I am using UBports because several years back Google changed from "cool search engine start-up" to "creepy internet stalker". UBports frees me from Google, which is great. The Librem 5 project seems to be the next step, allowing the hardware to run with GNU+Linux. If they succeed, they will have the GNU+Linux software repos available, but they will still have a need for software that is designed to work well on 5" screens. UBports already has some of that. I support both projects with donations. I hope they both succeed and I hope that Purism and UBports can work together in a mutually beneficial way.

I just successfully installed UBports onto a used Nexus 5 and imported my contacts via a vcf file from my old phone (Galaxy S2 running cyanogenmod). In case others are doing something like this, here is what I did.

I bought a used Nexus 5 (16 GB) from Cellular Exchange for $169. It is best to make sure the phone operates with its current ROM before buying it.

I performed the installation using by laptop running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
I installed Magic Device Tool from github:
git clone https://github.com/MariusQuabeck/magic-device-tool.git

From the phone being turned off, I booted to the bootloader (also called fastboot mode) by holding down the Volume Up and Volume Down (press firmly on the center of the volume control bar on the left side of the phone) and then pressing and holding the power button until the bootloader screen appeared. Then I plugged the phone into the computer using its charging/usb cable.

The messages on the bootloader screen said the phone was locked, so from the Magic Device Tool Directory, I ran launcher.sh and selected the menu items to unlock the bootloader. This made a screen come up on the phone asking for confirmation to unlock it. I selected Yes. The phone then went back to the bootloader screen and showed its status as unlocked. The Magic Device Tool script exited with messages saying it completed successfully.

I decided to turn off the phone and reboot into the bootloader to make sure the unlocking stayed between boots. It did.

With the phone in bootloader mode and plugged into the computer, I ran launcher.sh again. This time I selected the menu items for Nexus 5 Ubuntu installation from the legacy channel (the only channel available right now). After selecting the last menu item (telling the script the phone was connected in fastboot/bootloader mode), I got the following in the terminal:

---

Detecting device

039d1dc8437d7fe6 fastboot
Device detected !

Flashing legacy channel

Creating filesystem with parameters:
Size: 734003200
Block size: 4096
Blocks per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 7472
Inode size: 256
Journal blocks: 2800
Label:
Blocks: 179200
Block groups: 6
Reserved block group size: 47
Created filesystem with 11/44832 inodes and 5813/179200 blocks
erasing 'cache'...
OKAY [ 0.524s]
sending 'cache' (13348 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.630s]
writing 'cache'...
OKAY [ 1.064s]
finished. total time: 2.218s
Creating filesystem with parameters:
Size: 13725835264
Block size: 4096
Blocks per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 8144
Inode size: 256
Journal blocks: 32768
Label:
Blocks: 3351034
Block groups: 103
Reserved block group size: 823
Created filesystem with 11/838832 inodes and 93654/3351034 blocks
erasing 'userdata'...
OKAY [ 6.249s]
sending 'userdata' (137318 KB)...
OKAY [ 4.510s]
writing 'userdata'...
OKAY [ 9.115s]
finished. total time: 19.874s
rebooting into bootloader...
OKAY [ 0.134s]
finished. total time: 0.184s

2017/07/08 19:26:30 Device is |hammerhead|
2017/07/08 19:26:31 Flashing version 42 from ubports-touch/legacy channel and server http://system-image.ubports.com to device hammerhead
2017/07/08 19:26:52 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/ubports-touch/15.04/stable/hammerhead/version-1.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:26:52 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/ubports-d50c18b27590af5734a826c4f7857d8909b0e0f902d21af142a780620c8eb58b.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:26:52 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/gpg/image-master.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:26:52 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/device-728a726a0e9a9983dc3b3b5279ab12759b3e15d33a657dd4b9253b3aa27858c1.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:26:52 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/keyring-4c4e7ef380ebcfa2c31084efa199138e93bfed8fc58aa3eb06bdf75a78af9b57.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:26:52 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/gpg/image-signing.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:26:52 error pushing: failed to copy '/home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/ubports-touch/15.04/stable/hammerhead/version-1.tar.xz' to '/cache/recovery/': Is a directory

Move to your device to finish the setup.

Cleaning up..

Exiting script. Bye Bye

---

During this, phone rebooted to bootloader, then rebooted again and showed a ubports logo, then eventually moved from that to four animated circles. If you look in the terminal messages above, there was a problem pushing some files to the phone. The four animated dots were, unfortunately, the Android splash screen because the Android system had not been fully erased from the phone. I shut down the phone, let it sit for a few minutes, then rebooted it into the bootloader and ran the launcher.sh script again. I selected the menu items to install the legacy channel on a Nexus 5 again. The terminal messages were:

---

Detecting device

039d1dc8437d7fe6 fastboot
Device detected !

Flashing legacy channel

Creating filesystem with parameters:
Size: 734003200
Block size: 4096
Blocks per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 7472
Inode size: 256
Journal blocks: 2800
Label:
Blocks: 179200
Block groups: 6
Reserved block group size: 47
Created filesystem with 11/44832 inodes and 5813/179200 blocks
erasing 'cache'...
OKAY [ 0.634s]
sending 'cache' (13348 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.630s]
writing 'cache'...
OKAY [ 1.096s]
finished. total time: 2.360s
Creating filesystem with parameters:
Size: 13725835264
Block size: 4096
Blocks per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 8144
Inode size: 256
Journal blocks: 32768
Label:
Blocks: 3351034
Block groups: 103
Reserved block group size: 823
Created filesystem with 11/838832 inodes and 93654/3351034 blocks
erasing 'userdata'...
OKAY [ 7.467s]
sending 'userdata' (137318 KB)...
OKAY [ 4.511s]
writing 'userdata'...
OKAY [ 9.133s]
finished. total time: 21.111s
rebooting into bootloader...
OKAY [ 0.136s]
finished. total time: 0.186s

2017/07/08 19:41:15 Device is |hammerhead|
2017/07/08 19:41:15 Flashing version 42 from ubports-touch/legacy channel and server http://system-image.ubports.com to device hammerhead
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/ubports-d50c18b27590af5734a826c4f7857d8909b0e0f902d21af142a780620c8eb58b.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/device-728a726a0e9a9983dc3b3b5279ab12759b3e15d33a657dd4b9253b3aa27858c1.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/ubports-touch/15.04/stable/hammerhead/version-1.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/gpg/image-master.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/keyring-4c4e7ef380ebcfa2c31084efa199138e93bfed8fc58aa3eb06bdf75a78af9b57.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Start pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/gpg/image-signing.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Done pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/ubports-touch/15.04/stable/hammerhead/version-1.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Done pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/keyring-4c4e7ef380ebcfa2c31084efa199138e93bfed8fc58aa3eb06bdf75a78af9b57.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Done pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/gpg/image-master.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:36 Done pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/gpg/image-signing.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:41:46 Done pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/device-728a726a0e9a9983dc3b3b5279ab12759b3e15d33a657dd4b9253b3aa27858c1.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:42:10 Done pushing /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/pool/ubports-d50c18b27590af5734a826c4f7857d8909b0e0f902d21af142a780620c8eb58b.tar.xz to device
2017/07/08 19:42:10 Created ubuntu_command: /home/joe/.cache/ubuntuimages/ubuntu_commands910527468
2017/07/08 19:42:10 Rebooting into recovery to flash

Move to your device to finish the setup.

Cleaning up..

Exiting script. Bye Bye

---

Note that the terminal messages this time showed the files being pushed without errors. While the terminal output was happening, the phone rebooted to bootloader once, then rebooted to UBports recovery, then rebooted to a ubports splash screen (white background, orange text, gray phone drawings). After 3 minutes the screen went dark, then a Google logo with an unlocked padlock icon appeared. About a minute after that a different UBports screen appeared with Ubuntu-like color scheme and a droid-like icon. Then it started prompting me for language and time zone and such to finish the setup.

After I finished the setup, I wanted to import my contacts from my old phone (Galaxy S2 running cyanogenmod). I had exported my contacts to a .vcf file and copied that to the Documents folder on the UBports Nexus 5. I went to the Contacts app on UBports importe the vcf file, but it didn't have any options to do that. On a lark, I decided to use the File Browser app and navigated to the Documents folder to make sure the vcf file was there. It was. When I selected it, I was shown a prompt asking what app to use to open the file. One of the options was the Contacts app, so I chose that. It made me very happen when that caused the Contacts App to import the vcf file. It took a minute or two for it to finish the import, but now all of my old contacts are on my new UBports phone.

I'm excited to be using UBports, I'll be making a donation today.

@makeixo I received my Librem 5 a few weeks ago. I am also a Patreon supporter of UBports. I want them both to succeed. I really would like to see an android-free phone that supports "convergence" of computing and telecommunications.

Yesterday I started trying to use the Librem 5 as my "daily driver" phone. The telephone, contacts, and text applications are not as polished and nicely interconnected as UBports. I have done some web browsing with both Gnome Web and the mobile version of Firefox. Those have gone well. There is no camera app yet. I had one issue today when I made a call just fine, ended the call, and a few minutes later could not get it to actually dial out when I tried to make another call. I'm not sure what caused that.

The screen and virtual keyboard are both nice. I added a 512 GB microSD and it worked fine. I installed Audacious and it plays my oggs just fine. I like that because I use Audacious on my laptop, too. The down side is that Audacious hasn't been ported to a small screen form factor yet, which makes using it a little awkward.

I may end up going back to my UBports Nexus 5 just because I need reliable phone/text/contacts integration. I'll keep using it for a few more days before I decide. Either way, I will also likely buy a USB-C hub so I can try out an external keyboard and monitor to see how well it works as basically a single board computer.

I would like to see UBports work on the Librem 5, but I understand that the two projects aren't collaborating right now and they may have sufficiently different interests that the collaboration won't happen. That's too bad, I like Unity way more than Gnome (I use Unity 7 as my desktop on Ubuntu 18.04 and will continue to use it when I upgrade to 20.04).

I just checked and the Purism Librem 5 phone is 85% of the way to their $1.5M goal! If you were thinking about supporting them but didn't think they could make it, think again! Go to Puri.sm web site now and support them if you want to see free-er phones.

@hans1977se I saw that blog too. I have a reasonable amount of skill with soldering, but I think I'd also like to have a bit of good luck on my side to pull that off. On the other hand, if the phone isn't working anyway, maybe its worth a shot...

In short: I have a Volla phone with UBports installed. T-Mobile is not working with it. Does anyone know of a US mobile carrier that works with the UBports on the Volla phone?

More details: I purchased a Volla phone and installed a T-Mobile SIM in it. The T-Mobile SIM works fine in a Librem5, it gets a 4G connection that allows me to browse the web and such. However, in the Volla, the same SIM only gets a 2G connection. When I first installed the SIM, I received a text from T-Mobile saying it did not have the correct APN settings and those would be sent to the handset. I checked the APN settings, set them to the ones given on the T-Mobile web site, but still nothing more than 2G service.

I went to the T-Mobile store to ask for help. They entered the IMEI number for the phone into a hardware compatibility database on the T-Mobile web site and told me that the hardware in the Volla phone is not compatible with the T-Mobile network, so no amount of APN changes will help the situation. Does anyone know of US mobile carriers that are fully compatible with the Volla phone?

@hans1977se I had not looked at the unbrick link, I missed that along the way. I don't normally work in windows, but I have a dual boot laptop at work for occasions like this. I'll give it a try and let you know what I find.

I would also like larger fonts. Particularly in the text messaging app.

I'm another person who would like to have options to increase the contrast and font size. Ten years ago I wouldn't have had a problem with the existing setup, but I'm pushing 50 now and my close-up eyesight is not what it used to be. Much of the time I can get by without reading glasses, but the combination of low contrast and small font makes it difficult when reading texts and calendar entries on my UBports Nexus 5.

@andybleaden Thank you for the font size hack, I will try that out soon.

I traveled to Europe (Iceland, Norway, Netherlands, Germany, Italy) and the Volla phone worked flawlessly there. Strong LTE signal, fast data, texts, and voice. That was using a T-mobile SIM that a bought in the US and the T-Mobile Magenta plan, which provides LTE data around the world.

So the Volla hardware is fine if you are in a place where the cellular service providers use the right frequencies. Unfortunately, the US is not such a place. In my experience, the Volla phone is basically unusable on mobile networks in the US. That is the case whether it is running UBports or Volla OS.

Checking the IMEI on the T-Mobile site says:

"For the best experience on the T-Mobile network, you'll need a phone that supports these key technologies:
Extended Range LTE helps deliver blazing-fast speeds on the T-Mobile network.
Voice over LTE provides crisp, clear audio quality and helps prevent dropped calls."

In short: I have a Volla phone with UBports installed. T-Mobile is not working with it. Does anyone know of a US mobile carrier that works with the UBports on the Volla phone?

More details: I purchased a Volla phone and installed a T-Mobile SIM in it. The T-Mobile SIM works fine in a Librem5, it gets a 4G connection that allows me to browse the web and such. However, in the Volla, the same SIM only gets a 2G connection. When I first installed the SIM, I received a text from T-Mobile saying it did not have the correct APN settings and those would be sent to the handset. I checked the APN settings, set them to the ones given on the T-Mobile web site, but still nothing more than 2G service.

I went to the T-Mobile store to ask for help. They entered the IMEI number for the phone into a hardware compatibility database on the T-Mobile web site and told me that the hardware in the Volla phone is not compatible with the T-Mobile network, so no amount of APN changes will help the situation. Does anyone know of US mobile carriers that are fully compatible with the Volla phone?

@makeixo I received my Librem 5 a few weeks ago. I am also a Patreon supporter of UBports. I want them both to succeed. I really would like to see an android-free phone that supports "convergence" of computing and telecommunications.

Yesterday I started trying to use the Librem 5 as my "daily driver" phone. The telephone, contacts, and text applications are not as polished and nicely interconnected as UBports. I have done some web browsing with both Gnome Web and the mobile version of Firefox. Those have gone well. There is no camera app yet. I had one issue today when I made a call just fine, ended the call, and a few minutes later could not get it to actually dial out when I tried to make another call. I'm not sure what caused that.

The screen and virtual keyboard are both nice. I added a 512 GB microSD and it worked fine. I installed Audacious and it plays my oggs just fine. I like that because I use Audacious on my laptop, too. The down side is that Audacious hasn't been ported to a small screen form factor yet, which makes using it a little awkward.

I may end up going back to my UBports Nexus 5 just because I need reliable phone/text/contacts integration. I'll keep using it for a few more days before I decide. Either way, I will also likely buy a USB-C hub so I can try out an external keyboard and monitor to see how well it works as basically a single board computer.

I would like to see UBports work on the Librem 5, but I understand that the two projects aren't collaborating right now and they may have sufficiently different interests that the collaboration won't happen. That's too bad, I like Unity way more than Gnome (I use Unity 7 as my desktop on Ubuntu 18.04 and will continue to use it when I upgrade to 20.04).

I switched to the Stable channel and all of the issues that I mentioned above were resolved and working properly.

Hello,

I am running the Development channel on a Nexus 5. On 25 or 26 June I ran an update, and on Friday 26 June I noticed some screen problems. I have run updates since then (I am now using 1586), but they have not fixed the issues. The following problems are currently 100% repeatable on my device.

• Pressing the power button once no longer blanks/shuts off the screen. Pressing and holding the power button does still give a shutdown menu as normal and also can power on the device, so the button is not broken.
• When the screen blanks due to timing out, it does not actually turn off. If I look at it in a dark room, the screen is gray instead of black, meaning that there is light being generated instead of it actually being off.
• The display brightness no longer adjusts. When I move the slider on the screen brightness page, it has no effect.

Is this the right place to post bugs like this, or is there a separate bug reporting system I should be using.

@Lakotaubp Wiping during the 16.04 stable installation worked for me. Thank you.

@ellypsis I had the same thing happen with my Nexus 5, but I can't fine any symlinks in the directory you mentioned. I'm going to try the wipe option.

I'm another person who would like to have options to increase the contrast and font size. Ten years ago I wouldn't have had a problem with the existing setup, but I'm pushing 50 now and my close-up eyesight is not what it used to be. Much of the time I can get by without reading glasses, but the combination of low contrast and small font makes it difficult when reading texts and calendar entries on my UBports Nexus 5.

@andybleaden Thank you for the font size hack, I will try that out soon.

@advocatux It turns out that Web WeChat is augments the phone app, rather than replaces it. You need to have the WeChat app installed on your phone in order to log in to the Web WeChat. From the the WeChat web site:
__
How do I log in to Web WeChat?
In your web browser, visit web.wechat.com. Scan the QR Code on the computer with the QR Code scanner located within your phone's WeChat app. Once you scan the code, confirm your login on your device.
__
What is the difference between Web WeChat and WeChat for Windows?
Web WeChat and WeChat for Windows are both designed to provide users with a convenient chatting platform to allow quick and convenient file transfers between mobile and PC.

They differ in the following aspects:

1. Web WeChat can be logged in to at http://web.wechat.com; It uses browser-based login method.

2. WeChat for Windows must be downloaded and installed on PC before using. It uses client-based login mode.

3. WeChat for Windows allows users to backup and restore their chat history, while Web WeChat currently doesn't offer a backup and restore feature.
   __

I wonder if the "client-based login" on WeChat for Windows would allow you to log in without using the phone. But that would then require being able to run Windows software on UBports. If WINE works on UBports and WeChat for Windows works in WINE, that could be an option. I don't know if either of those are true, though. I'll check and update later.