MY perspective and experience with UT

[Futura]

I would just like to share my experience with UT, maybe get some ideas on things I did not try and possibly share some that may help.

First things first I would like to thank anyone who had a hand in getting UT to where it is today, I think this project is incredibly important and in my opinion the mobile OS space is at a turning point and really needs something like UT in a big way.

What/Where/Why:
What - Fairphone 5 on T-Mobile (GSM)
Where - US
Why - Ownership, in today's day and age a mobile OS that the end user has any shred of ownership over is just about nonexistent, especially where I live.

What I expected:
Going into this with the knowledge that I may need to do some work to get things running and not everything from any major smartphone is going to work. That is perfectly fine and worth it for what you get.
My basic needs are: Calls, text messages, quick web search for an answer, maybe some music while making dinner.

What I found:
This may vary, and I understand its dependent on all of the factors from who where why.
Calls work as expected
Web search (specifically on the FP5) has a weird bug where apparently it thinks the screen is 9" and everything is zoomed out. Bit of an annoyance with my aging eyes.
Text messages this is where I really had some trouble, RCS is a major sticking point as its forced by other devices and even MFA codes. Even SMS has a 10 min delay and is delivered with a current timestamp so for me it looks like it just got here, but to my wife who sent a text from the car asking for help carrying groceries in I ignored her.

Its not all bad though, there is plenty to like. Its very stable even running a nightly release on my device as the devel had a weird WIFI bug. My phone was 99% what I expected out of it. The gesture control was WAY ahead of it time when Ubuntu Edge was announced and UT along with it, since then all the major players have copied it in one way or another.

Some ideas (from a non programmer):
I know that there was some chatter about RCS somewhere, but its hard to tell what is relevant anymore as there is a lot of outdated information floating around in the ether. A somewhere official with the current state of affairs that is not on telegram would be a big help I think. Maybe I simply overlooked it, I would do a search for a feature, find a github page that moved to gitlab (or something else) that is now dead or had a link that sent me back to github.

I am willing to bet everyone is elbows deep in getting 24.04 stable and pushed but I do have a wish list I would like to share.
I think that getting something like flatpack running would be very beneficial to the platform as a whole. To break dependencies on Android (which I will get into) and Two for the same reasons that they are easier for linux distro's containerized/one "package" works everywhere/ and to really broaden the availability of applications for the platform.
Breaking dependency from Android, I understand there is a layer involved with helium, but Google looks to be merging Chrome OS and Android. They have stopped providing build trees for Pixel phones which seems to have had a negative impact on GraphineOS presumably other AOSP roms like Lineage. It also coincidentally aligns with the leads at CalyxOS stepping down and them pausing all new releases.
Now I am not saying these are all linked or some conspiracy, but I do think relying more on Linux for apps or low level device support and not Android would be a net positive. Again I am not a dev, just a passionate end user.

I don't even mind not having all the apps ever in the whole world either, if something like RCS was working where I can communicate with my family in a timely manor UT would be perfect for my daily needs.

IF you have suggestions, ideas, comments I am more than open to input on how to make that happen today.
Thanks!

[wally]

@Futura Thanks for the thoughts, and the tact with which you handle UT's shortcomings for your situation.

I'm surprised by your SMS experience. I've never heard of this delay before. I use SMS and MMS and it's more or less instantaneous.
It may be the case that on some devices, VoLTE is causing issues with SMS/MMS? And I heard that it's not working yet in 24.04. But both VoLTE and 24.04 that are in beta, and are being worked on.

As a fellow North American, I share your desire for RCS. It's not that I'm in love with the format - personally I hope the EU succeeds in making messenger apps interoperable the way email is. The problem is that that people here send RCS/MMS with the absolute expectation that it will be received, because it's free with every plan. Major problem here when it doesn't work.
My impression is that few if any of the core developers of UT are North American, and in most places in the world, RCS/MMS is hardly used, and definitely not taken as a given for anybody with a smartphone the way that it is here.
This said, group messages aside, MMS works pretty well for most people! Photos between myself and those using iOS and Android phones default to MMS and go through fine. I've always had the odd quirk, and sometimes would miss messages without seeing any notification, but I found a carrier where I always do at least get a message that an MMS couldn't be downloaded.
Unfortunately there aren't any easy answers to get RCS. UBports is driven by volunteers, devs are expensive, and the work is time consuming. There have been a tonne of big things to solve lately, and that are being solved / have been solved! From a global perspective many things are just bigger priorities than RCS.
Often we North Americans can tend to think that the world revolves around us, and it really, really doesn't. In a UT context, we need to learn to fix our problems ourselves and not expect volunteers to want to solve problems that don't apply to them or those around them when there are bigger fish to fry.
So I guess you and I can learn to be wizards at coding, find local devs willing to take this on, or raise a large enough bounty to make it worth somebody's time. Bounties seem not to be impossible, but I think it takes a lot to make it truly worthwhile.
Meanwhile, you could play with APN settings, borrow a SIM or take a cheap plan to try different carriers, and see if you can get SMS and MMS working normally, and support the UT project in any way you can.

Flatpaks sounds great, but again, it takes somebody doing it.
Without any interest in wading into a Flatpak vs Snaps debate, I'll mention that we do already have Snaps. To my mind, effort might be better spent getting more apps from Snaps working in a UT setting. Most Linux apps aren't exactly made for mobile, and whether we have Flatpak or Snaps, it's not going to mean that everything just works.
Meanwhile, some of us get by ok without using Waydroid at all, and with more up to date browser coming along, it'll get even easier to use more websites rather than apps.

One thing that us non-devs CAN do is communicate about the current state of affairs. I've always liked the Forum for this - easily searched and read by anyone. I feel that the website Devices page does a fairly good job too, and the Q&As are great!
But we can all brainstorm the best way to communicate things, pitch our ideas, and make it happen. https://ubports.com/community-center

Hope you're already able to solve the issues you're having and are able to use UT successfully and happily!

[arubislander]

@wally said in MY perspective and experience with UT:

Most Linux apps aren't exactly made for mobile, and whether we have Flatpak or Snaps, it's not going to mean that everything just works.

This is very true. However, with most other mobile Linux projects having gone the flatpak route, there are probably more mobile friendly apps in that format than snaps at the moment. The challenge for UT adoption, besides the packaging format, is that these are mostly GTK apps, which is a different toolkit than UT uses (comparable with Gnome apps running on a KDE desktop)

Developers of UT apps are being encouraged to also packages their apps as snaps. If adoption is picked up, the amount of mobile friendly apps in the snap store will increase. This will broaden exposure of these apps, making them available for desktops as well. But it will not in itself increase app availability on UT.