My feedback after flashing 20.04 on PinePhone braveheart

Fla

Hello everyone,

I used UT as my primary OS on my Fairphone2 years ago, but now it's been a while I did not play with it. So yesterday, I went ahead a flashed the last UT 20.04 image on my pinephone braveheart which was previously running the 16.04 version.

First remark, it's not easy to find the instructions, which are in a blogpost: https://ubports.com/en/blog/ubports-news-1/post/pinephone-and-pinephone-pro-3889 and there they are not really up-to-date or super clear. I would gladly edit it if someone tells me how to do that.

Now, here is the list of my remarks. I'm posting them here instead of opening bug report at the moment because I've been away from UT for quite some time, so I don't know if those issues are common to all devices or specific to Pinephone. Please tell me, and also where to open a bug if you think that's needed.

Installation:: The installation of Two-boot and UT went smoothly, nothing to say there.
Performance: The OS works well but is very slow. I know the Pinephone is a low end hardware, but I think there are some performance issues here, idk if it's specific to pinephone or not. The drawer or Morph are quite smooth (let's say, okayish for this hardware), but the settings app takes 30 seconds to open! (I did it 3 times in a row, 31sec, 32sec, 30sec). There is clearly something wrong here. Same for the Weather app for example, the screen actually turns off before the app is even launched. I think there is something wrong with those apps, as the OpenStore or Morph launch in less than 5 seconds.
Wi-Fi: The Wi-Fi connection is quite stable, compared to 16.04 which often disconnected and refused to reconnect. Although right I am writing this, I was in flight mode and after exiting UT is not able to connect anymore (but that's different than the issue with 16.04 where it was actually losing the connection)
Battery: When the screen is off, even with Wi-Fi on, battery usage is bad but okayish. But with the screen on and playing with the phone, it is a disaster, I'm losing one percentage every minute. I used the phone a bit before going to sleep at 1am. At that time the battery was at 45%. I switched off the screen and the bluetooth but let the Wi-Fi on. I woke up at 4h40, at that time, the battery was still 45%. I switched off Wi-Fi. I woke up at 9h30. Battery is still displaying 45% with the chart being completely flat since 1am. I play a bit with the phone, battery suddenly drops to 32% and then 28% in the same minute. The chart adapts showing a "going down" constant lane from 45% at 1am to 28% at 9h30. So apparently the phone is not able to tract the real battery usage when in sleep mode.
Camera: The camera is not working, which is surprising for me as it was working with 16.04 (with a bad quality and very low framerate but still, I had an image)
GPS: I know there is no A-GPS on UT so to get a GPS fix can take quite some time. However, here I was not even able to ask for the permission. First time I wanted to try the GPS, I launched Morph, went in openstreetmap and tapped the location icon. Morph asked me for the permission, I said yes, and then nothing happened. And if I go in the location settings, it says that no app asked for the permission. Then opening the clock app, the weather app, which all are supposed to ask for the permission doesn't even make the dialog appear. And are completely frozen during this "looking for position" phase (which is dozens of seconds). Rebooting the phone and starting with the Alarm app first instead of Morph did not help.
Alarm: The alarm worked well. It was able to wake up the phone. Tapping on "Repeat" or "Quit" was instantaneous.
Torchlight: The torchlight works as expected. No performance issue.
Screenshot: I was able to take screenshot of the screen. No performance issue.
Sharing an image: This bug was already here years ago, it's a bit sad to see it still not fixed in 20.04. It is not possible to share an image using the gallery app. Steps to reproduce: Open Morph and navigate to Mastodon for example, write a new post and tap the button to attach an image. A screen appears asking for the app to select the file. If you use the File app, everything works well (you select the image, validate, and it is uploaded). But if you use gallery, you can select the file, validate, and then the screen is stuck, Morph never gets the file.

I will stop here at the moment, these were my first minutes with the phone. Thank you to everyone involved for the good work, I had no crash so far!

Bolly

Hello @Fla ,

Xenial was abandoned a long time ago, from what I see you didn't see that before being abandoned the file upload was working fine.
A few months ago @Oren and others resurrected it but it's complicated and hands are missing. The latest thing they are doing is trying to make the image read-only and have OTA updates.
A lot of things that worked on Xenial no longer work on Focal because it's like they started from scratch.