Patreon is one of the methods to donate that is given on the ubports.com donation page. According to Patreon, 158 patrons are giving $US 1,148 per month to the UBPorts Foundation. Sure, that's not going to pay a salary, but, to me, it is a significant amount of money toward running servers and infrastructure. However, I don't know if that's true, because I don't know what the operating costs are. I am blindly donating because I want to be supportive, not because I am trying to pay an amount that I think the software is worth to me. What are the operating costs? If that was clear, maybe more people would be likely to donate. A graphic popped into my head: a thermometer where the level in red is the annual cost, and the red turns green from the bottom up as donations come in.

The question of charging a fee for FOSS is an old one. It cannot be easily answered. There's a lot of philosophical debate about it in the history of FOSS. To me, FOSS is one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. A shining knight standing to face the history of industrial economies. I'm just saying that charging money doesn't just slowly smother UBPorts. It's no longer FOSS. It doesn't matter if you charge $US 10 or $US 1,000. It's no longer part of this amazing community of altruistic creators.

Do you want a fee to use Linux? Wikipedia? Every forum and website you use to troubleshoot the problem with that driver that doesn't quite work right in Linux in the latest new bare hardware you bought? When someone posts a solution to a problem in a forum, they do not charge money. They are freely giving their intellectual property. This is all part of this network economy that the Internet is enabling. To me, UBPorts is my best hope for a phone in this economy. I will do what I can to voluntarily give of my time and money.

@beta-break
The core app list includes calendar, but not contacts. The list described here includes Morph, which is not a core app, but does not include an email client, such as dekko.

I realize that there's a lot of work planned here (like, VoLTE), but I think that contacts and an email client should be added. Also, the list of core apps should be re-evaluated?

Thank you!

Finally, I've received the right phone. It is from Southwest Distributors, via Swappa. I should have followed the recommendation of the UBports site and gone there first. I could tell right away because one of the first steps after powering it up is asking about a SIM and giving the option for an eSIM. Verizon models don't offer that.

@kugiigi Two of the Motorola phones I've had use serveral acceleration gestures. For the flashlight it is two hacking motions. Two wrist twists opens the camera.

I'm now on my fourth Pixel 3a from Amazon or Ebay. Every vendor has send me the wrong phone. Wrong model, wrong size (I already bought case and screen protector separately), Verizon-locked, unknown vendor locked. The one I have now is the wrong color, although I don't care about that. From Ebay, it's supposed to be "Factory unlocked". I tell vendors that I want that, plus OEM unlocking. This time, I was able to put my Google Fi SIM card (that I use in a Google Nexus 4) in and activate it. That works, but the OEM unlocking is greyed out. I can't downgrade Android to 9 (step 1).

I haven't been able to find out the model of this (Regulatory Label is blank). I tell vendors that I want a G020G, following the advice elsewhere in the forum, but I can't determine that that is what I have. I'm waiting for a call back from Google to see if they will unlock it or tell me what the phone's status is.

I can't see that it supports eSIM, but from what I read it is supposed to. There's no eSIM IMEI listed or other evidence of it. Is this a clue as to what the phone is?

Thanks for any info you can provide me.

Did you recently buy it? Can you return it? I went through 4 phones from Amazon, Ebay and the site that the UBports buy link goes to, before I got one that was OEM unlockable. Others here have had similar experience. Sellers might not understand what it means. Try to find seller who will check that or at least give you the IMEI number so that you can contact Google Fi support to find out if it was originally sold in Google Store. Those are unlockable.

@uxes Correct Android? I had whatever it came with. 10.something. I wasn't running UT. I was only starting the process. I couldn't get data, so I couldn't unlock the phone with Xiaomi. I wasn't close to installing UT yet.

I'm interested in exploring working on this, so that CardDAV can be configured via the system-settings and more. I don't see it under the system-settings-online-accounts repository in Github. I've run Mobian on my Pinephone and all the usual Nextcloud services are available in the settings there. I guess the code, even the language, could be pretty different in this case between Mobian and UT. Still, I'd like to explore that. TIA.

I already support through Patreon. I encourage that approach. Maybe more visibility for that? As much as I don't like paying middle-businesses, and I personally think Patreon takes too large of a percentage, there they are.

I'm open to other voluntary ways of giving money.

I'm upgrading from a Google Nexus 4 to a Pixel 3a. I have a convergence dock for my Pinephone. Since the P3a uses USB-C, I'm wondering if anyone knows if the dock for the Pinephone will work on the P3a. TIA.

@uxes Correct Android? I had whatever it came with. 10.something. I wasn't running UT. I was only starting the process. I couldn't get data, so I couldn't unlock the phone with Xiaomi. I wasn't close to installing UT yet.

@RobTheBold I've tried this phone (Global model) with AT&T, RedPocket (AT&T) and Mint Mobile (T-Mobile). The first two don't work at all. Mint works for voice and SMS but not MMS or data. I'm giving up on this one and returning it to EBay.

With Mint Mobile, it doesn't really get data. Almost zero connectivity for data. MMS is unreliable. Voice and SMS okay.

My conclusion here is that this phone is not a good option for the USA. I'm going to return it.

Yeah, this is really weird. It beeps, then works, then stops working, then switches to T-Mobile, but the APN is set to the Mint settings given in Mint's website.

Argh... voice and text work, data does not. This one is complicated. (Note, I'm still running Android on this. Haven't gotten to unlocking the boot.)

I got a Mint Mobile SIM card and it is working. I believe that it is over T-Mobile. T-Mobile APNs came in by default. It would not connect to AT&T using my AT&T SIM card (not an MVNO, but directly with AT&T).

Another data point is that I have an old T-Mobile SIM for which the account is closed. I used to use it on my Pixel 3a. It doesn't connect, but it does fill in the T-Mobile APN correctly.

Does this mean that my N9P is NOT carrier locked? That it will work with T-Mobile if I get a new SIM card?

said in RedPocket SIM card doesn't work:

MI Activation Lock: OFF

Does this mean that the phone is OEM unlocked and I would not need to go through the process of waiting a week for it to be unlocked before I can install UT?

I can't find out much about "agms". There's a little bit of information on the web about AGMS Global, based in Singapore. A couple of sites give APN settings for AGMS Global.

Weird.

I found another IMEI check site that is specific to Xiaomi phones and it says

Purchase Country
PARAGUAY
Activation Country
Guatemala

I found a site that gives the APN for "agms" for use in the USA. agms.nl.gmm

This is getting deep and mysterious.