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

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.

sixwheeledbeast

As a daily user can I share my "bugs that drive me mad"...
Having read the thread so far, I've minimised the duplicate topics you've already covered including:-
RCS, VoLTE, notch/corners, slow GPS fix, backup/restore, small buttons.
Below is in personal priority of annoyance. Hopefully this ramble is helpful.

Clock app:-
In my opinion the clock/alarm app is terrible and annoys me daily. Stopwatch and Timer are much better to be separate better fleshed out apps. Missing timezone information for world clocks but hours ahead and behind useful feature to keep.
I would suggest having the top menu options as just World Clocks and Alarms windows, loosing the swipe up menu completely (see below). Having a separate settings menu for each. Alarms menu could have larger font for time more legible and note be one line to maximise space for alarms list, as too much wasted space.

General UI Swipe ups:-
I'm not sure about any of the swipe up menus across all of the apps. Yes they're mostly consistent to be "add new thing" but really can be achieved much quicker and intuitively with a + on the top menu in every case. Swipe up is not an easy gesture to do either often requiring two hands as you need to swipe at least 1/3 up the screen to open the window.
Only swipe up that isn't "add new thing" would be the phone app which I feel should just display recent calls list anyway with options to open either Contacts or Dialling pad.

Settings:-
Lack of network connection options frustrating, proxies, static IP's, DNS, automatic connection, priority, etc.
Needing to connect to things with static IPs is one reason I need to keep a laptop around.
Previous networks should only show if you successfully connected to that AP.

General UI PullDown:-
Calender from pull down shows incorrect dates for future months. Multiple times I have given incorrect dates due to this and now have to open calendar app not use the pulldown one.

Keyboard Layout not consistent with settings. With English UK set in settings, a bluetooth keyboard types English US and is shown in the keyboard pull down as US.

Phone:-
Better highlighting of missed/incoming/outgoing calls from Recent calls would be useful read at a glance. Red/Green/Blue text maybe?

VOIP or IM accounts for Calls and Messaging. No XMPP/Jabber?

Music app:- Resume playing on headset reconnection needs to be an option.
Not using local album art seems to be a bug, I have folder.jpg files for all my music and yet thumbnails rarely work.
Now playing gestures for play/pause (to go with swipe skip gesture) would help for driving.

Nice to Have:-
Adaptive Charging or Maximum % threshold should be available in battery settings.

Lack of Printing app as standard?

Vlad Nirky

@mariogrip
Thank you for the summary table, it gives a pretty good overview.
I would like to point out that some of the issues listed are not present on the phone I use every day, so perhaps indicating which phones do not encounter these issues could help/guide the implementation of fixes:
Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro

Priority 1 bugs
None of them on my daily driven phone.
VPN: connection to my openvpn instance without any problem. (but has been quiet hard to make it functionnal)

Priority 2
Bluetooth: working with some issues (Ratchanan has a quiet clear idea on this)
Imap mail notification: works...
Communication (voLTE): works fine (Orange Belgium)

Priority 3
Keyboard crash: never.

Vlad Nirky

@mariogrip
As it is difficult for developers to have access to all phones to check/debug a given issue,
Ratchanan has twice used my VPN to connect to my spare phone (camera patch and bluetooth car debug).
I can offer the same service for others if it is useful.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro

projectmoon

Here is a new one that I forgot to put on my list the first time.

Silent Mode!

It does not work correctly, or at least it does not behave in a way that is intuitive. I turn on silent mode, and I still get notification ping sounds. I don't see the alert volume change to 0 in uVolMan.

Also there is no separation between silent and do not disturb that I can find. It would be good to have a do not disturb mode that completely silences the phone, vibrations, and notifications.

gpatel-fr

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

it gives a pretty good overview.

Interesting that my opinions about the installer were more or less reproduced.

That's the missing point in the premise for most posts here: what's driving you mad in your use of UT presumes that one is using UT. That is, the installing part did succeed else one would not use UT. However there is a surviving bias here :-).

Taking a second look on this problem, it is actually worse than I thought: there are 1900 unsolved issues about the installer on Github. It may point at many fire and forget issues, but that's also a janitoring problem: the installer is missing resources even for handling problem reports and that's because the experienced users are driving attention by being vocal about their problems on the forum or on Gitlab. The missing users are silent because they have tried UT and given up.