Fairphone 2 (FP2)

rom4nb

Dear community,

I own a FP2 but a year ago I sadly gave up to use ubuntu Touch as a daily driver because I had too many Unity8/Lomiri crashes in daily use and then messages I was typing disappeared, crashes during browsing happened etc.

I considered give it a new try after OTA-12 with finally the new Mir/Lomiri update coming to stable - maybe it works more reliable then for me.

I have been out of Ubuntu Touch for quite some time and wonder now whether you would recommend to use the "normal" image distributed by Ubports installer (I suppose it still includes Halium 5.1?) or this new Halium 7.1? What is faster, what is more stable? I learnt now that flash on new camera module will never work with Halium 5.1 but at Halium 7.1 there is finally a chance at least ... Anbox (which I have never used in my "Ubuntu Touch times", but for DB Navigator it would really be worth a try because for me, who has no car and who uses a lot public transport, mobile tickets make life so much easier ...) does not work with Halium 7.1 as far as I understand the above comments? But I'm not sure whether Anbox is still good enough at all to use it "seriously" on a daily driver apart from development work and testing.

In recent Q&A, there was also talked about Halium 9, but there is no discussion for our FP2 to push it to Halium 9? (LineageOS has had Android 9 for quite some time for the FP2 I think ...)
Is it a decision of Uports to change the "default" Halium in the Ubports images images or is it an separated decision of Halium project?

Thank you for your counsel, rom4nb

flohack

@rom4nb said in Fairphone 2 (FP2):

udes Halium 5.1?) or this new Halium 7.1? What is faster, what is more stable? I learnt now that flash on new camera module will never work with Halium 5.1 but at

When its ready, definitely change to the Halium 7.1 based build. The same goes for N5 and OPO, as soon as the builds are there, we will switch them over in the installer, so we kinda force everyone to use it. Its so much better in all aspects

rom4nb

@Flohack
Hi Flohack. Thank you for the answer. What is still missing for the Halium 7.1 to become "default" for FP2, OPO and N5? Should I better wait some longer time longer for OTA 13, until Halium 7.1 is ready or is it still not foreseeable when this will happen?

flohack

@rom4nb we dont know when it will happen, but we will announce it some time ahead, and you will not able to miss it

Luksus

Just another issue documentation:

When the phone is fully charged, but still connected to the power-chord and WiFi is enabled (connected to a 5Ghz WiFi), it reboots itself frequent.
Sometimes every 10 minutes.

And another one:

When I want to switch between cellular data and WiFi, I mostly need to turn off the one that I don't want to use, otherwise I get no internet connection.
Example: I am on cellular, turn on WiFi, the indicator indicates that it uses WiFi, but it has no internet connection, I turn off cellular data -> WiFi works.

Fla

@rom4nb hi! I used the halium 5.1 port until last march and it is pretty stable. The only advantage to use the 7.1 port at the moment is a better camera (quicker to launch and with flash). So if taking pictures isn't something you do a lot, I would advise you to install the 5.1 port using the installer. And yes, it is way more stable now than one year ago, you should definitely give it another try.

About Anbox, the kernel supporting it is now included in the build for the FP2 so you should be able to try it easily, but no, it should not be considered a stable solution. Especially, Android applications run that way are very slow and can't access hardware like bluetooth.

Welcome back to the Ubuntu Touch world, it's a nice place and is improving daily, you won't regret your return

Fla

@Luksus hm, I never encountered those bug, I probably never was in the case to reproduce the first one but I definitely was in the situation of the second one and didn't remember such problems. I guess that now that OTA-12 is officially released, @peat_psuwit will work again on that port?

At the moment I still use the image you provided me with so it is almost two months old. Did you build another image on your phone? Would that difference explain why you have those bugs and not me?

Emphrath

@Fla "about Anbox, the kernel supporting it is now included in the build for the FP2 so you should be able to try it easily" Is it really ? that would mean i just have to download the installer and no image to flash ? Last time i did that it broke my system beyond repair.

Luksus

@Fla hm perhaps the issues are unique to my phone, wifi module and/or battery.

No, I did not built another image yet. But this is also not necessary, when there are no changes in halium for FP2.
So you just can take the "old" halium and system build and flash it together with the latest ubports build.

Fla

@Emphrath it is yes, since february in devel I guess. And now in stable with OTA-12.

Fla

So you just can take the "old" halium and system build and flash it together with the latest ubports build.

@Luksus sorry I'm not sure I get what you mean, you mean that I can go back to last devel code with the installer and keep my Halium 7.1 base now that I flashed it? All the layers of Ubuntu Touch aren't clear to me, if you have some documentation to read it would be great.

Luksus

@Fla When you flashed your phone with the Halium 7.1 version, you took the images I provided to you and you also needed to download the current rootfs (dev) build from the CI-Server.
So you just can download the new rootfs build and flash your phone again with that command:

path/to/halium-install -p ut path/to/rootfs.tar.gz path/to/system.img

(Perhaps there is a way to flash the rootfs only? Hm, perhaps it is possible to flash the phone with the ubports-installer without flashing the boot-partition and the system-image, I don't know.)

After doing that, you need to make changes, which you did to the rootfs, again. For Example the droid-cam patch.

Luksus

I just created a new build of the halium and the system images:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WOV713_RLbFsvGGwCtiIFq1O7PCnSq1w/view?usp=sharing

I am not sure, if there are changes in halium, but @peat_psuwit did add the minimum brightness fix to the FP2 device config. Therefor this should work out of the box now.

For installing follow this instructions:
https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/porting/installing-16-04.html#install-halium-boot
From "Install halium-boot" until "Install system.img and rootfs". That should do it.

For the camera to work fast and with flash, follow this instructions.
Or just "wget" this script on your phone's terminal and execute it.
Don't forget to install the patched camera app.

Fla

@Luksus thank you, I will install it and report if I have new problems.

rom4nb

@Fla
I've been now for 1.5 weeks on UT with OTA-12 (stable channel) again. I use the Halium 5.1 based Image from ubports installer and after reading a bit in the Halium 7.1 thread (complicated Installation, Risk to burn the LED, …) I will stick to it and not try the Halium 7.1 Image now.

Indeed, UT is much more stable than a year ago. I've had two "hard" reboots now, one when I tried to take a photo (I remember this to trigger reboot from a year ago, seems to be an Halium issue …) and one I think when I was Messing around with Anbox. Lomiri crashes I've had like three while using it (one with Anbox, one when many apps were open, one just random), but that is also better. A year ago it was like 3 Lomiri crashes within one hour on the FP2.

I've tried Anbox as it is easy to install now (basically just apt install anbox-ubuntu-touch). The experience is not soo good, I described it here: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1676/development-testers-for-anbox/215

I want to thank here to all UT developers. It's a big Progress again in the OS. I already found nice new small Features like finally an integrated timer in the Clock app etc. And hopefully, with Pinephone etc. coming up, there will also be more General interest in UT and more People will take over the development of UT apps or develop new apps (I was glad to see that now in Openstore there are also some SailfishOS ported apps).

Emphrath

@rom4nb hey man, you've got to know: yesterday i was going to answer saying i agreed: the fp2 is heaps more stable, good job to everyone... and then lomiri crashed on me in the middle of my message, while I was doing nothing else ^^ It's hard to convey how hilarious it was at the moment

Fla

@Luksus thanks, I did the update and everything worked well. In your script to install gst-droid, you should remove the holding of qtubuntu, this package isn't there anymore (see original topic: UPDATED: qtubuntu packages have been removed from the repository, thus no pinning is required anymore).

Fla

@Luksus well no, everything isn't working fine: I can't do phone calls. I call someone, we can discuss and then after less than a minute, I can't hear the other participant anymore. At that time, the button to hang isn't working.

@peat_psuwit did you change anything in the halium part since a few months back?

peat_psuwit

@Fla The only change recently is the addition of repowerd config file.

Luksus

@Fla for me it works with the rootfs from 12 days ago. So I assume it could be caused by the rootfs build you have used.