Well Done

[acid andy]

My Manjaro CE Pinephone arrived and I have to say given all the discussion about people finding many of the features unreliable (which I was OK with as it's an open platform that's under development by the community), I am astonished and delighted how good it is!  

Thank you and well done to Pine64 and to everyone in the community for making a great Linux phone.

It arrived when DHL said it would. It was well-packaged and presented. I was impressed with the setup process which even included privacy-focused details like a link to UBlock Origin from the Firefox default home page.

Wifi, web surfing, the camera, all worked great. I put in my SIM card and tried out a couple of calls, expecting them to barely work but was pleasantly surprised to get crystal clear audio (the person's voice sounds altered, like talking to a different person, but it was clear and easy to understand). When I first called my partner I feared it wasn't working right because it sounded stuttery but it turned out that was just because I had it on Speaker and she was reacting to hearing her own voice! Obviously some kind of echo-cancellation algorithm could help there.

The only very minor issues I've had so far are the rapid battery drain (which I can live with); at one point the lock screen wouldn't open when I entered the correct PIN multiple times but a reboot by holding down the power switch fixed that; and when some dialog boxes pop up on the Manjaro UI (for example from some Settings) I can't figure out how I'm supposed to close them: I've just been tapping at the bottom of the screen to show all the open windows and close the dialogs that way.

Once again, thank you Pine64, Manjaro and the rest of the community! Keep up the fantastic work!

[pjsf]

My Manjaro CE Pinephone arrived and I have to say given all the discussion about people finding many of the features unreliable (which I was OK with as it's an open platform that's under development by the community), I am astonished and delighted how good it is!  

Thank you and well done to Pine64 and to everyone in the community for making a great Linux phone.

It arrived when DHL said it would. It was well-packaged and presented. I was impressed with the setup process which even included privacy-focused details like a link to UBlock Origin from the Firefox default home page.

Wifi, web surfing, the camera, all worked great. I put in my SIM card and tried out a couple of calls, expecting them to barely work but was pleasantly surprised to get crystal clear audio (the person's voice sounds altered, like talking to a different person, but it was clear and easy to understand). When I first called my partner I feared it wasn't working right because it sounded stuttery but it turned out that was just because I had it on Speaker and she was reacting to hearing her own voice! Obviously some kind of echo-cancellation algorithm could help there.

The only very minor issues I've had so far are the rapid battery drain (which I can live with); at one point the lock screen wouldn't open when I entered the correct PIN multiple times but a reboot by holding down the power switch fixed that; and when some dialog boxes pop up on the Manjaro UI (for example from some Settings) I can't figure out how I'm supposed to close them: I've just been tapping at the bottom of the screen to show all the open windows and close the dialogs that way.

Once again, thank you Pine64, Manjaro and the rest of the community! Keep up the fantastic work!

the lock screen occasional issues seem to occur on all phosh based distros.often all you have to do to get through it is double tap each 'key' i.e if your passcode is 1234 instead press 11223344 then press unlock twice.  not always the case but works quite often.problem goes away  once you're through the unlock screen.

[acid andy]

the lock screen occasional issues seem to occur on all phosh based distros.often all you have to do to get through it is double tap each 'key' i.e if your passcode is 1234 instead press 11223344 then press unlock twice.  not always the case but works quite often.problem goes away  once you're through the unlock screen.

Ah thanks, I'll give that a try if it happens again. At one point the lock screen did behave a bit like you said, where I had to press each button twice, but then I think I could sort of tell what I needed to do from how many characters were displayed in the password field, from what I can remember anyway. The time I had to reboot it seemed more like it was accepting the password as correct but then failing to disappear. I think it plays an animation when the password's wrong and it didn't do that. It's worth noting that I used the Manjaro UIs to try and change my user name from "Manjaro" so at first I thought it couldn't handle that, but after a reboot it just worked again.

It doesn't really bother me because most times it seems to just work fine. I probably won't be using phosh in the long run anyway as I quite fancy putting something custom on it.

[kern707]

The only very minor issues I've had so far are the rapid battery drain (which I can live with); at one point the lock screen wouldn't open when I entered the correct PIN multiple times but a reboot by holding down the power switch fixed that; and when some dialog boxes pop up on the Manjaro UI (for example from some Settings) I can't figure out how I'm supposed to close them: I've just been tapping at the bottom of the screen to show all the open windows and close the dialogs that way.

Once again, thank you Pine64, Manjaro and the rest of the community! Keep up the fantastic work!

The same thing here, rapid battery drain, even at night when the phone was not in use (probably modem was also in sleep mode) and constantly plugged-in to the charger. this seem to be an issue with power management (I think?), hopefully it will be improved in the near future.

In regarding to the lock screen bug, I just had it this morning too.. it was annoying but somehow I have managed to get through that screen (using the method pjsf had offered).

I also am very impressed with the progress, and believe that it goes in the right direction.

[acid andy]

Regarding my lock screen issue; it happened again so I paid more attention to the details. When it happens the keypad is definitely responding smoothly and normally. I can see the right number of hidden characters in the text box as I type the PIN. It definitely accepts the PIN as correct (because when I deliberately enter a wrong PIN it plays a sort of jiggly animation and immediately prompts to enter again).

The problem is that once it accepts the PIN, the PIN entry screen disappears but it's replaced by another lock screen. This lock screen is not completely frozen because the clock keeps counting and the battery icon shows if the phone is plugged in. However, at this point it won't respond to touch input so you can't slide up to unlock it.

Trying to remedy this by short-pressing the power button a couple of times goes back to another lock screen that does allow you to slide up and enter a PIN again, but again all that does is reveal the stuck lock screen another time.

This cycle just keeps repeating and only goes away if you reboot the phone. To take a guess, I wonder if it's allowing two instances of the lock screen program to run at the same time. Maybe one of them encounters a bug so it won't accept touch input or maybe just the fact there's two running at once stops one of them from working. It seemed to happen when the phone was slowing up a bit, and I think I tried to suspend it with the power button and maybe (if I remember correctly) it didn't suspend immediately so I maybe tried to press the power button a second time.

Maybe it's possible two presses of the power button, with a lagging suspend, could fire off two instances of the lock screen. I don't know if I'll find time to investigate this any further. Maybe the devs are already aware of it anyway.

[kern707]

Regarding my lock screen issue; it happened again so I paid more attention to the details. When it happens the keypad is definitely responding smoothly and normally. I can see the right number of hidden characters in the text box as I type the PIN. It definitely accepts the PIN as correct (because when I deliberately enter a wrong PIN it plays a sort of jiggly animation and immediately prompts to enter again).

The problem is that once it accepts the PIN, the PIN entry screen disappears but it's replaced by another lock screen. This lock screen is not completely frozen because the clock keeps counting and the battery icon shows if the phone is plugged in. However, at this point it won't respond to touch input so you can't slide up to unlock it.

Trying to remedy this by short-pressing the power button a couple of times goes back to another lock screen that does allow you to slide up and enter a PIN again, but again all that does is reveal the stuck lock screen another time.

This cycle just keeps repeating and only goes away if you reboot the phone. To take a guess, I wonder if it's allowing two instances of the lock screen program to run at the same time. Maybe one of them encounters a bug so it won't accept touch input or maybe just the fact there's two running at once stops one of them from working. It seemed to happen when the phone was slowing up a bit, and I think I tried to suspend it with the power button and maybe (if I remember correctly) it didn't suspend immediately so I maybe tried to press the power button a second time.

Maybe it's possible two presses of the power button, with a lagging suspend, could fire off two instances of the lock screen. I don't know if I'll find time to investigate this any further. Maybe the devs are already aware of it anyway.

I acknowledge this, happened to me for the second time about two hours ago.. This time I was unable to get around it, only by rebooting the device.