"The" Bluetooth Thread
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During the last Q&A, a question about how work is progressing with bluetooth was raised just at the end of the session, and it was therefore not addressed before the Q&A ended. The person asking said bluetooth issues appear to affect all devices in some way or another, so it should be rather critical for UBPorts and Ubuntu Touch.
I also want to know if there is any work done to improve bluetooth functionality, because as it stands now it is nearly unusable in Ubuntu Touch. If I am lucky, I can play music through bluetooth speakers (often with considerable stutter), and that is about it. Phone calls, Pebble smart watch won't work.
If the core team could shed some light on this, it would be appreciated.
Thanks
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@tomoqv I have asked this question i last Q&A , but it was ignored...
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@stefano I forgot who it was, just wanted to make sure this question gets answered :-).
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@tomoqv Thanks for taking the initiative to get a followup on this. I totally support your request.
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@tomoqv Ubuntu Touch is being maintained by a very small group of people, in their spare time, and is a work of passion. Also, third party devices that may be based on Bluetooth underneath, are often quite closed, and very difficult to support.
If you would like to assist with improving the situation with Bluetooth devices in general, I'm sure any bug reports, pull requests, or documentation you can provide about certain bluetooth devices, would got a long way to making things better.
Thank you for your concern.
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@dobey I respect the challenges and the limited developer resources in the project. Yes, I have filed bluetooth bugs (e.g. https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/issues/766) and I may very well file additional ones going forward.
I was merely requesting an update on where we stand with regards to bluetooth and Ubuntu Touch. To my knowledge, bluetooth works with Android on all the devices supported by UBPorts, while it mostly doesn't work in UT regardless of device. Bluetooth functionality is something that nearly everyone expects in a modern smartphone and therefore I would appreciate an update on the current status and potential roadmap to iron out the issues.
I am fully aware that there are other critical issues that need attention, and I don't even know if bluetooth is top 10 of issues that the core team is working on.
A little update is all I am asking at this point.
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@tomoqv You can see a kind of roadmap here : https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/milestones.
BT a priori does not seem to be in the main issues to be fixed for the next 4 OTAs.
It's also because BT is difficult to fix : it's divided in kernel modules (different for each device) and user space module (http://www.bluez.org/).
I believe it would take a lot of time for such a small team to achieve very random and possibly very low results.
So, as usual, contributions are welcomed.
(PS: not all smartphone users use BT, by far)
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@tomoqv That exact bug report has been targeted at the OTA 5 milestone, a month ago. That sounds like the update you seem to be fishing for, to me.
Beyond that, stating so it should be rather critical for UBPorts and Ubuntu Touch is a bit disrespectful and condescending. There are only a handful of developers, and they can't buy all the devices that all users might try to use with UT. While they definitely want to fix all the bugs and answer all the questions, not all questions are appropriate to discuss in the Q&A, because they are too technical, can't be answered beyond "we want those issues fixed, sure," or require more of a discussion with a feedback loop. "What about bluetooth issues?" is one of those questions.
A lot of things work on Android on all the devices that UBPorts supports, which do not work fully (or at all) under UT. Yes, Bluetooth is unfortunately in that not working fully category, for several reasons. However, restating the obvious as a form of complaint is not helpful. Let's find more constructive ways to request information and help make UT a more reliable platform for daily use.
Unfortunately, using Open Source systems in daily life requires making some sacrifices for certain features and reliability, due to lack of support from hardware vendors, and no major backers pumping hundreds millions of dollars into building the phone, as Google does with Android. If one is not capable of dealing with such sacrifices and lack of external support for their main phone, it would probably be best to keep Android as a main device for now, and help with the development of UT by having it on a secondary device.
But lets work together to make UT the best platform there can be, rather than tearing it down over individual issues we experience personally.
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@dobey Please allow users to request information without labelling it as complaints. You circle the forum and TG groups enough to know that I am not a person who is disrespectful or condescending to developers of UT. I am a long term user of UT (since 2013), I have had it as a daily driver most of the time since then and I am fully aware that there are sacrifices to this approach. I have supported the project from the very beginning, I am a monthly supporter as a patreon to this project and have supported the community by filing numerous bug reports over the years, not just bluetooth. To dismiss a request for information on something that is clearly a concern of many (and I am not talking about one specific bug here as you imply) is neither disrespectful nor condescending.
I know that you too put a lot of time and effort into this community and I appreciate that you are always around answering users questions. If you want to be a "gatekeeper" for the core devs, fine, but please don't imply that I and others requesting information about critical functions in a smartphone are just complaining. We all want to make UT great, and many of us try to contribute in ways that we can. With all due respect, I don't think you should be the judge of what best suits the community or the development. Let us keep an open discussion and bring this forward together.
And yes, I use an Android phone as a second device.
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@tomoqv I am not trying to be a "gatekeeper" by any means. Nobody is dismissing your request for information. I simply am asking you to perhaps think about some of the words you choose to use when making such requests. I know that maybe your intent is not to be disrespectful or condescending, but the words you choose to use may not follow your intent, and will make people reading your words feel disrespected.
Language is difficult, especially when crossing barriers through translation, and can turn an intended harmless statement or question, into an offensive complaint, especially when text is the only form in use, as there are no vocal or body language cues to pick up on for understanding intent and demeanor.
So again, please, let's all please choose kinder words and phrases when posting, so that our points of view can all be better understood, in order to as you say keep an open discussion and bring this forward together.
PS: With all due respect, please do not say such a thing and then follow through with such a disrespectful comment. I have been a "core developer" of UT for just as long as your claimed usage of it, and yes, your words have a disrespectful and condescending tone to them.
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@dobey Rodney, I don't want an infected discussion with you (or anybody else) about wording. I am not a native American or Brit, but I have lived long enough in the US and worked with English as my main language with enough employers that I think I at least have a sense of the tone I am conveying and the tone in what I am reading from others.
In your previous post I believe you made a number of assumptions about me that are not correct (like "sounds like the update you seem to be fishing for" referring to only one of many bug reports I have filed or commented on).
If you truly want an open discussion, dismissive comments like "restating the obvious as a form of complaint is not helpful" does not encourage people to express their views and may (with the reservation of my native tongue not being English) be interpreted as somewhat condescending...
Let's move on now and respect each others views and values. I will try to use even kinder words in the future, and in return maybe you could make an effort not to read things too literally :-).
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One of the things I like most about UBports is it's community. People giving and helping with what they can when they can. That also means respecting each others views and thoughts and conversing in a polite respectful manner. Even when we disagree (however strongly and on whatever level). So lets all do what we can and help move this great project forward.
I have just looked at the milestones and their related bugs on github. Some relate to bluetooth and some need confirming etc. Might be best to start with those close them off and work through the whole bluetooth issues thing one annoying bug after another.
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@lakotaubp Nice diplomacy there
Yes, be nice to each other and work together towards the Ubuntu Touch mobile OS dominance. -
Well, for what it's worth, I just purchased a Pebble Time for myself, to help debug such bluetooth issues on UT.
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Wow guys - this seems to have gone a bit out of control.
Sometimes stating the obvious IS necessary. Bluetooth still has a lot of issues. To keep silence about it will not get it fixed. And yes it affects many people. Not all of us know about the technical reasons or even not all know that due to these reasons the state of Bluetooth support may differ among UT devices.
So OK it cannot get fixed in 10 minutes. Is there a plan or do we rely on the community to spontaneously fix it? How about someone would take the lead here?
In my understanding this all started with a simple request for information. Nothing more.
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I'm really quite upset with the turn this thread took, so I'm locking it now.
The reason Rodney even became aware of this thread is because I complained about the tone it had taken in its last few posts. I get (probably unnecessarily, it's a personal failure) upset when people suggest that "thing x should be critical because it affects me". I also get upset about answering questions about specific bugs in the Q&A. Before long, the sessions become long talks about how Bluetooth is in a bad state because of greater market reasons, or how Libertine (which we acknowledge is experimental, but we put in the image for exactly that reason) isn't working in exactly the way someone wants. More than that, we don't have a full understanding of why some bugs occur so we end up speculating for too long in front of the audience. It's not fun for the viewers and it's certainly not fun for the team.
As for whether things are a priority or not, we've put forward our major ideas for the next few releases in the milestones. I grant you that they aren't filled with specific bugs, but they say the "big things" we're working on.
The reasoning for Bluetooth being in a poor state is not for lack of trying or for lack of impact. We know that Bluetooth is an important function of a smartphone. However, it is an unreliable (at best) protocol with tons of vendor-specific "gotcha!"s and weirdness. It's likely that fixing a bug with one device by tweaking a timing or changing a message will actually break another device. Personally, this bums me out. I love to use Bluetooth car kits and other gadgets. Not having them with UT is unfortunate.
Even the big players have trouble with Bluetooth. Look at the one-star reviews for any Bluetooth car kit and you'll find lots which say "this worked with iOS 10 but not 11" or "my Android updated and now this broke, what a piece of crap". These are companies who can devote entire teams to the protocol and, honestly, it's still terrible.
We may have paid developers, but this is still an open source community and our team is still extremely small. There's a huge amount of power in the "scratching an itch" factor. Bugs are fixed most completely when an interested developer picks them up and pulls them through to completion.
Let me be very clear: I'm not trying to attack anyone with this message. If you feel that I am, PM me and let me know so I can edit any ambiguity out. I'm also not saying that Bluetooth is not important, rather that it is an undue amount of effort for little forward movement. In more concrete terms, we could spend the time to fix Bluetooth for one gadget or tackle OTA-5.
If you'd like to solicit feedback about a specific Bluetooth device, please open another thread in the Support section. If you want to discuss anything I've said in this message, opening a thread in General is probably the best course of action. Opening megathreads like this is not conducive to good discussion in this forum software.
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I Ian referenced this topic on
