Yep, I did the tap 8 times thing, plus the slider that the ubports downloader tool said to set. Also I'm not using windows terminal, lol, gonna put ubuntu on a usb drive and boot off that, so basically just a clean linux install that I can put all my phone stuff on. Also could people click the up vote on my posts please so I can post more than every 3 minutes? Thanks.

Anyone know about Android ABI? Some sketchy github site was claiming that these phones all have different instruction sets, possibly to make it so it's really hard to bypass android, and that could be why there's so many android builds - google has a custom compiler to target various instruction sets that they modify on each new CPU? Is that true, and does that mean this "ABI", which might be some sorta VM since anything we compile isn't going to target the right instruction set, or is the instruction set of the supported phones known and we have compilers that target them? I guess the BUS/interface to devices is similar, I assume they're using non standard protocols and drivers that might be sorta 'obfuscated' or 'encrypted' to the hardware? And then to access those, I guess are we bringing in android core and android drivers, and then ABI + uh, what's their other VM, ART, in order to run more programs in this environment, or are we not using those?

@davedanger I'm using chrome on windows, looks like I have to make a custom phone building OS. Some guy on Facebook was claiming you can run native C++ on android, but after believing him for a while and grabbing NDK, I determined, no they're running NDK code in a vm/runtime, just like java runs in a vm/runtime layer, as per google docs. So yeah, I got the 128GB USB 3 drive and the USB 3 hub, so I should make my Ubuntu USB linux pretty soon, and then well hopefully ubuntu regular installer is fine with a USB drive, should be probably, and then I can put the phone tools on its own linux. Near future though. I guess I download the right version of the files from the website, and flash the phone from the command line, uh, if I do break the software, I can re-flash the phone by holding down some buttons while it boots? Or I can't?

Video chat would be great, heck since it can run native C++, it might be able to do really performant video chat compared to Java based solutions, what would be really awesome would be some l33t h4x0rs reverse engineering the other video chat protocols and making a OSS client that's compatible with the other major clients, like apple video chat and google video chat and microsoft video chat and zoom video chat and uh, whatsapp video chat, etc. Then you have like one app with notifications that can just handle all the other video apps and connect to them and their protocols, like how Pidgin used to do instant messaging with all the other IM clients back in the day.

If the device already says Pixel 3a (sargo) does that mean I can just flash it with uTouch, or should I not do that? Is there a way to flash it if I brick it? Or does it have to have good software on there to flash it?

@davedanger I did select a device, so I tried again, and selected a device again. I tried two different versions of 9 too, both the right one and another one! Not sure why it's still saying no builds available?

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong to downgrade my Pixel 3a from Android 11 to 9? Also what happens if I skip that step? Is the phone still flashable if the software gets in a bad state? I'm trying to use google's android flasher and it says 'no builds found'

Hey I'm trying to downgrade my new Pixel 3a from 11 to 9, but the android flash program says no sargo image available? Any idea why? What happens if I flash ubtouch with android 11 on there?

Hey is there a bug report section? I'm doing UBPorts Installer for Windows for Pixel 3A, and in the instructions it says developer mode is in settings, but it's actually in system settings -> advanced, that could be more clear. Thanks.

Hey I was browing the open store, that's where the apps are right, and I spotted a facebook app, I use that a lot on my android, but I noticed the app was in javascript? Anyone got a C++ version of that, or is that an option yet, or do we need to add ez c++ app support? I assume a C++ facebook client would run really well? And could be derived from the javascript code, anyone good at porting javascript to c++?

Okay I'm excited, I grabbed a new usb 3.0 128GB drive, I'll throw ubuntu desktop on there to build a phone builder linux os, and I also got a 3.0 hub. Cheap too, drive was $20, hub was $15.

Neat thing I spotted on amazon, it's a windows laptop with a 4G/LTE adapter, so you can do data over 4G/LTE from a laptop! Heck if you throw in a touchscreen and break the keyboard lol it's basically a huge phone, assuming someone's got a windows app that'll do phone calls over 4G/LTE. And text. Although that's way less portable than a phone. Also the laptop is x64, although arm64 windows exists, and lots of arm64 software exists, heck g++ can do most C++ code to either x64 or arm64 really easily. I assume you can put linux on the laptop with the 4G, although you'll need a driver.

https://www.amazon.com/Maximus-LTE-Ultra-Slim-Convertible-Upgradable/dp/B08HNB1ZG8

Also does ubtouch have a terminal on the phone, and maybe a telnet or ssh server on there too for remote terminal control from the pc or internet?

Oh okay I see clickable, I use that to cross compile from what, Linux environment to target arm64? Are good libraries already ported, and/or easy to build for this target? I guess that's easier than running gcc-arm64 on the phone lol, so yeah I'll get my cross compiler setup, maybe on uh, is Windows okay as a dev environment for this or should I use linux? Well, I can't wait to run hello world in C++ and performance test it lol. I assume it's got some libstdc++ or whatever it's called already built, and integrated with clickable? I'm an aerospace software engineer as my day job btw.

@dobey Well, now people are saying different things. Also if I can get a C++ program to run natively on this phone, I can get other OSS working right? LOL my phone showed up today, gonna try it. How tricky is it to build a custom image to load with the ubport loader? Also what's the fundamental difference between a phone, and a portable arm64 pc with a 4g net adapter and wifi and a touchscreen? That it's got flash memory instead of an SSD?

@keneda Wait, so pinephone is an actual linux phone, and the only one? Like it's got no android at all, and you can run a c++ program on it? Or does it require java vm too for some 'mysterious' reason? And no other actual linux phones exist, everything else is android (or ios) with a layer on top of it that sorta claims to be linux-like and has some source available for that specific portion, which is essentially an app, like a desktop rendering app? Is pinephone really linux? I think this Ubuntu Touch is sorta maybe mislabeled? Or do no phones exist that'll run a c++ program I write, and compile it, to run on the arm64 cpu?

@sam-strelitz I can build an image to flash, can I customize that and have it execute programs, and then mount the free space as a filesystem? Or an SD card as a filesystem? Can I add programs to the image easily, is there like an image building utility, although yeah if it has to go through android stuff, and less things are available than android and all the restrictions of android are present, what's the point?

@emphrath Oh it's a 'layer on top of android', so it's running android core, android VM, and has all the flaws of android and the slowness, and none of the compatbility? Is anything good about it? So I can't run a native binary at all, I have to run everything through android through it's Java VM?

@lakotaubp This totally isn't like an android app that sorta looks like linux is it?

@lakotaubp Hey is this replacing Android or running on top of (some) of it?