Nexus 4 is Unusable
-
I thought maybe my reaction to UBports was premature; many of you said you use it daily, and after reinstalling, I had better luck with phone calling. But other than that, this is a useless phone.
As I've already pointed out, the microphone doesn’t work.
File Manager is treacherous. I highlight a file, select delete, and it deletes something else. I tried several times. It does not work reliably.
Battery life is about 12 hrs. when unused. If I use it, I have to charge 3 or 4 times per day. I’ve rarely ever had to charge oftener than once per day on this phone in the past.
Browser has many issues:
Too much white space, it uses the screen real estate poorly. Google Sheets is almost usable, I can only view 1 cell at a time. Surprisingly Office.com works pretty well.
Many web sites don’t' work. Games not much at all. The most common errors are:
Hardware acceleration not enabled.
Unable to obtain GLES2 context.
It is slow. Slower that I’ve ever seen a browser work.
My credit union web app doesn’t work. There goes my primary use case for a phone, which is managing my bank account and paying bills.
Many apps from the Open Store don’t work. Some, like Tux Racer, are unable to install. As I’ve already pointed out, Recorder and Guitar Tools do not work due to missing microphone functionality.
Unable to get my voice mail. When the voice mail alert pops up, and I select it, it just clears the notification. All other phones I’ve ever used will activate the hand set and take me to my voicemail. That is what this phone used to do.
Music playback is low quality, has too much crackling noises. I can’t use it or I get a headache.
Camera doesn’t work. In fact when I clicked on the camera icon, my screen went black. Now it will not reboot not even recovery mode. The phone is bricked.
I’ve wondered about using a linux phone. I have been skeptical that it can handle it on a daily basis. Now that I know, I’ll stick with Android.
-
5 years with MX4 Canonical uTouch Edition.
Camera works, mic works everywhere, browser works... etc...
Maybe you should choose another phone...
And you can't brick a phone with uTouch, use ubports installer to reinstall.
But what is really the point of this thread?
Pointing N4 weakeness or telling uTouch doesn't feet your needs/is useless?
uTouch works for me since 2015, like i said.
-
I've never used Nexus 4 but most of your issues do not exist on the UT devices I've used. Perhaps they are specific to Nexus 4. I think Nexus 4 users are relatively small and I don't hear anyone said that they are using it as a daily phone.
There are definitely missing features in UT and it is still depends in each individual's needs and willingness for compromises, if UT can be considered as daily driver or not.
Just to be sure, are you sure you installed the latest version? Did you use the UBports installer?
-
File Manager is treacherous. I highlight a file, select delete, and it deletes something else. I tried several times. It does not work reliably.
I just tried this, on my nexus 4 running devel. Both swiping right on a file to reveal delete icon, and long press to select and choose delete from toolbar menu. Worked exactly as expected. So I don't know what you did, but the app seems to be working just fine.
Battery life is about 12 hrs. when unused. If I use it, I have to charge 3 or 4 times per day. I’ve rarely ever had to charge oftener than once per day on this phone in the past.
Battery life on Nexus 4 is indeed bad, but this is also true when running Android on it. Blame the fact that the battery is probably 8 years old at this point if it was never replaced, and the fact that the battery life just wasn't that good in the first place on Android phones of that era. Not UT's fault.
Too much white space, it uses the screen real estate poorly. Google Sheets is almost usable, I can only view 1 cell at a time. Surprisingly Office.com works pretty well.
These are problems with web sites, not the browser itself. Don't blame us for poor web site designs.
Hardware acceleration not enabled.
Unable to obtain GLES2 context.Yes. This is because of how the Chromium engine works and its lack of support for running in a GNU/Linux environment on top of the Android HAL. I'm sure the QtWebEngine developers would love to have PRs from you to enable use of libhybris to attain hardware acceleration of rendering, and WebGL support. Even if they don't, we would be glad to include such patches in Ubuntu Touch. So feel free to work on it and help us make UT better.
It is slow. Slower that I’ve ever seen a browser work.
I'm sorry you haven't experience many browsers in your lifetime, or extremely slow internet, or lack of hardware accelerated video rendering. But "it's slow" is completely unhelpful information, nor is this forum an issue tracker.
My credit union web app doesn’t work. There goes my primary use case for a phone, which is managing my bank account and paying bills.
Again, this is not necessarily something we can control. Please complain to your bank that their site is not usable in mobile browsers on alternate operating systems. Complaining to us will not do anything about that.
As I’ve already pointed out, Recorder and Guitar Tools do not work due to missing microphone functionality.
And as it's already been pointed out in your other thread, this is a known issue. If you'd like to debug and promote a fix, feel free, but repeatedly whining about it here is not helpful.
Unable to get my voice mail. When the voice mail alert pops up, and I select it, it just clears the notification. All other phones I’ve ever used will activate the hand set and take me to my voicemail. That is what this phone used to do.
Again, the forum is not an issue tracker. If accessing voicemail from the notification is not working, please open an issue on GitHub in the issue tracker there, which we use to track issues. This is not a common complaint I've heard of, so perhaps there is something wrong specific to either your device or your SIM provider. Please also check in the dialer app whether long pressing on
1will dial your voicemail. If not, again there is probably something wrong with the SIM config or such.Music playback is low quality, has too much crackling noises. I can’t use it or I get a headache.
This is probably mostly due to either damaged hardware or poorly encoded audio files for the most part. Remember, you're playing music on an 8+ year old phone. But for reference, I just played some KMFDM (which is definitely going to challenge the Nexus 4 speaker), at 100% volume, and do not experience these noise issues as you've described (though the quality of reproduction is poor, because the device simply cannot reproduce all the frequencies in the song).
Camera doesn’t work. In fact when I clicked on the camera icon, my screen went black. Now it will not reboot not even recovery mode. The phone is bricked.
The Camera works perfectly fine on my Nexus 4. Again, this sounds like you probably purchased a device which has some damaged hardware.
I’ve wondered about using a linux phone. I have been skeptical that it can handle it on a daily basis. Now that I know, I’ll stick with Android.
That's fine, but I see no reason in your rant here, for posting such a rant here. You are clearly using a device that is more than 8 years old, and almost certainly has abused/damaged hardware, which is causing at least several of the mentioned issues in said rant. Use what suits your needs best, but most of your issues have nothing to do with Ubuntu Touch, and are all due to external factors. You can help make things better of course, but you seem unwilling to do so from the start, given your choice was to come in here and post a series of useless complaints rather than to ask how to help make things better. Such rants do not help anyone, so please refrain from doing so further.
Thanks.
-
@overlordofdata You do appear to have been unlucky with this device and it's effect on UT as an OS. I don't have this device so have no direct experience but judging from others comments yours does seem to have problems that many have not encountered using a Nexus 4 so suspect that hardware is in issue for you. I would encourage you to try UT again on another device from here https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ to really discover what this OS can do.
Also this subject is now accross at least two if not three threads can we please now keep it here. Thanks -
I have moved this thread to device specific category.
-
I have had UT on a Nexus 4 since Canonical was doing their thing, I was really looking forward to using Ubuntu but if memory serves me it worked, but with a lot issues and no cell or MMS at the time. I parked it a desk drawer then.
I stumbled upon UBports last fall and got the thing to reflash the image with this newer one. I putzed with it a bit but had not tried to use it as a daily driver.
In January I inserted my AT&T and it would not connect to the network.
I reinserted my sim in my IOS and they had locked my account for using an unsupported device. Seemed pretty brilliant to me.I have since gotten a Patriot Mobile sim and inserted it and they sent a text saying "We see your phone does not have the correct settings to access the internet or send MMS. Setting will be sent to your handset." And it works.
I have been using it this weekend and all the issues are because it is a tired old dog! It's been sleeping in a desk drawer for three or four years! LOL! I am amazed it works most of the afternoon streaming audio to my BT headset. I found a Oneplus One that according to UBports is better supported. Hope so, I like UT a lot better than IOS or Android.
Hope to contribute here.
