Battery life is usually less than expected due to unoptimized software and processors clocking too high. On my devices, I set the CPU governor to 'powersave', which reduces power usage but also performance.
There are multiple scaling governor settings which might not be available on all devices (depends on kernel configuration)

• performance : high frequency; slightly increased performance and battery consumption
• powersave : low frequency; reduced performance and superior batter life
• schedutil : changes according to the scheduler (default on my device)

This command list the available governors to set for each core (should be more than those I listed above)
sudo cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors
Report which governors are currently selected for each core:
sudo cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
Set the scaling governor to powersave to every core:
echo "powersave" | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

The commands above do not need mounting root as read-write, any change is reverted on reboot.
I tried to make an app for configuring these (a while ago) but I had trouble with sudo.

@Twigg Many questions indeed, I will try to answer them as accurately as I can, so if anyone knows more, feel free to correct me.

Before answering your questions, I think it is necessary to clear any misconceptions about the Android kernel.
Most Android devices don't support mainline Linux, so the upstream kernel can't work on the device, as it is missing specific drivers and device trees. That is because the SoC manufacturers (Qualcomm/MediaTek) use an older kernel as a base to test their new designs, and that old kernel is subsequently used by the device manufacturers (e.g. Fairphone). Of course, neither of them bother isolating the changes to create a pull request to upstream Linux (due to costs etc.). As a result, Ubuntu Touch developers have to do extra patches to make the downstream patched kernel work for them.

Does you mean that the FF5 did not support mainline Linux?

Yes, Fairphone officially didn't, but the community has (see the PostmarketOS port)

Why the change with FF6?

I don't know. Maybe they hope they can attract more Linux enthusiast (like us).

I wonder about the advantages/disadvantages to using mainline Linux vs the Hallum approach

Mainline Linux enables more flexibility and a desktop-like experience. However, it is more difficult to make everything work there, postmarketOS is a great example, as almost none of their devices currently support the same hardware features as they did on Android. Not even Qualcomm themselves have succeeded in fully working mainline Linux kernel, as the recent Snapdragon X Elite chips which were made to compete with x86 still don't have full Linux support.

Halium on the other hand uses the same downstream kernel as Android does, with some adaptations for Ubuntu. It also runs the Android drivers on an LXC container, which allows easier access to hardware. As you can imagine, this has limitations, as we can't change the Android drivers and pulling patches from upstream Linux can break functionality.

I presume that this amounts to a desktop equivilence to doing a clean install of Ubuntu, vs installing it in Windows?

I don't get your analogy. It would be more accurate to say that to install normal Ubuntu, you have to reverse engineer the Windows drivers. However, in Ubuntu Touch's case we can reuse the Android drivers as the Linux kernel remains mostly the same.

From what I have read above, it looks like there haven't been too many changes from FF5 to FF6, so perhaps that makes it easier for Ubuntu Touch to get released on the FF6?

Each device needs its own port, sometimes even devices with the same chip require very different ports. In this case FP6 seems vastly different hardware-wise than FP5 so I don't think they would be similar software-wise.

@captainfunk said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 168 call for questions:

Are you thinking or planning to implement the screen rotation to 180 degrees ?

It depends on if the porter enabled it. The configuration file is located on /etc/deviceinfo/devices/<codename>.yaml. Taking the Volla X23 configuration file as a random example:

  SupportedOrientations:
    - Portrait
    - Landscape
    - InvertedLandscape

As you can see, there is no "InvertedPortrait" mode enabled. I don't know adding it below will work.

---

Edit: (sorry, just noticed the Q&A was 3 days ago...)

It will also support mainline Linux (like the pinephone) as the patches have already been submitted: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fairphone-6-Linux.
I suppose the Ubuntu Touch port will be Halium based but it is certainly nice anyway.

@ds2k5 You can enable the SSH server from UT tweak tool.

@Salah I believe it should work fine, as these icons neither large (to fill the partition) nor a dependency to something.
I had modified lomiri's qml by editing some files, and there wasn't any issue.
You can try, and if it fails reflash.

@mihael In the same directory normal Debian-based distros with NetworkManager do:
/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/WIFI_SSID.nmconnection

@TeckMonster There is a port for the Samsung Fold 3 (https://gitlab.com/ubports/porting/community-ports/android11/samsung-galaxy-z-fold3), you may want to ask its status on Telegram, and if the porter got the screen switching working.

@wally Just ported the app to 20.04, changing icons works!
This is the new repository: https://gitlab.com/ikozyris/custom-phablet-tools,
I plan to publish it to the open store if it works for others as well.
Took me ~2 hours.
I might add a way to add custom icons, currently they are downloaded from https://framagit.org/ubuntouch-fr-dev/custom-phablet-tools/raw/media/icons/[APP-NAME.EXTENSION].

@Salah I'm currently rewriting the backend to not require remounting as read-write. Currently this arm64 focal .click works. Screenshot:

@pparent

Example from this review: https://itsfoss.com/news/pinephone-review/
"As a result, users of it are subject to Ubuntu Touch’s “locked-down” style, similar to Android and iOS."

" PinePhone owners are generally tinkerers who like control over their device, which is made much harder with Ubuntu Touch."

Actually apt is allowed in the PinePhone, so the article linked is mistaken. Which is typical for that site since it is not technical. The "locked-down style" is particularly wrong and shows the author hasn't done any research at all.
In general, new people coming into UT should expect having to adapt to things being different than their Linux distro. I like to describe the Ubuntu Touch experience as the closest you can get to the familiar GNU/Linux stack while retaining the phone's original functionality.

@gpatel-fr These small utilities can installed with nix or just copy the executable from the .deb to .local/bin.

@fredldotme Encrypting WiFi settings (/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections) is a must-have, as they contain passwords. But what is the reason to encrypt apps' installation? The executables and assets are public anyway, I don't know any app that stores sensitive data in /opt.

@bbiw I think it's feature for when you listen to music through external headphones and you disconnect them to stop playing music. It also happens on Android.

@TeckMonster There is a port for the Samsung Fold 3 (https://gitlab.com/ubports/porting/community-ports/android11/samsung-galaxy-z-fold3), you may want to ask its status on Telegram, and if the porter got the screen switching working.

@asiasiasi The UBports PDK is what you are looking for, presumably the "emulator that didn't work". There was a recent post where someone needed to make chages for it to start. It is essentially a QEMU VM with adaptations for graphics but not used often so it can break.

As you already found out, Lomiri can be ran on normal Ubuntu as well in case you want to familiarize with the environment.

Individual apps can be ran (and built) using clickable desktop to test if it what you want, since apps are a big part of the ecosystem.

@gpatel-fr Actually all that A-GPS does is significantly (normal GPS is 50b/s) speed up downloading the satellite orbital data (almanac and ephimeris) through cell towers. It can also help with the triangulation as the phone knows it's near to the cell tower.

@mihael You can use scp to copy (pull) those file over ssh to your phone: scp user@ip:/file.txt /dir

@gpatel-fr

Vndk deprecation happens in Android 15, not 14 - unless Halium 14 means Android 15 ?

I think the only thing UT has to do with VNDK is mount the correct partitions to be read by the android container, which handles the rest. Ask in the porting group for more detail, there are already some short discussions around it.

to check the vndk version, it's necessary to enable debug mode on the phone, connect a computer through usb and use adb

You can install an app called Treble Info from F-Droid.

@gpatel-fr

Also, what's up with vndk deprecation for Android 15 ? Has libhybris any chance of being updated to use the new-fangled apexes ?

New devices use GKI (generic kernel image) which is part of the effort by Google to standarize the kernels used by devices. For us this means that the first boot will be harder to achieve, but it will be easier to get more phone hardware working due to the similarities. Halium 14 is already working to some extent so there shouldn't be any issue.

(Sorry for the late reply, couldn't respond when I first read it and forgot it later.)