Update

The issue for me, at least, is bluebinder. It sits up at the top of top consuming 154% CPU.

I have bluetooth turned off, not that turning it on does anything.

it would be interesting to know if any one else with this device has experienced the same.

It's nearly a year later, but:

Totally new install from Android->UBports using ubports-installer_0.9.7-beta, on a Pixel 2 (just 2), and there's no wifi device. I haven't yet tried a different version. I'm so new to this that I don't even know how to tell which OTA version I'm using; the installer was 0.9.7, and what ended up on the phone was kernel ubuntu-phablet-4.4.169-something under Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial).

rfkill sees the bluetooth, but not the wifi.

I apologize if this is considered necro-bumping.

Just another data point: I just installed UT on a Pixel 2, which I originally decommissioned because the USB port had become unreliable; the battery was not new when I turned it off for the last time, but not terrible.

I installed the baseline Android, including flashing the radio image (radio-walleye-blah-blah.img), before using the ubports-installer; the installation went without errors. However, after rebooting I apparently have no wifi device. NetworkManager doesn't see one, and neither does rfkill (although, it does see bluetooth devices hc_power and hci0). I wasn't really expecting much anyway, so I set the phone aside, screen off.

I came back a couple of hours later to show my wife Linux on a cell phone (!!!), but the phone was off. Odd, I thought, but it informed me of an empty battery, so I plugged it in and started it up again.

I'd attach a screenshot, except I haven't figured out how to get data onto or off of the phone yet, but I'll use my fantastic art skills to paint what the battery widget showed me:

100% |         |
     |         \
     |         |
     |         \
     |          |
     |          \
     |           |
     |            \
 0% |               |
     |-----------------------------------------

This is with no WiFi device visible to Ubuntu. Maybe it was on full power madly broadcasting out radiation, and the Linux kernel just couldn't see it; I don't know, but it is funny, mainly because I don't need this device to work. It'd just be nice.

I suppose if I really cared, I'd start a new post asking how I get the wifi working; I probably will, eventually. OTOH, if there's something I missed that I need to do to get the kernel to see the wifi device, I'd be grateful to know. I should probably look at the dmesg logs and see if anything stands out.

I'll repeat that I did successfully flash the radio image from the Android Walleye zip prior to the installation.