UBPorts 16.04 updates + feature tests

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41

you could use SailfishOS :wink:

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42

That works well, too

43

Now that Lineage 15.1 is officially supported I’m testing Ubuntu Touch again. Updated to 16.04/devel version 2018-08-11. No time for a full feature test, but things I noticed

  • The Samsung BD-J5500 Blu-Ray player is now found via WiFi direct but connecting fails
  • The libertine desktop app scope now shows the installed apps

Then I also tried the vivid version of cutespotify, but it fails to login. Tried to build it myself for xenial but I already failed at download a required library from spotify because the linked download page no longer exists.
uMastonauts (for Mastodon) seems to work somewhat, i.e. I was able to login and it showed my timeline a couple of days ago but today the app screen stays blank.

The phone was switched on for 26 hours now and the battery is down 59%. But then I’m not using it much as my main use cases don’t work (yet). I had GPS and bluetooth enabled for roughly half of the time (which I usually switch off on my main phone).

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44

Thanks for your regulär reports!
Do you have any knowledge about the state oft anbox? Last thing I heard was that it is being worked at but there are problems for certain devices due to kernels.
Has the camera improved for the new models? Last time I tried it was working so far that the picture had the right orientation, but taking photos was incredibly slow and flash was not working. (I wonder whether they could benefit from @mal’s work, as the camera is perfectly working with SFOS.)

45

As far as I understood, there is no work being done at the moment to bring anbox to new devices as everyone concentrates on getting 16.04 done. And IIRC anbox has some challenges with qualcomm devices, so I wouldn’t expect anything soon for the FP2.

Also, I don’t think anyone works at the FP2 new camera module problems (no flash, front camera picture is upside down).

Edit: at the moment, there is no fully working email client, but a first alpha of dekko2 is out since yesterday. Setting up an IMAP account worked fine, but that alpha version doesn’t display multipart emails yet.

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46

The issues in Anbox are not so much with Qualcomm but wayland in general. Upstream Anbox doesn’t yet work well with wayland backend of SDL. There is work being done to fix it but might need some changes to Anbox. In theory the alternative approach we have used in Sailfish might also work in other mobile platforms such as Ubuntu Touch. Not sure what backend Ubuntu Touch actually uses though.

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47

Can’t say. Whenever there is talk about anbox in the UT telegram groups there are references about trouble with Qualcomm devices. But maybe this is just coincidence.
And as far as I understood, UT uses Mir, not Wayland.

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48

Thank you.
At least for me, camera isn’t upside down anymore (when I tried last time). It has correct orientation, but is incredibly laggy when you shoot a photo. So, as there seems to be progress in this issue, I thought that some progress might have happened to the flash in the mean time, too.

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49

Haven’t done any new testing, but just wanted to share that OTA-4 is out which means that now 16.04 LTS is the base of Ubuntu Touch :slight_smile:

Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 Release :uk:
Ubuntu Touch auf LTS-Basis gehoben :de:

It still has a few problems, so the automatic update for existing installations on the stable channel will switch to 16.04 with OTA-5 which is expected to arrive early October.

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50

I’m on OTA-4. With some issues that need to be solved on OTA-5 (for example, Web Browser-next is not yet ready), but it runs really well. Very good OS. Dekko 2 Beta runs well, although needs to be “finished”. But I can see new mails, answer them… Flash is yet useless. But Camera runs very well (front camera is upside-down, but I think this is a “Stranger Things” reference, Isn’t it? Ho, ho…).

I hope OTA 5 will arrive with amazing changes too. And I heard that OTA 7 will bring Unity 8 and probably New MIR, in January. Great!

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51

Small update: there is a call for Anbox development testers in the UT forum

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52

Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 succesfully upgraded from OTA-3, with the ubports-installer on Xubuntu, with sudo. :white_check_mark:

What works for me:

  • New browser: Morph. :earth_africa:
  • Dekko 2 community edition: sending and receiving mails (IMAP). :email:
  • Telegram, even for group messages. :arrow_forward:

What I’ll test later:

  • CardDAV/CalDAV sync. :calendar:
  • Linphone SIP VoIP calls :phone:
  • SSH connection with laptop :computer:
  • Libertine container :tophat:
  • Anbox ?..

What doesn’t work

  • Flash (new camera): known bug :flashlight:
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53

Just installed UT again on my device for testing and restored the contents of my home directory.
Wanted to try out anbox next, but the system.img only has 2GB which are almost full. I found some instructions how to enlarge that, but I’ll postpone that for later.

Edit: there is also some hint to clear the apt cache and set the reserved blocks in the image to 0. Then the space is sufficient.

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54

First impression: anbox enabled (not actually running) already drains the battery a lot (phone is unresponsive and gets extremely hot).
So the most important command to learn was anbox-tool disable. :smiley:

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55

Now some real testing…

I pulled some APKs from my android phone using this description at Stack Overflow.

Then I pushed them to my ubuntu phone

adb root
adb push *.apk /home/phablet/anbox-data/data

Once the APKs where on the phone I installed them as described in the UBports anbox doc.

Refreshing the app scope made all the nice android app icons appear.

As I feared my bike sharing app doesn’t work. It uses Google maps but Google services are not available in anbox.

What does work is Spotify :slight_smile:

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56

Would MicroG be available (now or in the future) ? It could do the trick :wink:

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57

Well, I even thought that it might be possible to install opengapps?! But I’m just as the very beginning of trying out anbox :wink:

58

Installed microG, but it simply doesn’t seem to work.

But good news (for some): WhatsApp works like a charm :smiley:

Edit: these are the apps that work for me

  • CatLog
  • Onleihe
  • Spotify
  • Threema (Polling instead of Push notifications)
  • WhatsApp (probably also polling)
  • my banking app

But please take note: I haven’t tested those in depth and am not using them on my daily driver, so maybe some problems went unnoticed so far

What didn’t work

  • AdAway (needs root)
  • Bücherhallen (doesn’t run without gapps; managing wish list works)
  • car2go (doesn’t run without gapps)
  • DB Navigator (crashes immediately on start)
  • Drive Now (doesn’t run without gapps)
  • Firefox (looks as if it works, but web pages are rendered entirely black)
  • iButtons (simply doesn’t start)
  • Real Drum (simply doesn’t start)
  • Stadtrad (doesn’t run without gapps)
  • vlc (upper third of screen remains black, the app window seems shifted down and lower part is not visible)
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59

I saw your video on the Telegram group, Whatsapp is quite fluid! :smiley:
What about the battery life (now that you installed android apps)? Does anbox still drains the battery or not too much?

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60

Actually, typing in Android apps is not as fluid as it seems on that video. When I’m not holding a camera in one hand and using the other to type while trying to get a video as stable as possible, the OSK is not as fast as I usually type.

Can’t say much about battery life. In general it’s not good on UT and the phone gets a lot hotter than on Android in any case. And while testing things the phone is usually connected to a power supply or at least via USB to PC because I’m using adb commands quite often.

I remember the first time I tried anbox the battery drain was higher than the charging via USB from PC. But last weekend that wasn’t the case.

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