Manjaro ARM Beta14 with Phosh (PinePhone)

ARM Releases
, ,
1

Manjaro ARM Beta14 of Phosh for PinePhone!

The Manjaro ARM project is proud to announce our fourteenth BETA release for the PinePhone running Phosh!

image

This image is running the 5.13 kernel from Megi, which is designed for the PinePhone.

Features:

  • Firefox uses a dedicated configuration and plays videos on Youtube pretty well
  • Camera app with access to back and front camera, including autofocus
  • Auto-Rotate function and manual rotate
  • Welcome wizard for easy setup of the device
  • We have now a working Torch in the quick-access-menu
  • Prime phone functions working, including resume from deep-sleep and free speaking
  • Recording of audio works
  • Most applications got added to scale-to-fit
  • Haptic feedback functions are given
  • Optimized keyboard layout for terminal
  • Maps working with geolocate
  • Volume buttons working
  • Sensors fully functional
  • Easy access to Bluetooth, Wlan, Rotate and Mobile functions via quick settings
  • Default branch is arm-stable. This can be changed by editing /etc/pacman-mirrors.conf
  • usage of callaudiod for better audio experience with calls
  • This image uses a Crust enabled uboot

Changes since Beta13

  • Kernel got updated to 5.13.14
  • pipewire got updated to 0.3.34
  • We switched back to PulseAudio due to issues with switching profiles automatically
  • callaudiod includes now a patch to mute the microphone. However, your call participant might hear a ticking sound when muting.
  • Calls got renewed to 41beta
  • Phosh is now at 0.13.1
  • chatty got updated to 0.4.0-beta2
  • eg25-manager is now at 0.4.0 and got an enhanced modem management added
  • pinephone-manjaro-tweaks got a list to enable adaptive apps on the launcher
  • systemd got renewed to 249.4
  • bluez is now at 5.61
  • firefox got renewed to 91.0.2
  • mesa is now at 21.2.1
  • we now use ngl as OpenGL render. This will make usage of MegaPixels faster
  • regular package updates

A detailed list of package changes can be found here.

Currently broken:

  • GPS may not work as it should

Known issues

  • You may loose the modem often. If that is the case call systemctl edit --full ModemManager and then edit --test-quick-suspend-resume to become --test-no-suspend-resume
  • it may take longer to wake up from deep-sleep mode when a call is incoming. Most of the time that call will vibrate only.
  • after a deep sleep (more than 30 mins nothing happening on the phone) the phone might wake up due to an incoming call, but won’t ring. You only will get notified with a missed call, when the caller hangs up. You may want to flash Biktorgj’s Firmware 0.3.1 or later.
  • UI becomes unresponsive after a while.
  • Doing a recording may result in noisy audio savings
  • Lots of apps are still missing or are not mobile friendly yet.

Download:

Device Phosh
PinePhone Beta14
PinePhone Nightly

About the device:
PinePhone:
Perhaps you’re in a line of work where security is a must, or a hard-core Linux enthusiast, or perhaps you’ve just got enough of Android and iOS and you’re ready for something else – the PinePhone may be the next Phone for you. Powered by the same Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit SOC used in our popular PINE A64 Single Board Computer, the PinePhone runs mainline Linux as well as anything else you’ll get it to run.

The purpose of the PinePhone isn’t only to deliver a functioning Linux phone to end-users, but also to actively create a market for such a device, as well as to support existing and well established Linux-on-Phone projects. All major Linux Phone-oriented projects, as well as other FOSS OS’, are represented on the PinePhone and developers work together on our platform to bring support this this community driven device.

Order

Pinephones Beta Edition are still on stock. Visit the Pine64 Store

How to install:

Download the image/xz file from the download location. Verify that the download completed successfully.

After that, install Etcher (sudo pacman -S etcher if on Manjaro) and burn the to an SD card (8 GB or larger).

The PinePhone should recognize the SD card as a bootable device and boot from it.

The premade users are:
User: manjaro
Password: 123456

User: root
password: root

Donate!

Please consider supporting Manjaro ARM directly via Patreon, Ko-Fi or Open Collective.
You can also donate to our upstream, which is Arch Linux ARM.

Bugtracker

If you face issues with this editon, please open a new issue on our bug-tracker

Development Changelog

We will list our progress to Beta15 here

  • Beta14 (2021-09-05) Download
    • based on stable branch
  • Dev (2021-09-06) Download
    • based on unstable branch
    • updated alsa-ucm-pinephone to support 5.14 kernel series
    • calls got updated to 41rc1
    • Kernel is now at 5.14.1
    • add a fix for camera detection with pipewire 0.3.34
  • Dev (2021-09-07) Download
    • based on unstable branch
    • adding fixes for stock firmware to modemmanager and libqmi
    • added general MMS support
    • updating chatty to 0.4.0-beta3
    • added gnss: Support using ofono when compiled with HAVE_MMGLIB to eg25-manager
    • updated pacman to 6.0.1
  • Dev (2021-09-08) Download
    • based on unstable branch
    • added MMS UI settings to chatty
    • properly add PostmarketOS Tweaks to the profile
    • added gnss: properly clean temporary file before downloading assistance data to eg25-manager
  • Dev (2021-09-09) Download
    • based on unstable branch
    • Kernel got updated to 5.14.2. It includes a regression fix for v4l2, which prevented the cameras to be detected by Megapixels
    • added updated MMS UI settings to chatty
    • eg25-manager, modemmanager, libqmi got some more fixes to support stock firmware
    • Firefox is now at 92.0
  • Dev (2021-09-10) Download
    • based on unstable branch
    • Pipewire got updated to 0.3.35
    • more MMS related updates to chatty
    • libhandy is now at 1.4.0
    • manjaro-tweaks-pinephone has workaround for camera breakage removed
  • Dev (2021-09-11) Download
    • based on unstable branch
    • chatty gained more fixes and MMS releated improvements
    • contacts got updated to 40.0
    • ModemManager is now at 1.18.0 which includes all the needed fixes to improve modem stability on the Pinephone
    • Megapixels got updated to 1.3.0
    • Siglo was renewed to 0.9.4
  • Dev (2021-09-12) Download
    • based on unstable branch
    • Chatty got updated to 0.4.0 including additional MMS patches
    • We are using a mobile version of calculator
    • mmsd-tng got updated to 1.2
    • pamac got updated to 10.2.0
    • pinephone-manjaro-tweaks got pamac adjustments changed
    • We added vvmplayer to play your voicemails
  • Dev (2021-09-13) Download
    • based on unstable branch
    • appstream-data got updated by Arch
    • eg25-manager got some more gnss fixes
    • kwayland got updated to 5.86.0
    • Kernel is now at 5.14.3
8 Likes
2

Modemmanager was upgraded to 1.18rc1, and there are changes to how call notifications from the modem are handled on the Pinephone. As a result, some receiving calls may be missed. SMS/text messages are not affected by this. Alternative Firmware 0.3.1 seems not to be affected by this, however we are now working on a solution also for stock firmware. Before you change your firmware you may want to read this articel about Pinephone Modem Stack. Also the upcoming Beta15 might have needed fixes for the stock firmware.

1 Like
3

Should the release build from 2021-09-07 (and -08) have the fixes of missed calls for stock modem firmware (.002) ?

4

This sentence makes me assume the fixes aren’t released yet, as Beta 15 is yet to be released, and even then it might have the needed fixes :slight_smile:

Edit: Hm, well. Seeing this listed under the Dev (2021-09-07) release makes me doubt myself :thinking:

  • adding fixes for stock firmware to modemmanager and libqmi
5

We have a process to rollout the fixes. However you can always test out the daily builds.

6

Here is a relevant blog:
https://dylanvanassche.be/blog/2021/pinephone-modem-myths/

7

See second post my friend …

8

Its been awhile since i have updated my Phosh SD on the pinephone and just updated to the newest Dev build. WOW!!

Ill have to test out the MMS functionality within Chatty over the weekend
Liking the “Tweaks” app. Having more customization is always a plus
Notifications now on the lockscreen (more of a Phosh update)
Camera is buttery smooth now (still green tint on front camera - probably Hardware related)

9

Review/Feedback.

Although the hardware specs are a bit of a downgrade from my daily driver phone, Manjaro (Phosh) on the PinePhone in the latest builds are getting very close to usable for my daily needs.

Apps

  • Navigation
    Although the only thing that stopped me from making the decision to try to leave my Android handset at home and taking my PinePhone out with me was the lack of a usable navigation app (like Google Maps on Android for example).

  • Browsers
    Most browsers available to use feel like they lack user-friendlyness on the PinePhone, although the technical capabilities of something like Firefox running on Manjaro (Phosh) is obviously something to admire compared to Android/iOS browser alternatives.

  • Most other applications that I use daily on Android have usable alternatives on the PinePhone so far (albeit with the odd few compromises admittedly).

OS/Performance
Please forgive my lack of knowledge regarding some of the work implemented so far regarding the following, but I’ll suggest the ideas in case they are constructive anyway :slight_smile:

  • Storage/Memory
    I think that given the current state of PinePhone builds, perhaps some kind of optimised version of the ‘preload’ daemon may be welcomed to reduce the time it takes to launch frequently used applications which with time may adapt to the individual users preferred apps rather than some preset options of course (as I choose to use Telegram and Signal and rarely ever choose traditional SMS, MMS & calling methods, I’d rather those apps were given priority over the phone and messages apps).

  • CPU
    A daemon which could be used to lower the CPU priority of background apps and give full priority to the foreground app may be welcomed as I often find that even having one background app running whilst I’m using another app causes significant slow downs in many scenarios.

Phosh/System GUI
Of course I think we can all accept that at this stage of development the GUI progress is going to have some limitations, whether that be due to system performance, or simply lack of time to make further progress in developing the front end.

  • Interaction/Navigation
    The app drawer button/arrow at the bottom of the screen can often be inconvenient as I often find myself tapping that accidentally when trying to press the space bar in the on screen keyboard. I think that it would be more practical to either add a larger dead zone/padding between the drawer button and the OSK to avoid accidental presses, or better yet, if it won’t impact the system performance too much, require that the user swipes up from the drawer and OSK toggle buttons to make those function to avoid accidental presses whilst typing in the OSK.

  • GUI Design
    The design would benefit from some changes. I personally have tried to experiment with Gnome 40 on a PinePhone Manjaro build simply to try to see what could be possible with the Gnome environment with a few quick and easy tweaks without too much effort required (partially as I don’t have enough time to focus on developing changes myself through code, so chose other extensions/tweaks to see the possibilities).
    With Dash to Dock to help permanently show 5/6 favourite apps at the bottom of the screen, it felt much more like a traditional mobile launcher GUI with the stock Gnome top bar providing something that feels like a status bar (until interacting with the top bar of course as it lacks a mobile pull down notification center and quick toggles for example).
    Although of course, if this was to be the inspiration for future mobile GUI designs, I think that it would require the dock to switch to a navigation bar when an app is running in the foreground (unless something similar to Android swipe up gestures were to be implemented in order to enable greater use of the screen real estate, and then simply providing the user with the customisation option to hide the dock when an app is in the foreground would be a good option)
    Although Gnome 40 was kind of usable at 200% display scaling, I think that 150%/175% fractional scaling may be preferable if Manjaro’s mobile project was to consider trying to base it’s GUI off of the same base as the Gnome desktop environment with minor improvements to the desktop GUI’s adaptability to smaller screen sizes.

Conclusion

  • Overall the project is very impressive so far in its early stages, I would love to see its potential on higher spec devices with more modern hardware specs (i.e. 8GB+ RAM, Snapdragon 800+ SoC, 64GB+ storage, etc…). The possibilities that this project brings to the mobile space are endless and I would love to see this bring an end to the current OS duopoly in the mobile space eventually. Thank you to everybody involved in the project for your efforts so far. I hope that this feedback has been constructive and I wish you all the best in the future with your goals! :slight_smile:
10

Hey, on yesterdays nightly release I noticed there was a Visual Voicemail app that is missing from my regular install. Im on the unstable branch so im wondering if my phone somehow missed the update or has it not been released yet?

11

New apps will not get installed by default, unless they have been added as a dependency to something you already have installed.

So if you want the Visual Voice Mail app, you need to install it from the repo.

12

I entered all of the MMS carrier information in Chatty, but I am still unable to send or receive MMS texts. Also I am unable to add more than 1 person to a chat and whenever I start a chat it says “This is an SMS chat” with no option to switch to MMS. Are there any other steps to be able to send MMS?

13

Edit the file $HOME/.mms/modemmanager/mms as needed in a text editor. Upstream is working on getting this automated. UI is just a preview on how it might look. A connection to mmsd-tng is not given with Chatty UI yet. See also Beta15 release announcement for in-depth how-to.

1 Like
14

So I edited the .mms file with the correct APN information, but now when I run “mmsdtng -d” I get the error:

Ofono plugin needs to be ported to GIO Dbus!

Ofono plugin is disabled until then

…mmsd-1.2/src/plugin.c:add_plugin() Plugin ofono loaded

Lost Dbus connection! Exiting…

15

what does journalctl say?

16

/mmsd-1.2/src/plugin.c:add_plugin( ) Plugin modemmanager loaded
Ofono plugin needs to be ported to GIO Dbus!
Ofono plugin is disabled until then
/mmsd-1.2/src/plugin.c: add_plugin( ) Plugin ofono loaded
Lost Dbus Connection! Exiting…
GNSS assistance upload started…
GNSS assistance upload step (1/9): disabling GNSS engine through ModemManager
GNSS assistance upload step (2/9): disabling GNSS engine through AT+QGPS
Executed soft wake sequence
Sending command: AT+QGPS?
Response: [+QGPS?

OK]

17

Why ofono? Did you try the developer image or beta15 image? I tested both to see if the mmsd-tng update created a regression. Works as it should with T-Mobile Germany (Ja Mobile Prepaid) just fine.

18

I was using the developer image from 9/13, but I just flashed the beta15 image and am getting the same error. I am using AT&T in the States, if that makes any difference.

Edit: I reinstalled mmsd-tng and it is now registering mms in cli but not in chatty, which if I read the changelog right is normal.

19

There is no connection to the UI and mmsd-tng yet. Roadmap: Completing MMS Support (#571) ¡ Issues ¡ Librem5 / chatty ¡ GitLab

20

That’s what I thought. Thanks for all your help Phil.