someUnexpectedSparks @someunexpectedsparks@librem.one

So I recently learned about the librem5-goodies and its “scale screen” app. It shouldn’t have to exist, but it does and that’s great for where the #librem5 is today. Can’t see a control or an app is rendering stuff off the screen? Just make the screen “bigger” and it might work.

If you’ve lived your life afflicted with “toothpick-fingers” and wonder why on-screen controls are so large, this is your day :)

For context (2/2), in my situation there are two key impediments to having a gnu/linux daily driver – software usability and overall reliability. That can happen on low-spec hw. In principal either the #librem5 or #pinephone can remove those limits with current devices

One day, I’ll notice that there’s been no random weirdness for couple/few months and make the switch. Right now, that interval is measured in days

I view buying these things as supporting the companies working to make it happen

For context (1/2), I don’t much care about the performance of the #librem5 or #pinephone. To me, the fact they exist at all is the awesome thing and a move in a good direction.

I want to make the switch. I’ve been reducing the apps I use on my Android phone to remove the creepy/tracky/surveillancey ones and the ones that I don’t expect to have a mobile-gnu/linux equivalent anytime soon. I don’t expect hw performance to be the limiting factor. Almost nothing performance-intensive is on my list.

Since I’ve tooted some #librem5 & #pinephone perf metrics, I want to note how truly limited in usefulness such things are. In many cases, unless you have a specific thing to optimize and test it carefully, knowing which resource is the bottleneck is challenging. I’ve tooted some factoids here, please use them responsibly😃

Related: one of my favorite quotes…
The first rule of program optimization is: Don’t do it. The second rule of optimization (for experts only) is: Don’t do it yet

I gave speedtest-cli a shot on my manjarao #pinephone and #librem5. Interesting results. In my C++ compilation test, the L5 won. On these, the pinephone comes out well ahead. There was a good bit of variability in the tests, so I’m presenting it as a graph.

Both are attached to my 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network. I couldn't get the pine to "see" my 5GHz network so I didn't bother with it here to make things more comparable.

I’m no kind of network engineer or testing lab. These are my experiences, ymmv

A reprise of my #librem5 benchmark to add the #pinephone

My October toots about it for context:
1) https://social.librem.one/@someunexpectedsparks/104989138328111860
2) https://social.librem.one/@someunexpectedsparks/104989155078072644
3) https://social.librem.one/@someunexpectedsparks/104989174678396616

tl;dr – this is based on the build times of a C++ project I’m puttering around with

No real news. The L5 is about twice as fast as the pinephone in this case. Neither is actually fast. My desktop’s best time is 2.3 seconds compared to the L5’s 36

🚫🔋😠
It is now going to take me even longer to trust the #librem5

I'm nervous enough that I routinely double-check for a charging indication whenever I leave the L5. I just grabbed the it after “charging” all night. It wasn't powered on and had no charge. Sadly familiar. I re-plugged it in and it is running and seems to be charging. So I guess this was more a warning than another fatality.

To be read in a radio announcer’s voice:
This was today’s reminder that the L5 is not a daily driver

Are the #pinephone & #librem5 good telephones?

In my experience, a freshly booted device does mobile connectivity just fine. But let it sit idle for a bit and then try it. That’s tougher to test, tougher to review, and tougher to notice if it doesn't work.

I’ve seen them both miss calls and texts, even when indicating cellular connectivity. You’ll notice if you try to use mobile services yourself, but not if others are looking for you.

Quiet unreliability is not what I want in a daily driver☹️

I’ve had minimal success with the #pinephone dock on the #librem5. Sometimes the keyboard & mouse work. Less often the settings app recognizes the display, getting info about the monitor (resolutions, refresh rates, etc). I’ve never seen anything appear on the actual display.

Might be a clue? I used grim to grab settings app pics. On one, you can see the phone thinks it’s showing something, somewhere. Wasn’t expecting that. Maybe I can make this work?

Will experiment/research more later.

So I have the #pinephone dock. I’ve seen it work with the pinephone. It is fidgety to be sure. It sometimes works fine, though with occasional odd display artifacts. I was able to use it to set up Firefox since that isn’t really mobile-friendly yet. But the dock doesn’t always seem to connect. It isn’t clear to me if there is a right order to connect things, or timing matters, or something.

Will experiment/research more later.

Factoids:
The #librem5 now ships without a pre-installed screen protector

#purism must have done something about heat dissipation for #evergreen. With the #dogwood if I picked it up and it wasn't noticeably warm, I assumed it wasn't turned on. It still gets warm to the touch at times, but not uncomfortably so. After playing Animatch for a bit, I got a 99.9° F reading on the screen with an IR thermometer.

So the #Animatch game seems to work well on the #Librem5

Well it worked nicely for a few dozen minutes of play anyway

But should it have sound? It seems like the sort of thing that would be making all sorts of noise. I didn't hear a thing.

The modem just disappeared!

After playing with SMS and mmcli on the #librem5, it stayed plugged in to power and was left idle overnight. Untouched. Even the ssh session was still open.

In the morning, the modem had gone. It just disappeared. I've no clue why. The indicator at the top of the phone screen was gone. Flipping the kill toggle did no good. Incoming calls and texts didn't come through. It only came back after a reboot.

This thing is not a ready to be a daily driver

My swing at @eliasr ‘s https://social.librem.one/@eliasr/105437794237782817

I only have one SIM card, so I did…
#Librem5 in one room
ssh into L5 from a desktop in another room
send the text to an Android phone in a third room
see the SMS on my #Pebble watch

“stupid” in the best possible way :)

I had some trouble reproducing this. The key (for me) was to include delivery-report-request='yes'. Most tutorials didn’t have that, so I attached mine if you want to play the home game :)

#librem5 Weather 1/5
So how about the #librem5 weather app? Its included in the phone, surely it’ll be top-notch software. Right?

I played with it some yesterday and looked at the weather for some locations and noticed a few oddities. When I opened it today, here’s the screen I was greeted with. No location history. Type-ahead worked yesterday for this field, but not today.

I couldn’t figure out how to move past this screen, so I gave up for a while.

#librem5 Weather 2/5
After a while, type-ahead started working an I selected Waterbury, CT from the type-ahead list. I think that means it should be a valid location with data available, but here’s what I got.

After a few dozen minutes I happened back to look at Waterbury and there was a forecast. Not sure what that means or why.

#librem5 Weather 3/5
I was eventually able to select NYC from the type-ahead and get data right away. So that’s good. But, I’m doing this mid-day on 12/24.I guess the weather starts tomorrow?

Also, you can select the vertical … thing to get some more detail in a pop-up. Sort-of. You can see the right-hand side of that detail but it isn’t clear to me what it means. I saw the left-hand side of that yesterday when certain days were selected, but I can’t reproduce that today to get a screenshot.

#librem5 Weather 4/5
Maybe the pop-up display thing works better in landscape? Nope. Here’s what you get there. You can barely see anything and you can’t move things to see anything else.

I thought I could see the whole thing on an external display, but I haven’t gotten that to work yet. I’ll toot about that later.

#librem5 Weather 5/5
On the one hand, I don’t care that much about a weather app, especially one that barely even tries to display detailed info. On the other, this is an app #purism thinks is worthy of including in the 15 that come out of the box.

I don’t like to be overly critical. For instance maybe the forecast starting tomorrow makes sense somehow. But the layout issues seem had to accept in a “production” app.

I have to admit, it will take me a few weeks to trust the #evergreen #librem5. Pattern recognition is a thing. I’ve not seen Purism describe fixing charging issues like mine. Since they are replacing my devices, I don’t think it’s a software.

As a positive – my L5 arrived with 60-ish% charge. My #dogwood drained power-off fast enough to make that unthinkable.

As a negative – I’ve already plugged it in once and saw no charging indication. Re-plugging in it fixed it.

💡⚡nervous⚡💡