When trying to switch to UT, one of the blockers for most people could be the messenger apps, especially WhatsApp.

I personally will be unable to pass on WhatsApp, since I have too many contacts there, who are not willing to use other messengers. In addition, basically every organization of group events (birthdays, vacations, etc.) takes place in WhatsApp groups.
This forces me to keep on using WhatsApp, although I would like to replace it.

Now when making the switch to UT, this would mean I will need some sort of replacement, or ways to access my WhatsApp chats by other means.

Currently, I am aware of 3 possible solutions:

• Use WhatsApp web
• Use waydroid + WhatsApp native
• Use some sort of bridging (e.g. matrix)

I have tried all 3 of them, and found that all 3 of them are sub-par, and rather a pain to use than good.

• WhatsApp web is slow, not a real app, and not feature-complete.

• Waydroid can't be kept running 24/7 since it consumes too much battery. Also, its not (yet?) very well integrated, means you will always have a full android window.

• Matrix bridge works in a way, I have this running on a private home server for over a year. While it suddenly stopped syncing (for no obvious reason) during several months, and suddenly continued to sync (for no obvious reason), it basically allows me to chat with WhatsApp contacts using a matrix messenger (currently using Cinny). However, it has a whole bunch of disadvantages; matrix + bridge setup is overly complex, their documentation is severly lacking/incomplete as well as confusing, matrix will update year-old chats every now and then with some meaningless events ("Your security code with XXX changed"), audio-messages don't work at all.

So the question is, what is your solution for using WhatsApp on UT, and how happy are you with your solution?
(And please, for the love of god, don't spam this topic with "Just don't use WhatsApp" and the likes).

One thing that actually came to my mind recently was about the recently introduced European Union guideline for big messengers to force them to provide interoperability between messengers. E.g. WhatsApp must connect to Telegram, to allow WhatsApp chats within Telegram and vice versa.
Would this be a potential approach which was viable for UT also? So imagine we had an official UT messenger, and we could integrate with WhatsApp directly, this means we would have a native WhatsApp client? What you guys think about this?

Okay nevermind. Although the bootloader was already stating "DEVICE STATE - unlocked", and every reboot remindst of the bootloader being unlocked, I had to do fastboot flashing unlock_critical (which would ask again if I wanted to unlock the bootloader), and then the flashing tool for FF4 would run fine.

Android was successfully reinstalled.

I successfully installed 20.04 on a new FF4. Now I want to revert to Android. Following the official guide (https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405858261777) leaves me at executing the flashing script, which aborts with the following error:

*** Fairphone 4 flashing script ***

INFO: The procedure will start soon. Please wait...
INFO: The package type is "user-factory"
INFO: The build number is "FP4K"
INFO: You are using a Linux distribution.

INFO: Validating the integrity of the package.
      This might take a while. Please wait...
INFO: Validation complete.
WARNING: Flashing this image wipes all user data and settings on the phone.
         It will also remove the Google factory reset protection.
         Are you sure you want to continue?
         Type "Yes" (case sensitive) and press enter to continue: Yes
INFO: Looking for connected device(s)...
INFO: One Fairphone 4 in fastboot mode found (serial number: xxxxxxxxxx).
ERROR: The critical partitions are not unlocked.
       Please refer to our support articles for help.
ERROR: Aborting now (press Enter to terminate).

How can I unlock critical partitions? What does this even mean?

I am the author of the Scooter app (https://open-store.io/app/scooter.s710), which supports operating Bird eletric scooters.

I have support for another provider in the works, and therefore needed to also change Bird-related code.

However, unfortunately, Bird withdrew from my hometown, so I no longer have accessto Bird scooters to test my app.

Therefore I want to ask if there was someone in the community with access to Bird scooters & UT phone willing to help me test the existing Bird functionality of my app? Basically I would supply an updated version of my app, and it should be tested whether or not searching for scooters, locking/unlocking and so on still works as before.

@sven said in Which phone ?:

@s710 You can compare with Geekbench 5 scores if you keep in mind that all Vollaphones are variants of Gigaset phones. (Yes, Geekbench is Android based, but it should be a good indication for Linux, too.)

The first Vollaphone corresponds to the Gigaset GS290; I see a single-core score of 150 and a multi-core score of 902. The FP4 is much faster: 642 and 1878.

BTW: The Vollaphone 22 corresponds to the Gigaset GS5 and is somewhere in the middle, with scores 352 and 1296.

Can you maybe share some details about UT usage beyond the benchmark numbers? Eg opening times of apps, stuttering, slow downs or other kinds of issues while using the app switcher, gallery, browser, other apps and so on?

Btw do you run the 20.04 channel or 16.04?

@sven Nope I have the normal Volla Phone. But tell me anyway.

Does anyone have a comparison between FF4 and the Volla Phone?

I do have a Volla Phone, but I find the performance to be rather disappointing (of course this is personal perception/preference). I see that the FF4 has a mid class CPU, but no OLED. How is performance and display quality compared to the Volla Phone?

I am quite excited by the FF4 and love the concept, and I’m happy that it will be so well supported, but I am more of a sensible person in regards to responsiveness and performance (coming from an iPhone 11 pro where everything (including the gallery of 5k photos) opens and happens instantly). I am trying to get as close as I can, so I am also looking into the OP7 direction (since a port is being worked on), or the S10 which should also be quite powerful.

Not yet using UT as daily driver, but I want to in the future.

@domubpkm said in New music track recognition app:

@s710 I tried Shazam under Volla OS (AOSP) and the identification of music tracks matches very simply without creating and registering a personal account. Only access to the microphone is requested. Maybe something similar is doable under UT?

Yeah as I said, shazam seems to provide a public API. This might mean that it could be possible to create a UT native app which uses shazam cloud services to recognize music.

But as I understand it, there is existing apps for UT which are capable of recognizing music?

[edit] Actually I think I got it wrong. There is official client libraries for Apple and Android, however those cannot be used.
But there is a reverse-engineered python library which seems to be fully featured, which could probably be used.

@domubpkm said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

If one day there can also be a small app for identifying music tracks, that would be great !

Well, as it seems, Shazam actually provides 3rd party app APIs, so this could be a thing

@dobey said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

@s710 You should probably just make it such that the user would have to acquire their own API key, and provide a UI for entering it in your app. Otherwise, do you plan to pay the fees for going over the number of requests, or even paying €1000/yr?

The contract PDF you linked to is very much oriented toward scientific organizations building applications for research, and doesn't seem to be oriented toward people who want to occasionally query Pl@ntNet for what plant they find while out on a walk.

The app works like this. The user needs to provide the key.
I was under the assumption that they know we make an app since they do not provide one for UT, and they are okay with it. So they should be aware of the fact that there are only to ways it can work: 1) per user developer key 2) dedicated shipped key with special limits.

@emphrath said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

@arubislander Well how do they make their own android app work then ? I don't get it.

Yeah well, maybe they're using non-public APIs. Those, of course, can also be reverse engineered from the binary.
I am no expert in reverse engineering, but I was told that virtually anything can be reverse engineered with enough efforts. For example, someone reverse engineered the HTTP APIs used by the Bird Scooter app (which, btw, enabled me to make a scooter app).

Unless you're using a dedicated authentication (user must login within the app), there is virtually no way of publishing something secure, you simply cannot ship credentials/hidden stuff. Of course, this is from a pure security perspective. The owner might still decide to ship apps like this and rely on no one caring about reverse engineering, which might be an acceptable risk.

In the end, it completely depends on what Pl@ntNet wants to do. I just wanted to point out that if I was given a dedicated API key, and Pl@nNet would increase limits for this single key, I would need to ship it within the app, which would be insecure per design. Of course, I can try to occlude it as best as I can, but it won't be bullet proof. If Pl@ntNet accepts this approach, I don't see any real issues, since I guess that not so many people would be that eager to get into possession of a Pl@ntNet API-key with increased limits so that they would actually take the efforts of reverse engineering it out of my app.

@emphrath I don't see how this could be done in a secure way. They could supply a dedicated API-Key with increased usage limits, however it would be impossible to ship the key within the app without the possibility to reverse engineer the key and use elsewhere. Of course, depends if someone is actually willing to reverse engineer, and someone actually looking for an API-Key for Pl@ntNet. Just trying to say that shipping credentials is never a good idea.

@emphrath said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

@s710 awesome work. Copy paste to the api key doesn't work for me but copy paste is hit and miss in UT anyway. Btw i now realize I had this warning during my conversation with them: "Making users signup to the API individually is against our term of use.
You can find the agreement here: https://my.plantnet.org/documents/agreement_PlantNet_API_english_v4.pdf"
So this hardly can be a long term solution. I gave them the repo address just now, and even though i didn't imply it was already published, they'll find out.

Hmm okay well. Then I am wondering how this could work out at all

@catalyst said in OnePlus 7 UBPorts GSI development found on XDA, new thread?:

@s710 think you are better asking him on the discord. looks like he hasn't logged into the forum for a little over a year now.

Which discord?

@moem yeah those are jpeg. But you might have pngs in the gallery. Although maybe it would be unusual.

Great!

I think I forgot to add a function which either converts images (e.g. PNGs) into jpeg, or warn the user. I think Pl@ntNet only accepts jpeg. This might lead to unspecified errors when someone tries to upload non-jpeg images.

Gonna add this soon.

Alright, so here is the first version:

https://open-store.io/app/plants.s710

Let me know what you think of it, and if it works for you.

@quilty-weavy Why do you want to change the UI or fix bugs? I mean I am working on the app, and of course I will fix bugs when they are found

Do you have any comments or requests for improvements? Just let me know and I will take them into account.

I will publish the code to github tomorrow or on wednesday, not going to find time for it today.

@quilty-weavy There are no issues I am struggling with. It all depends on what the service of Pl@ntNet is offering. And this can only be influenced by Pl@ntNet, and not by external app developers (me).

As per https://my.plantnet.org/usage, their service only allows to submit images to get a plant identification back.
There is no feature in their public service which allows to submit own identifications back to Pl@ntNet.

As stated on the linked website, one should use their official apps (iPhone, Android) instead to contribute and submit identifications. Of course this means that there must be a service to submit own identifications somewhere, but it is just not available to the publicity / external app developers.

As @Emphrath is already in contact with Pl@ntNet, and they seem to be aware of us making an app for UT, and they know that no offical apps for UT exist, maybe they will be opening the service to submit identifications to me/us, so I can integrate it into the app. But thats completely out of our hands.

Hope I explained it well enough.

Oh well, I just purchased a OnePlus 7

@RyanAM Can you maybe provide some details on why the progress stopped? Your discord link is no longer active, and on your github repos I don't find any OP7 related artifacts anymore.

Would it even be worthwile trying to start some working on OP7 porting as a beginner? I would try to invest some time, and start reading the general docs about device porting, and learn about porting. But maybe if you encountered some severe showstoppers or anything it would be good to know before, or maybe even you still have your progress in some private repo, which could be used as a base?