Smooth Edges (name pending) - Let's Fix the Bugs That Drive You Mad

ma

Although I use Ubuntu Touch (UT) as my daily driver, I haven't been able to convince anyone to switch to UT so far. Besides the availability of Android apps, I see two main reasons for this.

Most phones are 5 years old or older. No one wants to invest money in an outdated phone that also has a poor battery by now. Furthermore, the future development for the selected devices is not guaranteed and heavily relies on individual contributors. A potential solution, in my opinion, would be to have a new "primary device" released every two years. This point might be classified as priority 0.
People interested in UT often have a strong focus on privacy and security. While the OS is privacy-friendly, I don't see adequate protection when using browsers. For me, in addition to data encryption, it’s important to easily change the DNS server and to use a secure browser that can mitigate tracking and fingerprinting, for example, through extensions. I think this is priority 5.

Thank you for starting the initiative!

danfro

Here some thoughts on my priorities:

1. Core features

mobile data on sim2, although I think there is a PR already, so hopefully almost sorted
apps not properly accessing apparmor, like camera app on my OP5T, but other devices have that too, app logs have apparmor error entries and as developer I am never sure if they are important or kind of "normal" and can be ignored

2. stoppers for using UT:

Encryption. I know several users who don't use UT or stopped because of that. Makes you feel bad to know "everyone" can grab all data off your device in case you loose it.
rounded corner/notch as has been mentioned, but that really restricts usage, we do rely on our indicators and they are great, but can't use them properly on affected devices (would simply limiting screen size be a workaround?)
VoLTE, because a phone needs to be able to do calls, during the next few years even here in Europe we will need this
keeping dekko updated or replacing it, email is a critical feature for most
improvements in Teleports and matrix and signal apps, likely the most used apps on smartphones are messengers
call/video call options in browser and messengers

3. daily use

camera app (no crashes, device specific but happens on several devices), more features e.g. for white balance, multicamera support, panorama mode
Morph has been named, work is going on there, so I am confident this is solved soon
system side backup feature as has been named, I think for many this would make things simpler, not everyone can setup a nextcloud or syncthing services easily
vpn integration for several protocols, because we often would like to connect to open wifi's but I would feel more save with vpn there, and some users depend on vpn in their countries

4. nice to have

swype feature in OSK, but only possible with proprietary code, even on LOS, so likely hard to achive
faster GPS for me is only added here, I rarely use it and mostly are then fine to wait a bit for initial fix
app grouping in the drawer, maybe even favourites and rarely used sections would be helpful for me
bluetooth comes here in my usage, I never use that, but agree it would be "not bad" and other depend on it, like when driving

5. polishing
I am not going to add a long list here. We all know there is plenty to do all the time everywhere if it comes to finishing touches.

projectmoon

Here are my thoughts. What started small turned into something big!

Priority 1: Core System Stuff - Boot loops, crashes, phone completely unusable. Fix immediately.

Sometimes on the Volla Quintus the passcode prompt just stops working. Either the number keys don't enter the characters, or the phone does not seem to respond to the full passcode being entered. This is on 1.x daily channel, so I dunno if it is a problem in stable.

Priority 2: Basic Phone Features - Calls, SMS, WiFi, Bluetooth, notifications, camera. If these don't work, it's not really a phone.

Cameras: Devices with multiple cameras don't have support for all the cameras, even if the underlying hardware + software stack is functioning. Quintus has 3 cameras, and the test camera apps can access them and take pictures, but the main camera app does not have the ability to switch between the lenses.

Camera is too slow to take pictures, and images are blurry if there's any motion or bad lighting conditions. This might be device-specific.

Security: Encryption is a basic requirement. Thankfully, it's been recently added. But it shouldn't be optional. If possible, the entire device should be encrypted when powered off. Bonus points if it can encrypt during lock like Android devices.

Display/Indicators: Notch needs to be handled, and work is being done on this. I also think there are way too many indicators. This is part of the problem with handling notches.

Too many icons to show. I have a dual SIM phone with one SIM on roaming, and the network indicator alone is 4 icons (two reception icons, the roaming icon, wifi/5G icon).
Take the rotation lock icon, for example. On my phone, it's one indicator with a pull-down that has exactly one item in it: rotation lock on or off. This could easily be collapsed together with other functions.
Similar for other indicators. Many of the pull-down shades have two items in them. Doesn't really make sense in my opinion.

Priority 3: Daily Use - Browser crashes, app store issues, keyboard problems, file management. The stuff you hit every day.

I won't mention the browser since it's obvious and being worked on.

Messaging: The native chat apps are slim pickings, but the ones that exist work well. Delta Touch is good. WhatsWeb works very well. Signal-UT is up and coming. Ideally, there should be a native Matrix client. Ideally-er, it should be disconnected from the idea of "Matrix." It's just "UT Messenger" or something.

VPN: There is no (usable) UI to manage VPN connections. Required for corporate users, or people who want to connect to connect to wireguard, Tailscale, etc. Telling people to install the tailscale snap and run terminal commands ain't gonna fly.

Dekko: The only email client. And it's amazing work. But if we are talking daily use issues, I have to list them.

No HTML replies. Everything is sent out using plain text.
Broken message forwarding. When forwarding messages, due to the aforementioned only-plain-text, forwarded messages get completely garbled and become unreadable when the recipient gets it.

Mir 2: I think migration to Mir 2 is essential. As I understand, work is underway on this. There are a ton of convergent Linux apps out there that simply do not function properly on UT either due to scaling or due to keyboard not appearing, etc. A properly functioning Wayland environment could allow snaps to be featured in the OpenStore as first-class citizens. The jankiness of the X server in general is also a huge problem (keyboard, slowness, focus issues).

Keyboard: The keyboard is very lowly positioned for me. The ability to raise and lower the keyboard is important for me, at least. Basically, replacing the system keyboard with the Ambot installer keyboard would solve all these problems. I realize it's probably not as simple as copy pasting the code, of course.

Developer Mode: Developer mode keeps getting turned on every time I boot the phone, even if I toggle it off. Not sure if this is a daily channel thing or an actual bug. It's a security issue if it's not something specific to the daily channel releases.

Priority 4: Polish - Like those tiny contact navigation arrows that are impossible to see. UI glitches. Things that make UT feel unpolished.

Volla Quintus: under-screen fingerprint reader does not yet work. I assume this will eventually come, in time, hopefully with work from Volla.

KDE Connect port! Phone <-> computer sync is very handy.

APIs: Lack of APIs for apps to access auto-fill, auto-type, and so on. This is quite relevant to the app I'm making, of course, as it's a password manager. Copying and pasting is an inefficient way of doing things, and also not super secure.

App drawer: Ability to organize the app drawer: making folders of apps, for example. The search is good, though.

Waydroid:

Waydroid notifications need to be propagated to the main notification bar, and should function completely like native notifications, opening the corresponding Android app, etc.
Fully functioning multiple window mode with icons appearing in the sidebar and app drawer properly.
Copy and paste doesn't seem to work inside Waydroid, not to mention being able to copy and paste between the Waydroid container and the rest of the system.
File access should be transparent between Waydroid and the rest of the system. Waydroid should be able to see the home directory of the user, or at least some subset of it, without having to copy files in and out using the Waydroid Files app. Also vice versa.

Priority 5: Nice to Have - Advanced features, edge cases, stuff that matters to specific users.

Update of snapz0r to allow direct installation of snaps instead of having to use the terminal.

projectmoon

@danfro said in Smooth Edges (name pending) - Let's Fix the Bugs That Drives You Mad:

swype feature in OSK, but only possible with proprietary code, even on LOS, so likely hard to achive

AnySoftKeyboard has an--I think--completely open source swiping implementation, and FUTO (which is not open source, but rather source-available) has (or is building?) an open swipe dataset. Not sure which license terms, but presumably fully open once they release it.

There is also an open source swipe keyboard available for Sailfish OS: Magic Keyboard. But I'm not sure if the underlying swiping is open or not.

All potential options to look into, at least.

danfro

@projectmoon I only know heliboard, but that requires you to download a proprietary file for swype to work. The implementation itself is opensource, but not that file. But thanks for the suggestions. Something to look into for sure.

projectmoon

@danfro said in Smooth Edges (name pending) - Let's Fix the Bugs That Drives You Mad:

@projectmoon I only know heliboard, but that requires you to download a proprietary file for swype to work. The implementation itself is opensource, but not that file. But thanks for the suggestions. Something to look into for sure.

Yes, Heliboard uses Google's swipe library that was originally created for AOSP. Which unfortunately is proprietary. I think Florisboard also has a glide typing implementation, but I'm not sure how functional it actually is.

Eric H

@mariogrip IMO its a brilliant idea. Thank you.

Here are some examples of bugs that are problematic:

Core System Stuff

device crashes
- Daily reboots without command
- Poco NFC X3 it reboots and disconnects the sim about every 12 hours

Basic Phone Features

The phone application freezes when I receive a call while I'm already online (VoLTE enabled). A reboot is then necessary.
switching to airplane mode often leads to a disconnection of the VolTE. A reboot is then necessary.
My camera app crashes every day or so

Daily Use

camera image quality
- All pictures (and also videos) taken with the device have colors off and are overall poor quality
- Camera Not Actually Fully Supported
GPS too slow

Polish

Rounded corners and camera notch

Nice to Have

Docker container cannot start normally

uxes

@Eric-H i think that those first six bullets from you are just device-specific since i dont have them on miatoll stable (reboots, freezing on volte, camera crashing, camera quality) and i am not sure if there should be listed community device-specific issue

kristatos

Thanks for your initiative for making UT better and more reliable.
Here are my ideas, although they are similar to what others had already mentioned:

Priority 1:

Sometimes the phone is stucking, almost freezing after using it a longer time without rebooting or using more apps than just 3-4. Then Lomiri seems to crash and just restarts.
An annoying bug that we have since the beginning of UT back in 2015 is still present: When you've opened more than 3 apps and then want to restart or poweroff your device Lomiri crashes and restarts. Then you have to select restart/poweroff again.

Priority 2:
Like others already said:

VoLTE is not reliable yet (but it's seems to be the "basic phone functionality" in more and more countries)
WiFi is always trying o connect to last used network instead of the one which has the best signal
Bluetooth is almost unusable (no file transfer possible, no hfp in any of my last 4 cars)
Notification-area is too fragmented. I think it's better to have less indicators or an option to reach the most used on the same "page". Also it's often hard when swiping down from the notification-area to keep in line with the selected indicator and not to swipe to much to left/right and select the wrong one.
I think RCS will be a next big point for UT to keep in line with Android/iOS

Priority 3:

The browser is of course outdated and it's more for basic browsing. It's even a bit laggy and slow compared to Android, but that's not as important than the outdated engine.
The keyboard is sometimes hard to use and I'm writing sentences full of mistakes because of missing blanks and so on. But I don't know why it's happening, if the keys are to narrow or if the input is to slow?

Priority 4:

The "back" buttons in for example "dekko", uRSSes",... are hard to tap on or sometimes you have tapped on it and you can see the button-press but you have to tap on it again because it was to short or something else.
Overall performance, it could be "smoother" when switching between apps and so on.
The start-time of apps is much longer than under android, I don't know why they need so long to start. Even a simple app like calculator or clock needs several seconds to start...
Support for rounded corners and notches is nowadays a must. When a new user installs UT on his phone and even the clock is not fully visible and there's also no option in the system to set it correctly he will instantly frustrated.

Priority 5:
Nice to Have - I think with the above points there's no time for "nice to have"

gpatel-fr

@kristatos said in Smooth Edges (name pending) - Let's Fix the Bugs That Drive You Mad:

if the input is to slow?

FIY I have noticed that disabling haptic feedback was leading to me typing faster. I don't know if it's psychological or if the buzz is really slowing the keyboard. Give it a test if you don't have disabled it yet.