Device: Sony Xperia X F5121
UT Version: 16.04

Hey everyone,

I am just sharing my overall good experience with the switch from Android to Linux with the Xperia X.

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate the develpers for such a great job. I am lost for words, actually. I am just truly tired of being stuck with Android and iOS and Linux on my phone is just a breath of fresh air. I never thought I'd be running actual GNU Linux this early.

The actual installation from the installer took about 10 minutes. I spent time, though, attempting to backup the TA partition, which didn't happen and upgrading to Android 8.0, which also didn't happen. I had 7.1.1 on that device and it was stuck on that. It's probably because of my region. I tried the manual upgrade but that didn't work, too.

So, I just said I didn't mind bricking the phone so I just started at Android 7.1.1 from the installer, the binaries were installed and in 10 mins, I was already running GNU Linux on my phone!

If I decided to go straight to the installation I would have saved a lot of time, but the whole process was a good learning experience.

I like that everything works, my battery is around 40% longer vs when it was still with Android 7.1.1. I can use the GPS much more happily because it's not assisted by Google servers and I am just thankful for this kind of freedom.

I do have some issues that I am working on right now but I will make separate threads for them just in case I haven't found a solution yet. Some of them are:

• Dekko 2: I haven't added my Office 365 business accounts there. I have already added my personal live.com and outlook.com accounts.
• Wire, my current favourite FOSS messenger, still thinks that the webapp is open in another after restarting the app. This is present my app created using Morph-based Webber.
  *Skype works with Morph and I can login properly but I can't get it to work with Webber.
• There were some unforced restarts when dealing with Morph, Sapot and Webber but that's fine with me. My normie phones did that too.

Those are minor issues as I was already resigned to use my Nokia brick phone just to get out of the Google - Apple ecosystem. Ubuntu Touch is a huge plus for me just by being present on the Xperia. Also, I work extensively on my Linux desktop and laptop where the apps involved work properly.

Regarding settings as to why my phone runs longer with UT vs Android, as asked by @arubislander, as well, my settings are just standard. I am assuming that my use of Android 7.1.1 has an effect on this? It's just that many experience that Apple and Google slow their devices down as they approach their devices' EOL. Maybe, Android 7.1.1 is still in the early stages of the support for the device?

My last full charge gave me 40 hours and that's with playing with Libertine, creating Webapps, calling through Wire, which is rather clear, in my opinion, and browsing through locally-created shopping sites. Of course, using the GPS and uNav kind of drained the battery much quicker but it wasn't that bad.

Anyway, the experience was rather smooth. Thanks again devs!

@arubislander said in Welcome to the UBports community! Introduce yourself here!:

@TakoR Welcome to the community. I hope you will find that we are, overall, a friendly bunch willing to help if we can.

Thank you!

@arubislander said in Welcome to the UBports community! Introduce yourself here!:

This is really surprising! Most of the time people feel that the battery life on UT is not as good as on Android. Maybe you could open a new thread and elaborate on your previous Android config on that device compared to your current UT config?
I know I would be interested in hearing more.

I will write a thread about my rather smooth UT installation experience and will mention battery life in it.

@Opolork said in Welcome to the UBports community! Introduce yourself here!:

@TakoR Greetings!

Thanks!

Hi everyone, this is my first post.

May I know if Ubuntu Phone just uses TTFF for GPS fixing, not assisted-GPS or A-GPS?

I noticed on some replies here that it's only TTFF that Ubuntu Phone uses and that's good. We still value privacy, right?

I am just concerned because I found out that the other good Android ROM, LineageOS, uses A-GPS, which uses supl.google.com servers.

I tried scanning the code but couldn't find it there but found the TTFF, which is what I actually want.

Thanks in advance.

@arubislander I was referring to regular mobile data LTE but it's all good now. I might have just botched the update using the UBPorts installer when I thought that the phone was unresponsive at the SONY logo.

I have updated to 20.04/rc now and the LTE mobile data is working properly already.

I will upgrade to the stable one when it arrives but, for now, the rc is what I am using. It's just much faster than 16.04. Buttery-smooth is the best description, I guess.

Hi everyone,

I forgot to introduce myself. I am a physical scientist, self-employed and am rather new to Ubuntu Touch, as evidenced by my previous posts.

I have been running full GNU Linux on my main PCs since 2017, while leaving one laptop with W10. In January, I decided to give that XPS the Linux treatment.

I tried distro-hopping in my early Linux days from 2008 to 2011. Then went to Ubuntu 12.04, then disto-hopped again. In 2014, I decided to return to Ubuntu, since I am using my PCs in a business environment and I just find that it's just easy with this distro.

In my earlier years, I studied software but then decided to do the sciences/research and converted coding as a minor hobby. I now have good knowledge with system security and privacy just because I had to learn it to secure business systems.

I have some contribution to the open source community but, at the moment, my schedule is too packed for such development.

This forum seems straightforward and I like it. The devs and moderators are also knowledgeable.

My normal phones gave me some form of discomfort because I know how these devices communicate to HQs. Lately, when using those devices, it's like baring a different part of oneself to the major corporations. The tracking is just so out-of-place.

I decided to go Linux on phones. UT is my first venture into this and I am totally satisfied. The battery life is longer, everything is just lower-level efficient.

I tried this on an older Android device and the UT version has a much longer battery life. It just works.

Other Linux-dedicated phones are on my radar especially the Pinephones or Librem but I will get them to mature a bit. Cheers.

Hello everyone,

I have already browsed through the site regarding creating a Webapp for Skype and some of them were from 2 years ago.

Does anyone have a working custom user agent string for the current Skype webapp (web.skype.com)?

For reference, I can run Skype without any issues on Morph Browser but when I share/forward it to Webber, it just keeps saying "Device not supported."

I've only tried the following, so far:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/113.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/113.0.1774.35

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/113.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/113.0.1774.35

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/113.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/113.0.1774.35

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/113.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/113.0.1774.35

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/113.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/113.0.1774.35

If somebody can share a working string for Skype, that would be very helpful in saving time. Thanks in advance.

@timofeyshhh Can you force the device to go to fastboot mode? I believe Redmi's fastboot mode is acheived by powering off and holding the power + volume down buttons simultaneously.

@MrT10001 @Lakotaubp @gdegrez Hey mates, I found an app on the Open Store which can handle M$ Exchange servers.

Here it is: https://open-store.io/app/outlook-office365.ste-kal.

It's a good wrapper and handles OAuth2 very well. It allows access probably just to one account but that's fine. It's a start. There is that "Sign in with a different account option" but I haven't tried that yet.

I have marked this as "Solved" even though it's not through Dekko 2 as the new app is actually a very usable option.

@slowcyclist Thanks for your reply.
I've been away for quite some time, so apologies for the delayed response.

Since the suggestion involves the read-only rootfs, how did your OTA-5 update turn out?

I am not able to mount the image as writable, by the way. I've done it before but not on a UT device, so I am not sure if there is a better syntax. I used it as a sign not to tamper with rootfs, for now, until I am able to confirm that OTA updates are not going to be affected by the workaround.

I've only observed that the inability to connect to the hotspot can be related to the WiFi WPA-PSK security, as well. It may be a good idea to have some options regarding WiFi security, but it will have to be a bit more universal, as in all devices have them, even though, at the moment, only our Xperia X devices have this hotspot issue, at the moment.

@Luksus Yes, I have. I have wiped the disk in other instances but to no avail. Cheers.

Hi everyone,

Is there a way to tweak/adjust wireless hotpot security settings on UT? My Xperia X can't establish a hotspot after the update to Focal.

I am assuming that the issue is with the wireless security settings as I had a similar issue connecting to our router after the update from Xenial to Focal. I adjusted the 802.11w protocol and was able to connect to our router again.

I believe there is something blocking the establishment of the hotspot in terms of wireless security.

Does anyone have any inputs to this? Cheers.

@arubislander Apologies for the delayed reply. We've been overwhelmed by work tasks.

I mentioned it in one of my posts but haven't managed to create a thread regarding it. The issue is with the Xperia X only. I believe it's related to wireless security as I remember having the same issue after connecting to my router after using my P3a after upgrading to Focal, but then I just tweaked some settings in my router and was able to login again.

UT treats the hotspot as another wireless connection but this time, it acts as a router. I still haven't found a solution through the terminal in tweaking wireless security. Cheers.

@danfro I am most probably going to revert back to Xenial after trialling Focal on my Xperia X just because of the wireless hotspot. I know I don't use the hotspot that much but there are times when I really need it.

I am still having second thoughts, though, because Focal is just so smooth. I can keep Focal on the XX as I have acquired another capable phone with UT and Waydroid and I can just use that for wireless hotspot. The smoothness of Focal is just hard to beat.

@peat_psuwit, I have already solved the WiFi connection issue. It was just one of my router's security features preventing reconnection to WiFI, similar to the Android 11 issue.

Anyway,

I have an Xperia X F5121 and here are some things I noticed:

• The dark theme is a welcome as my 20.04 OTA-3 installation didn't have it.

• Personal hotspot still doesn't work, just like in OTA-2, where the Xperia X isn't on the list. I am able to configure the personal hotspot but still can't connect to it.

• LTE often disconnects randomly after plugging in a USB cable in-car to charge. I remedy this by resetting APN settings.

• The phone recognises my Sony head unit (and vice versa) much more quickly now than ever.

@Mario-CH I got it working now. There was one setting in my router that thought that there was MAC address spoofing going on.

Anyway, this OTA-3 is so good and so stable, especially coming from Xenial. It's even better than when I tried OTA-2, which wasn't tested on the Xperia X.

@peat_psuwit

Thanks for this. I got the update. I still have the WiFi bug that I have been experiencing in my Xperia X with the OTA-3. Here's the link for reference. What happens here is that when I connect to WiFi, I would immediately get the prompt connected while the WiFi icon won't be fully coloured white. It would just show the 3 dots in it. After around 2 minutes, it would ask me to enter the password again. It has been like this since OTA-3 but I choose not to go back to Xenial because of the night-and-day performance. It would be nice to get some workaround to this. I didn't have this bug when I forced OTA-2 on mine, even though it wasn't supported yet at that time. Cheers.

@Mario-CH said in Focal OTA-3 stable on Xperia X?:

The transition to UT 20.04 Focal OTA-3 was not too bumpy, had to download and install a few upgrades, also reinstall the apps including the OpenStore.

May I know which upgrades you had to download and install before proceeding with the OTA-3 installation? It may do it, too, to check whether or not it can solve my WiFi issue.

@Mario-CH said in Focal OTA-3 stable on Xperia X?:

In the meantime, I think I can narrow down that it is most likely only the phone application respectively all the components involved for making calls that are responsible for the increased number of device crashes.

Mine is different. I can't connect to WiFi but I find that my device crashed only once after my last installation. I had multiple installations before just to check if I could solve the WiFi issue.

@Mario-CH said in Focal OTA-3 stable on Xperia X?:

You should delete the old connections if you are no longer able to use the wireless network.

Do you mean "Forget Network?" I deleted or clicked "Forget Network" on my previous connections but that didn't solve my WiFi issue as the the phone kept asking for the password again and again.

I am really keen on solving this as I find it hard to go back to 16.04. I tried the 20.04 RC a while ago and went back to 16.04 because of stability issues. When I installed OTA-3 again recently, everything is much more usable like I have a brand new phone. It's just the WiFi which is my problem.

@Mario-CH

Thanks for your input.

I tried the OTA-2 Focal before but reverted back to 16.04 just because I needed the Hotspot feature.

By the way, is the UBports devices page updated? It says that the X is abandoned but you are still getting security updates. Is it just the porting which is abandoned?

I am still using the Xperia X as my main phone, by the way, and I will probably get back to 20.04 anytime soon. Cheers.

EDIT: By the way, I've just tried 20.04/stable since a few hours ago and noticed that I can't connect to WiFi, at all. I tried reinstalling it using UBports installer, to 16.04/stable, which was working OK, but then when I tried both 20.04/rc and 20.04/stable again, I still couldn't connect to WiFi.

Does anyone have a workaround to this? Regards.