Call for testing: Samsung S3 Neo (s3ve3g) owners

[Nathan123]

I will try to get an S3... Wanna help.

[sunrunner]

didn't realise that ADB is such a pain. Updated bootloader on phone. rooted phone, and for some reason cant get the thing to recognise in download mode.

[sunrunner]

Ok. got to the last step and seemed to fail at the end. "heimdall flash --BOOT halium-boot.img".

got the below message. Any advice !! ?
Many thanks
Sun

Beginning session...

Some devices may take up to 2 minutes to respond.
Please be patient!

Session begun.

Downloading device's PIT file...
ERROR: Failed to send request to end PIT file transfer!
ERROR: Failed to download PIT file!
Ending session...
ERROR: Failed to send end session packet!
Releasing device interface...

[sunrunner]

Cracked it ! It was a version issue with hemidall. 1.4.2 seemed to resolve the issue.

Huge thanks to @hsce1 for this documentation, it really helped a lot.

Just playing about with Ubuntu Touch and getting familiar with stuff.

Only got about 2 % space free tho .

[Mohsen1220]

ill jump in SAP , when the camera fix will come ?

[flohack]

@Mohsen1220 I am not sure now. We are seeing that basically all cameras fail with Halium and wwe need to change the whole camera access to GStreamer and a droid module to interface. While this works reasonably well for Halium 7.1 there is currently no one working on a backport to 5.1 - I can take a look how much work this is, but I cannot tell when

[flohack]

To all testers, I see a regression regarding the modem, it does not start correctly anymore. Can one of you insert a SIM card and test the functions of the modem?

[kitwiz555]

@Flohack can't you use helium 9, because all we do knows that s3 neo all 3 models have lineage os 16 so it would help to fix a lot of problems as the camera and ril problems

[flohack]

@kitwiz555 Maybe, I did not look into whats needed for Halium 9, and how much work it would be, I started the port at a time when support for 9 was not even a thing

[bosito7]

Hello @Flohack , thanks for the hard work. I was pleased to see that there are some people out there working on porting ubuntu to S3.

I do own an S3 i9300 1GB RAM. I checked and sadly is not the same hardware (CPU/GPU) as S3 Neo so the compiled kernel link on the guide does not work.

Do you know if there is any recent work around i9300 device? If so could you please point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.
So far the best info I found is this:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s3/orig-development/discontinued-ubuntu-touch-13-10-builds-t2315397/page23
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices/i9300
But half of the links do not work

I do have some Linux and programming skills and I am willing to collaborate doing a Ubuntu port for i9300. I will need some guidance in the beginning though.

BTW I added some info that might help others on the port installing instructions: https://pad.ubports.com/p/samsung-s3neo-alphatesting
I hope is ok

Regards

[flohack]

@bosito7 Hi, yes this is only for S3 Neo s3ve3g, which has Kernel 3.4 luckily. Sadly S3 has only Kernel 3.0 I think, and thats really really low, even if you get it ported, it will not be easily maintainable through the major migration to 20.04 that we are preparing.

A lot of kernel patches that might be needed are only available for 3.4 kernel onwards, as well as systemd wont run on this kernel easily. So while it might be fun trying to port it, don´t expect it will be a good daily driver in the end.

I am saying this because I started on the S3 and gave up at a certain point. Also I am not sure you wanna try to run it off a LineageOS 14.1 build, if there is an official one, you could still try it. You basically need to follow http://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/porting/halium_7-1/index.html

Please do not use any ancient resources for this device, this is all outdated and not compatible anymore with how the current Ubuntu Touch works.

[hsce1]

I have gathered some information for experimenting on the FM radio topic with the S3 Neo. After some digging I came across this documentation https://github.com/mer-hybris/hadk-faq#fm-radio. Is it possible that most of the changes can be done on a running device? Or am I getting it wrong?

11 FM radio
11.1 Qualcomm

1. Needs a device with suitable FM radio hardware and a kernel defconfig containing CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS=y (CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS=m if fail to build IRIS_TRANSPORT as module) and CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS_TRANSPORT=m (or =y)
2. If your CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS_TRANSPORT is built-in then this is not needed, however if you have problems try building CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS_TRANSPORT as a module: add (adapt to fit your device if needed) https://github.com/mlehtima/droid-config-fp2-sibon/blob/master/sparse/lib/systemd/system/droid-fm-up.service and https://github.com/mlehtima/droid-config-fp2-sibon/blob/master/sparse/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service.wants/droid-fm-up.service
3. Sometimes device permissions are wrong (root owner), in this case add https://github.com/mlehtima/droid-config-fp2-sibon/blob/master/sparse/lib/udev/rules.d/999-droid-fm.rules to your droid-configs repo (or directly to device for testing)
4. Add qt5-qtmultimedia-plugin-mediaservice-irisradio to patterns (or install directly to device for testing)
5. Add https://github.com/mlehtima/droid-config-fp2-sibon/blob/master/sparse/etc/pulse/xpolicy.conf.d/fmradio.conf to your droid-configs repo (or directly to device for testing)
6. Starting from Sailfish OS 2.0.2 FM radio Media app plugin jolla-mediaplayer-radio can be added to patterns.

On my S3 Neo running UT, it seems that point 1 and 2 are satisfied:
zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -n RADIO_IRIS gives:

2587:CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS=y
2588:CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS_TRANSPORT=y

Regarding point 3. It seems to me that KERNEL=="radio[0-9]*", OWNER="audio", GROUP="audio" would have to be added since
cat ~/../../android/system/halium/lib/udev/rules.d/70-android.rules | grep radio0 returns:

ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="radio0", OWNER="system", GROUP="system", MODE="0640"
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="radio0", OWNER="fm_radio", GROUP="fm_radio", MODE="0640"

No idea how to check for the other points.

I know there is no FM radio app in the open store yet but could it work to build something quickly using this https://doc.qt.io/archives/qt-5.6/qml-qtmultimedia-radio.html?

Unfortunately I have no experience in porting yet but if someone could give me a bit of guidance through the steps above, I'd be happy to sacrifice my S3 Neo for testing.

[flohack]

@hsce1 Cool I can change the udev rules for you and then we can try this maybe

Note that I am working on the installer support currently, so if thats done you have it much easier to install newer versions of the system.

[hsce1]

Cool! Installer support would be amazing! Thanks a lot for all your hard work!

[libremax]

@hsce1 said :

Thanks a lot for all your hard work!

IT people never work hard, they just fake it!

[hsce1]

@libremax That's what I wanted to say

[flohack]

Dear All,

I suggest to split up various questions from this thread into smaller posts in the new subforum https://forums.ubports.com/category/62/samsung-s3-neo , and we let this thread alone, eventually closing it.

For example, the radio suggestion can be a separate thread probably, but also other questions. See my first post there regarding installer, unfortunately still not there

BR

[flohack]

Good News! Installer is finished!
The pull request being prepared, so I close this thread here, and, as menstioned in the previous post, please move your discussions to the subforum.

Note that you might need to update your installer, older versions might haave issues with flashing the phone with the Heimdall tool.

BR Florian