I know some PinePhone kernel developers read this forum, and hopefully some people in ModemManager and Librem5's dev team too, since I use their "Calls" app.

This doesn't include stuff like the camera, which just isn't working anymore on recent kernels.
I'm using Fedora 32 with XFCE on a 5.7 megous kernel.
  • Merely having the bluetooth kernel module loaded cripples wifi speed to an unusable point. I can get wifi working well by either not installing the firmware for the 8723cs bluetooth chip, or blacklisting the btrtl driver. Bluetooth works fine, but wifi drops down to around 30KB/s.
  • Intermittent audio routing issues with phone calls. Sometimes there's no way to get audio without rebooting the modem entirely, other times the call audio will scream in my ear at distorted, extremely high volume levels. Sometimes it happens multiple times a day, other days it behaves fine.
  • Being in CRUST sleep frequently eats text messages, not leaving a trace that they ever existed.
  • Sometimes calls will wake the phone from CRUST sleep, but not actually trigger a ring. When this starts happening, rebooting the modem doesn't help, a full phone reboot is required.
  • HDMI output over Type C has serious lag, even when the DSI touch panel is disabled. It's enough that the second hand on my digital clock can go slower than realtime.
  • Touchscreen will occasionally start refusing to act on clicks although the cursor moves, as if there's another finger touching somewhere on the display, but there's
    not. I must reboot at that point, usually via ssh.
  • Modem sends AT CMT message events that seem to trip up ModemManager during some outgoing calls, making ModemManager erroneously think the call failed, although audio will route fine. There is at that point no way to hang up a call short of powering down/rebooting the modem or the whole phone.
  • GPS reception is very poor, may be fixable with drivers or a device tree change.
  • Seems impossible to play two audio sources at once, the attempt will frequently crash both programs.
  • Battery reads 100% as 92%, though this seems specific to the megous kernels.
  • Battery will fully charge, then slowly discharge itself without charging again until I reconnect the charging cable.
Not sure on how much of this is in userspace (e.g. Xorg, ModemManager) or kernel module related.
#2
ALL of the OSes are in heavy development still,    however I do not think every OS has all the problems you listed.

I do see a trend of more modem problems reported on  CDMA than on GSM carriers.  * (Maybe more developers test with GSM ? )

Charging problems seem to vary with distros,

You did mention your Distro, but not your carrier....
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#3
(07-04-2020, 05:14 AM)bcnaz Wrote: ALL of the OSes are in heavy development still,    however I do not think every OS has all the problems you listed.

I do see a trend of more modem problems reported on  CDMA than on GSM carriers.  * (Maybe more developers test with GSM ? )

Charging problems seem to vary with distros,

You did mention your Distro, but not your carrier....
I'm on Consumer Cellular, which uses T-Mobile's GSM towers.
Yeah, I imagine some of those bugs are in userspace and specific to generic distros, Ubuntu Touch for example might behave better with some stuff.

In addition, yeah I'm probably the only one running generic non-phosh, non-rawhide Fedora on a PinePhone right now, so I do expect I'll have to figure a lot of things out for myself, which I have.
#4
- HDMI lag is probably you having GPU enabled. I don't see any lag on Xorg with noaccel option enabled.

- 92% capacity max on my kernel may be related to the voltage you choose to charge to (4.35V max, 4.2V default)

- charger behavior is normal, it should start charging again after a while by itself, and keeping the battery at 100% all the time is not that good for the battery

- modem audio reliability probably depends on which side of the i2s link is the master and some other factors. earlier modem was configured as master, which needs enabling/disabling some audio controls just after call starts and this should be not necessary with SoC being made the i2s clock master (not sure which variant you/your distro uses)

- SMS messages loss is just about design decisions in the modem software. Personally I prefer to set up the modem to accept and store messages, and then sync them to some other storage before deleting them, but I think ofono relies on being able to receive messages directly without involving modem storage. So if ofono fails at this one shot to receive the message, it's lost permanently. Maybe ofono has some switch to use the mode of receiving messages with intermediate storage in the modem. I don't use ofono, so I don't know. This is doubly the issue since the signal that tells the modem to hold up messages until SoC wakes up from sleep is only wired up on PP 1.2. I have no idea if any of the distros use this signal (AP_READY).

Dunno about the rest.
#5
Elaboration on the GPS signal strength, and why it might be fixable with driver of devicetree changes:
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...6#pid70116


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