Update Meizu Pro 5 Baseband

HendriXXX

@halucigenia

You can monitor mobile signal strength with following way..

Open terminal
$ cd /usr/share/ofono/scripts/
$ watch -n 1 './list-modems | grep Strength'

Bigger numbers = better signal.

halucigenia

@hendrixxx Thanks, I will try that.

I still had to toggle flight mode to get a signal on my way to work this morning.

Stefano

@tera there are 2 or more hadware types of Pro 5. LTE and TD-LTE.
LTE (International) I have now, gives me no trouble, but when I had TD-LTE, it was a hell. Service always denied, unregistered, no matter what I did with it. Even on Flyme it was problematic. So it might not be just a software (ril), but most likely the modem itself. I read somewhere that those TD-LTE has some other, cheaper component (modem, some other chip or whatever) and it was designed for China network, so that's why is problematic outside of China. I'm not sure if that's true though.
I hope I'm wrong and this bug can be solved for you guys.

mihael

I have the TD-LTE and it's not that bad.

Stefano

@mihael so probably is the Meizu Quality control very bad as clearly some devices are ok and some not

halucigenia

Mine is a TD-LTE too, it has its problems but it's not "hell".

aenima

mine is a TD-LTE (ubuntu edition) and it's not hell too . The main problem is the 4g frequence of 700 or 800Mhz used in France and not supported by the pro5 (is it the case for the LTE too?)

Stefano

@aenima Yeah, the 700 and 800 are not supported on LTE as well. Well, it must be a hardware fault then, cos I don't see how could the same software run on same type/product/hardware has such a huge difference. Clearly Meizu let slip some devices through Q. Control.

tera

I had a disastrous week in London, unable to perform calls unless de-activating data (took me a while to figure that one out) and dropping back to 2G indoor between others...

Reading more online, i noticed that XDA thread https://forum.xda-developers.com/meizu-pro-5/development/meizu-pro5-baseband-17-08-2017-t3667799 mentioning better signal with this firmware version:

Revision = S333_M86_20161109_CHNOPEN_MZ041

So to summarize, i'm now trying the following:

Updated rils from http://xep.8800.org/pro5/ flyme6_ril.zip (well, how to check their versions?)
Modem version above from https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=73866639&postcount=7

As i personally swim in unknown water, it would be great to know how to build that android lxc image from scracth, i could only find this interesting deck online: https://elinux.org/images/c/cf/Ubuntu_Touch_Internals_1.pdf

tera

Hi All,

It has been a while with no update here on my side, i do not consider the Pro5 usable anymore, especially professionally, and currently testing a Fairphone 2 and a Nexus 5 for which the signal is definitively better.

In parallel, when time allows, i have slowly started looking into re-building Halium on Android 7.1 for Meizu Pro5... do not hesitate to ping if you are working on something similar

Peace,
Tera