Been carrying for a week or so now, here is the current state of core functionality on PMOS-Phosh (edge)
In the last couple of days a new glitch has appeared, when the phone sleeps the modem is going down, not going to sleep. On wakeup the modem takes about as long to return to showing bars as wifi, and since this started no message or call has come in while off the plug and the phone allowed to sleep.
That aside, and the bug in Contacts reported in a different thread, here is what you can expect.
At random, a text message from a new number will show on Chatty's list of conversations but you can't touch it to read the whole message or reply. It "depresses" when touched but nothing else will happen. If you ignore it and come back in minutes or hours it sometimes works. If you need to interact with it now you must reboot. That has, so far, always worked.
If you make a contact for a text from a new number Chatty may or may not update the number into a name. Rebooting won't fix that one, only deleting the conversation has any chance of working as new messages appear. Still not assured of working though. Get a billing message after every activity, no matter what it just shows as "38809090" They aren't "normal" SMS so that might have something to do with it, they are system messages.
The calls app does have basic functionality now. You can make and receive calls. You get a call log and you can call back from it. You can't create a contact or send an SMS in response to a call. You apparently can't clear the call log either.
You can still expect Phosh to go insane and refuse to allow you to unlock or cleanly shutdown but it isn't as often now as a week ago. And this morning the phone was simply dead. Blue light was still on but it was unresponsive. Power key did nothing, inserting the USB cable did nothing. So cold start and the battery was almost unchanged from eight hours ago when it was put aside for the night. Had took a few updates and rebooted at the end of the day so watch out?
Away from the core phone functionality, the alarm clock needs some love, badly. If the phone sleeps it of course won't go off at all, waiting for some other event (call, text, power key) to wake it, then it goes off. But even on the charger, the UI needs help badly. Unlike Android, Phosh has no ability to allow an urgent dialog to precede the lock screen. And the clock can't launch itself! So you must enter the unlock code, launch the clock app and THEN you can shut the darned thing off.
(12-02-2020, 04:28 PM)jmorris Wrote: Been carrying for a week or so now, here is the current state of core functionality on PMOS-Phosh (edge)
In the last couple of days a new glitch has appeared, when the phone sleeps the modem is going down, not going to sleep. On wakeup the modem takes about as long to return to showing bars as wifi, and since this started no message or call has come in while off the plug and the phone allowed to sleep.
That aside, and the bug in Contacts reported in a different thread, here is what you can expect.
At random, a text message from a new number will show on Chatty's list of conversations but you can't touch it to read the whole message or reply. It "depresses" when touched but nothing else will happen. If you ignore it and come back in minutes or hours it sometimes works. If you need to interact with it now you must reboot. That has, so far, always worked.
If you make a contact for a text from a new number Chatty may or may not update the number into a name. Rebooting won't fix that one, only deleting the conversation has any chance of working as new messages appear. Still not assured of working though. Get a billing message after every activity, no matter what it just shows as "38809090" They aren't "normal" SMS so that might have something to do with it, they are system messages.
The calls app does have basic functionality now. You can make and receive calls. You get a call log and you can call back from it. You can't create a contact or send an SMS in response to a call. You apparently can't clear the call log either.
You can still expect Phosh to go insane and refuse to allow you to unlock or cleanly shutdown but it isn't as often now as a week ago. And this morning the phone was simply dead. Blue light was still on but it was unresponsive. Power key did nothing, inserting the USB cable did nothing. So cold start and the battery was almost unchanged from eight hours ago when it was put aside for the night. Had took a few updates and rebooted at the end of the day so watch out?
Away from the core phone functionality, the alarm clock needs some love, badly. If the phone sleeps it of course won't go off at all, waiting for some other event (call, text, power key) to wake it, then it goes off. But even on the charger, the UI needs help badly. Unlike Android, Phosh has no ability to allow an urgent dialog to precede the lock screen. And the clock can't launch itself! So you must enter the unlock code, launch the clock app and THEN you can shut the darned thing off. Not a fix or anything, but if you get into this state again you can usually avoid battery removal by doing a long press of the power button while holding down the volume down rocker for 6 to 10 seconds possibly followed by a repeat. that's got me out of a few "hard lockups" over the past 10 months.
(12-02-2020, 09:17 PM)pjsf Wrote: (12-02-2020, 04:28 PM)jmorris Wrote: You can still expect Phosh to go insane and refuse to allow you to unlock or cleanly shutdown but it isn't as often now as a week ago. And this morning the phone was simply dead. Blue light was still on but it was unresponsive. Power key did nothing, inserting the USB cable did nothing. So cold start and the battery was almost unchanged from eight hours ago when it was put aside for the night. Had took a few updates and rebooted at the end of the day so watch out? Not a fix or anything, but if you get into this state again you can usually avoid battery removal by doing a long press of the power button while holding down the volume down rocker for 6 to 10 seconds possibly followed by a repeat. that's got me out of a few "hard lockups" over the past 10 months. It is simpler than that, just hold the power key for a bit. (The PMIC can be configured to change the exact time required from the default but the driver doesn't seem to support it yet.) Ten seconds seems to get the job done. Then release and give it a short press to power back on. Basically it is the same as a desktop PC with the power button and the failsafe power down built into all ATX power supplies.
The downside is the worry about the modem not liking sudden power loss. Wasn't too worried when I didn't have a SIM in it, doubted it was doing enough to have a file system go corrupt on a reboot. Now it is more of a concern. Since I had to flash the latest firmware into it I know I have a working firmware so I'm assuming if it all goes horribly wrong that can get flashed back in again.
(12-02-2020, 11:38 PM)jmorris Wrote: (12-02-2020, 09:17 PM)pjsf Wrote: (12-02-2020, 04:28 PM)jmorris Wrote: You can still expect Phosh to go insane and refuse to allow you to unlock or cleanly shutdown but it isn't as often now as a week ago. And this morning the phone was simply dead. Blue light was still on but it was unresponsive. Power key did nothing, inserting the USB cable did nothing. So cold start and the battery was almost unchanged from eight hours ago when it was put aside for the night. Had took a few updates and rebooted at the end of the day so watch out? Not a fix or anything, but if you get into this state again you can usually avoid battery removal by doing a long press of the power button while holding down the volume down rocker for 6 to 10 seconds possibly followed by a repeat. that's got me out of a few "hard lockups" over the past 10 months. It is simpler than that, just hold the power key for a bit. (The PMIC can be configured to change the exact time required from the default but the driver doesn't seem to support it yet.) Ten seconds seems to get the job done. Then release and give it a short press to power back on. Basically it is the same as a desktop PC with the power button and the failsafe power down built into all ATX power supplies.
The downside is the worry about the modem not liking sudden power loss. Wasn't too worried when I didn't have a SIM in it, doubted it was doing enough to have a file system go corrupt on a reboot. Now it is more of a concern. Since I had to flash the latest firmware into it I know I have a working firmware so I'm assuming if it all goes horribly wrong that can get flashed back in again. This seems to be different behaviour that gets a reboot even when a standard long press does nothing.
(12-03-2020, 12:24 AM)pjsf Wrote: This seems to be different behaviour that gets a reboot even when a standard long press does nothing. That isn't documented as part of the PMIC, is PMOS still alive enough to be doing something, perhaps with POKOIRQ? The chart on page 27 of the AXP803 datasheet shows the power button can generate POKSIRQ, POKLIRQ, POKOIRQ or just cut power but reboot isn't offered as an option. Note that that final option also cuts power to the RTC so it is as close to a battery pull as it gets. Haven't seen PMOS use anything but POKSIRQ but Nemo, Sailfish and GlowDroid use POKLIRQ as well. Another thing, PMOS can't actually halt right now. The screen goes blank but it is still powered on and blazing away. So reboot or halt then do a very long press. If you have the multi-distro you can reboot to it and power down from there, because that works without clearing the RTC.
12-22-2020, 12:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-24-2020, 12:22 AM by jmorris.)
Ok, update time.
When making calls, the dialpad can be called up during a call but it does nothing. The speakerphone is always enabled and attempts to turn it off can cause total loss of the Phosh session. On the upside, the quality of the speakerphone is very good.
The modem is running during suspend, calls and texts do seem to reliably deliver, but you if you do not wait (up to thirty or more seconds) for the bars to appear when waking the phone, launching calls or chats is unreliable.
There is currently no way to set a ringtone. Incoming texts make one brief sound and nothing else to alert you to new messages. The notification LED seems devoted to use as a suspend indicator, which would be appropriate on PineTab or PineBook but seems out of place on PinePhone.
The address book still refuses to permit adding Nickname or Birthday, it will reliably crash. This is only seen on PMOS-Phosh, it is repeatable on the multi-distribution's PMOS-Phosh and doesn't appear with Phosh hosted on other distros.
PMOS ships has the best calculator app, the others break on a phone display.
Seeing a new behavior. An SMS arrives and causes a wakeup. The phone will stick awaiting entry of a Wifi password (entry prefilled) and refuse to go back to sleep or even blank the display. Apparently that dialog is urgent enough to override the screen lock (which shows it is possible, an excellent development) and screen saver.
The phosh bug where everything has to be tapped twice is not only still there, it seems to be happening more often. Reboot is the only way out and it is almost impossible to do with the normal UI. Terminal and sudo reboot is the reliable way.
Battery life can now be declared solved. Idle power has been under 2%/Hr for some time now. Getting some background processing going while keeping battery use in the "charge at night" pattern is going to be the next milestone.
Update: Merry Xmas from somebody, plugging into a USB3 port is currently working. Confirming that it is physically possible, any remaining instability is just bugs that will get solved.
I had the same issue with the speaker phone. I turned off the micro switch for the headphones (switch6), ensured the sound setting was set to internal speaker, and that seemed to solve the problem of all calls going to the speaker phone. Turning off the headphones was not a problem for me as I have no volume control for calls. It's all full blast, which almost ruptured my eardrum the one time I tried using earbuds. Right now, I have to use "manual" volume control, i.e., not holding the speaker directly over my ear.
The dial pad works for me during calls. What does not work is tapping Speaker. Calls remain on the internal speaker.
I agree with the Chatty issues. It would be really nice to have a Resend function. Holding down on a text pops up a menu that only says Copy. It will copy text, but the only way I've been able to paste text back into the entry box is by using Ctrl-V on the terminal keyboard. This is how I have been able to resend a text.
I also see the phosh double taps. It seems to come and go around connecting the power cable. Side note: Knowing, now, that phosh is responsible for this might explain why when I "rc-update del" the gpsd_pinephone service the unlock screen wouldn't recognize finger taps. If phosh is doing some kind of GPS check or depends on that service, that could be causing it to malfunction. Otherwise, I can't see why killing the GPS service would cause the unlock screen to malfunction.
But the biggest issue I have is that the sound settings disappear at random. When this happens, the System Volume slider in Settings->Sound is all the way off (not muted). None of the input or output pull downs contain any information and cannot be activated to be set. Interestingly, the volume indicator on the screen drop down (the display that appears when tapping the top of the screen) indicates the sound is active. When the settings disappear, the phone does not ring, offer the audible alert when receiving a text, and cannot be used for making calls. This problem is the one thing keeping this phone from being my daily driver. I can live with all of the other problems, but this one makes the phone undependable. I haven't been able to determine if the sound or settings are driven by a service, or how to restore the settings without a reboot. It would be nice to be able to restore the settings even if through the terminal (seems I live in the terminal). I've looked in /var/log/dmesg for errors but don't see any and can't seem to find any log file that would be relevant. If anybody has any suggestions on this, I'd really appreciate it.
uname -a = Linux pine64-pinephone 5.9.1 #2-postmarketos-allwinner SMP Mon Nov 2 09:26:33 UTC 2020 aarch64 Linux
Thanks!
Status update. An update yesterday (Sat Jan 9) killed the link to the modem. It doesn't appear in settings, etc. Megapixels has been broke for a few weeks now. Sometimes it shows a preview, but trying to take a photo exits.
Currently booted to the older PMOS-Phosh on the multi-distro image and the modem is showing up.
Another week, another update. Modem came back about a day after the last update. Looks like moving fast and breaking things at work. Progress is good. The modem still doesn't appear instantly but it comes back a lot faster, sometimes before the unlock PIN is entered and often faster than the WiFi reconnects. So visibly better. Phosh and the double tap bug hasn't popped up this week so either lucky or it is finally squished.
New bug observed (or just newly observed). The volume control doesn't impact the internal speaker. At all. Hit YouTube or something and start some audio. Try to change the volume. The side buttons won't, the control panel controls won't. Alsamixer on a terminal will if you adjust line out or the DAC. Pulse needs some serious loving, it needs to get smart enough to know which of the four possible audio destinations is currently active and which dial adjusts it.
Even more fun, no idea if this is Pinephone related. Go to digitalrevolutionradio with Firefox and hit listen. Once you have music playing hit the options and there is a volume slider there. Won't budge. Firefox on a Fedora desktop goes to an entirely different player so no way to check behavior.
Another longstanding glitch that might not have been reported yet. Bluetooth works. With an asterisk. From a cold start my BT keyboard won't associate. Open the BT Settings panel and it almost instantly shows up as connected and works thereafter. Annoying but livable.
Megapixels has updated several times over the last week or two, none have actually been able to take a picture. It either exits or hangs when the shutter button is clicked. Picture quality in the preview is also usually horrid. Assume furious development is in progress?
I just downloaded all of the updates available as of yesterday. All loaded without errors. I rebooted the phone and now there is no way to close apps as the black circle with the white "X" (close button) is no longer on the thumbnail windows. I know there were a couple of Gnome updates that were in the update list and I suspect that's what removed the close button. Is there any way to re-enable the button?
I know this is supposed to be a beta device and all that, but losing functionality after an update quickly makes this phone more work than it's worth, and I REALLY want this phone to be my daily driver.
Any assistance with this issue will be greatly appreciated.
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