the definite VoLTE deadline date in the USA is now known

Rondarius

@dizzy
Hahaha
I could try, lets see, most of these features needs to be a stand alone app, we have the rw permission that prevent us from having it within the OS itself and that was not my intention either, the suggetions was meant for app developers to create and maintain and not the core developers, easing the burden. How about a webapp to sync with nextcloud? When users is getting used to the concept the core app could be removed or not displayed, if it's connected to the functionality of the OS. I don't know if you are able to have an app that only displays the calendar, email and more from within nextcloud. I was just brainstorming and as I wrote earlier, there is probably alot of other solutions to look at. We need to find other ways for our OS.

dizzy

@rondarius Thanks for the explaination! I could see myself paying for that but if we are talking about that you have to use UT's Nextcloud as the only option, then I think its a misstake. UT should not be "locked in". My two cents....

Rondarius

@dizzy
No, no one should be forced to anything. When it comes to nextcloud, it was a suggestion. Of course you should be able to use your own setup or none at all.

dizzy

@rondarius I could definitely pay for hosting my Nextcloud at UBPorts if that would make them earn some money. Remember Ubuntu One by the way? Long time ago

Rondarius

@dizzy
I was hoping for Canonical to host an email service too

flohack

@rondarius one correction for UBuntu LTS: Its supported for 5 years, which means that by now we have only 3 years left until we need to shift to 24.04

The idea is also to maybe move to STS versions again - a mobile phone distro on long term support means we always will have outdated packages of everything, and are constantly struggling in an ever-changing IT world.

Having an STS or even rolling release would be much better, also because upgrading constantly smaller parts of our OS is much easier than locking down everything every 3 years or so.

flohack

Will be a sad day for UT...

VoLTE is as far as a galaxy away. This is still lightyears from a sustainable solution, as already some posters remarked, VoLTE support will come to a few chosen devices only, if ever. As long as that thing is not standardized its impossible for smaller projects to reverse-engineer that part, also as typically in Android the same vendor makes their stuff incompatible already with the next device (Not even talking about multiple vendors), and for every model we need again to dive into this.

The same applies to eSIM: We need to learn a lot from unofficial sources so to say how to implement the right protocols.

Until there is decent open hardware this will prevent any proliferation of open technology.

dizzy

@flohack Hum, that's depressing. In Sweden 2G and 3G will be shut down before 2025 at latest.
To me this sounds like the end for UT. At least in its current form...

Keneda

@flohack said in the definite VoLTE deadline date in the USA is now known:

Until there is decent open hardware this will prevent any proliferation of open technology.

What about the PP and PPP ?

flohack

@keneda well they are good candidates, idk which modem is in the PPP, but they need to be made more usable with UT, thats also not easy.

But yes, probably good candidates (if they work with VoLTE in the US, idk, US is special for everything)

rocket2nfinity

@flohack PP and PPP share the same modem - quectel eg25g. It already does VoLTE on UT without any instruction from UT for it to do so. It even works with Verizon.

messayisto

@rocket2nfinity That sounds awesome - can somebody confirm for the EU?

dizzy

@messayisto Should not be a problem in EU with PP or PPP.

GeekBone

@flohack I guess I am still confused about all of this. I have a Pixel 3a that is loaded with Android (My UT phone is a Nexus 5) and I am on T-Mobile. I received notification that my Nexus 5 would no longer work, but they said my other phones will be fine. (Wife has a pixel 3), so wouldn't UT still work on the 3a?

stanwood

@geekbone Well, it will, but in UT voice calls can not be handled over LTE nor WiFi yet.
So if 3G is cut, you won't be able to make nor receive phone calls.

flohack

@geekbone VoLTE has the beauty that most things for calls, sms/mms that were handled by the modem before will now be handled by a telephony stack in the Android container PLUS we need our own service on top of it to handle all that mess. We decompiled a few Java classes and that API is north of 150-200 single calls that all need attention and handling.

Its more like a reimplementation of signalling and call handling in upper layers. Definitely a project of a few resource-years (head-years) for UT, and not even then its clear if it would ever work (only on a few devices that use a more open IMS stack).

Thats an overview picture, only the leftmost part is relevant but still...

IMS means its prepared for multimedia data, so every call can contain also video, verious codecs etc. Its much, much, much more than just a POTS voice call

stanwood

@flohack Indeed, the IR.92 official document is composed of 76 pages.
Tried to read to understand the basics, but just gave up due to the complexity...

https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads//IR.92-v16.0-1.pdf

There are 193 official documents related to VoLTE...

Maybe years of migraines and white hair are ahead us...

GeekBone

@flohack Lol! I didn't follow all of that, but it did help. Thanks for taking the time to spell it out.

Keneda

@Flohack So Pinephones and other open hardware projects, even non affordables ones, are the best way for the futur of UT and cummunity.

Now the question is when it will become a priority to have at least one full supported ? After 20.04 ?

domubpkm

For France, 2G and 3G coverage can be expected until 2030.