@jmlich In my opinion if you need Android apps a lot, UT is not a good choice. Waydroid is a good complement of UT for Android apps you really need, but if you need a lot of them, I think a good advise is to better stay in Android. For instance if you use Whatsapp a lot, UT will not be ideal.
You should use UT if you have UT apps for all your basic needs, except a few ones, like bank apps or public apps only available in Android and Iphones.
I second the support for working the documentation in UBports Docs, it is better to keep things organized and centralized, and at least for me reading is much more valuable that watching a video, but I'm from a non-media generation. For instance I'm still struggling with the lack of mailing lists in this community (fortunately we have this forum, because I get completely lost in the chats).
@cherrie One way of checking, if you have a Linux installation, is to install Waydroid there and try, Waydroid can be installed in most Linux distributions.
My experience with Fairphone 5:
Working in my car for receiving and sending calls. Works also connected to a Pebble watch.
Works for me, it takes 10 to 20 minutes to get a fix, in the open air or at the balcony of my place (1st floor of a building 9 floors high). Sometimes it takes longer, if I don't see a fix in 20 minutes I restart the phone.
Using the current development image the battery lasts for the whole day, unless using Waydroid for too long. I haven't seen the background apps draining battery so far.
I use it with Waydroid in the transport system of my city, no issues.
Calls: No issues, 5G or Volte are working.
SMS/MMS: SMS fine, I don't use MMS.
Waydroid: Very fluid, but it hangs often when put in the background. Not a big deal because it starts in seconds.
Connection to PC: No issues to mount the device in Linux, or connect with adb.
Wifi/network: Disconnects if moving between WIFI antenna, but otherwise no issues.
Despite that I would love not to depend on Google, I have to sync my UT calendar and contacts with my Google accounts, as this is what my job uses. But it seems that Google is changing security policies and will not allow UT to sync any more with their services. This is the email I received:
"Hello,
Although you do not have to do anything, we want to inform you that it is possible the following applications stop accessing some of the data of your Google Account, such as the content of Gmail. If these applications do not meet the requirements of the new data policy before the stipulated date, they will not be able to access the account after July 15, 2019.
Ubuntu
This change is part of our constant efforts to guarantee the privacy and protection of your data.
In the Google Account you can check, manage and delete whenever you want the applications that you have granted access to."
Is there anything that can be done to keep the ability to sync to Google apps?
@Emanuele-Sorce Thanks a lot for such a detailed guide, I think it's crucial that we have a working development environment if we want to contribute.
@gt I also have this problem. The description is that the screen gets unreactive, showing whatever it was there. Sometimes I also notice that Unity opens some random applications without any touch. Turning off and on (without rebooting) the phone gets the responsiveness back, sometimes the button has to be pressed more than once. I attributed it first to Waydroid, since it was more or less after I installed it that I started noticing this, but even if I don't start Waydroid I still see the issue.
It is especially annoying when you get a call and you cannot respond to it.
Good to hear (sorry) that this does not affect only me, because I was starting to think it is a hardware problem, and I wanted to make sure that it was not only affecting me before opening a bug report.
Has anybody already opened an issue on this?
@arubislander Maybe if somebody from the community saves a kid of Zuckerberg from drowning, or something like that...
I'm still longing for classical mailing lists with searchable archives (and the forums) for this project, and chats only for interactive non-permanent exchanges, but I'm an old guy and I lost this battle long ago. For me it is a pain to look for old information in the Telegram chat.
There are a couple of apps in the Ubuntu Store that I'm interested in and that don't seem to have any chance of being moved over by the original authors to the OpenStore. These are apps that were created like 2 years ago, received a couple of updates, but haven't been touched any further in the last two years.
My questions:
Is it OK to fork them and move them to the Openstore? (They are all free software with GPL licences)
Should the original authorship be kept in the package, or only in the code?
@arubislander Good point, and I see that it is also available in Teleports.
@Opolork Now I remembered another way. Set up a group in Telegram with somebody you know and than expel him/her, call it "Message to myself". Now you can write in this group and access your notes from any device that also has a Telegram client.
@Opolork I used to use the Notes native UB app and sync it to Evernote, which I accessed through the web in my laptop or desktop devices. But I got tired of Evernote teasing me to subscribe all the time, and I'm not sure if Notes is still working in UB to sync with Evernote.
Nowadays I use the native UB app Jotit and sync with my Nextcloud Notes server. This part is easy, setting up a Nextcloud server is not.
@cherrie One way of checking, if you have a Linux installation, is to install Waydroid there and try, Waydroid can be installed in most Linux distributions.
I installed 24.04 on a Volla Phone 22 which had a clean install of 20.04. The installation of 24.04 went smoothly.
I tried to install Waydroid with Gapps, and you get into the Waydroid session, it starts complaining that it is not certified for Google services. This hasn't happened to me with any of the Waydroid with Gaps installations I tried in 20.04. It looks like a Waydroid issue though, not sure if it is related to the fact that Waydorid is now running in 24.04.
@Vlad-Nirky Worth keep testing.
In the Settings section of satStat, in the section that says something like "Updating from AGPS", do you have anything marked? There is: WIFI, BLUETOOTH, ETHERNET, VPN
@Vlad-Nirky Thanks, very informative.
But waydroid does not have any WIFI access or mobile data. There is something that fakes WIFI, the LineageOS thinks that the network is being accessed through WIFI and not through the bridge with the UT host, but it doesn't seem to be working for me in the waydroid/LineageOS being used currently in the FP5 ( I think 13). And I doubt that even with the fake WIFI working, this will help Agps to get anything.
@Vlad-Nirky I press on "Recharger ..."
But I have to amend very much my first tests. I tested this several times after my first tests and the results were worse and more in line with the usual lag of getting a position.
This morning I went out jogging and after following the above sequence I couldn't get any position at all. I went through places with tall buildings on both sides but also through open spaces.
I doubt very much that waydroid can get any Agps result in these devices. As far as I understand, Agps gets information from cell towers, and waydroid does not see any cell signal to do that.
Having said this, I have to say that I have also a Volla Phone 22, and that one gets position immediately in waydroid, even under a ceiling. I don't know what is going on there, but it looks very different from what I see in the FP5.
Answering @Vlad-Nirky in a new topic, this was out of topic in the request for FP5 features:
@wgarcia
If you are using waydroid, could you make this test. (as you report very long >time to fix gps postion)
Disable GPS (and move somewhere else).
Launch waydroid.
Run (after install) satStat.Settings reload AGPS.
Enable GPS.
Look at the connection time in waydroid and in UT.
I did some experiments with my FP5. This is what I tried:
I installed satStat from Fdroid in Waydroid. I opened and checked settings. There is an option for Agps, but only to choose Wifi, Ethernet, VPN, ... , I left that all unchosen. I saw another menu entry, not in Settings but at the top level, side by side with Settings, which says something like "Get location from Agps" but could not find anything about reload. So the experiments I did was clicking on that menu entry. I tried this:
It got position in approximately 1 minute.
The I repeated this but with an app in UT:
Unav got location in about 5 to 6 minutes.
These experiments were done both in the same open space (within the city, with some high buildings around).
@Futura I'm located in Spain. I think Volte is working as expected, but I haven't run any explicit test to try it.