My phone arrived a couple days ago. Here are some initial impressions / experiences...
No luck at all trying to get my USA T-Mobile account working. I made all the settings like I did in my Librem 5 but they don't work. (APN: fast.t-mobile.com, tried every combination of 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G) I suspect there is more work to do here. I may check with support but feel its in the experimental stage and I may just have to wait for more development.
Next I wanted to try reading my Linux Magazine pdfs on the device. I found a setting to enable the ssh server but it didn't work. Went to the CLI and installed openssh-server. That did the trick. Using scp I transferred some magazines and videos to the device. It seemed to transfer really fast. Guessing great wifi performance. No pre installed software to view my PDF. I installed evince. Amazing graphical performance. Pinch zoom, panning, all very smooth and fast. Made my other Linux phones look bad.
Movies, no issues here. They just worked and worked great.
Setup my Murena NextCloud account. Very easy and was up and running with my contacts and calendar.
Next I tried the Alarm / Timers with Gnome Clocks. It works great but there is no sound. Only a popup telling me my timer has elapsed or that my alarm has gone off. I spent a bunch of time with dconf-editor, settings, etc. no joy. Looks like I'll have to create a bash script using dbus-monitor so I can play some sound myself. I really hope this is taken care of. A big problem with the L5 is to make the battery last it goes into sleep mode. You get no alarms or notifications when its sleeping. Since this phone doesn't seem to have any issues with battery life I want to start using it but.. ..it must be able to get my attention from an alarm or timer. Hopefully there is sound from calendar reminders. I'll be testing that next.
The first few tests with the camera show it to be fast and beautiful. Nothing but good news to report at this time.
Firefox browser. Seems to open and can bring up simple pages. The pages I normally test with are www.ford.com and www.youtube.com. They both crash the browser.
Bluetooth keyboard paired right away but doesn't seem to work. I messed around for a while but could make no progress. I resorted to a keyboard with a dongle. That worked.
The hardware on this device seems really good. Very responsive, long battery life, lots of storage space, etc. I will keep installing updates and hope they can get my phone, texts, browser, and alarms working. Once those things are working it will likely become my primary phone. I just hope that happens. I have been waiting a long time for my L5 to get to that point but it just doesn't seem to be happening. Fingers crossed.
Hi Adam,
Great reading the positive results. On the T-Mobile, bands are an issue. I will get back to you on this one.
Sound, its a know issue at the moment as is being actively worked on. It effects all of us.
Firefox. Uninstall "esr-firefox" and install "firefox". - It will fix your problems. Also run a software update.
Bluetooth keyboard. Please raise a github ticket for us. We will need more details.
This will be your daily driver in a matter of weeks not months. 🙂
Since it lacks the banda for T-Mobile, is there anything that can be done for those in the US?
Is the modem capable of more bands? Is there other carriers or MVNOs that would work other than T-Mobile?
About the alarm clock issue:
https://github.com/FuriLabs/issue-tracker/issues/15
To use gnome-clocks with sound you need to
sudo apt install libgtk-4-media-gstreamer
First thoughts after receiving the phone and booting up for the first time. As described solid and nice feel, not a light weight. First boot up updates via wifi, smooth experience. Screen brightness adjustment does not work (no change when using the scroll bar). When the phone is off and on charger the screen will always show battery status in high brightness. I have not yet found a button to turn off that screen (without switching it on).
Same issue as described before: no cell phone signal with ATT SIM which works flawlessly with the Librem 5 or Pinephone or Brax X2. Probably the bands, only 4G and 5G available in the US (I had not yet a 5G phone to test).
I hope that the modem will eventually offer more bands or options, but this limited band availability is not unique to this phone. Volla Quintus might have the similar limitation.
They're working on a firmware update to enable US cellular bands. Hopefully it works out and we can all enjoy the phone here in the US!
I bought the phone second hand and this is my experience after more than one week with it. All the hardware works, with the exception of the second SIM slot. Calls and data work too, here in the Middle Europe. The system is also nice, I could switch from my Android phone to Furiphone the next day after buying it. There are many bugs but no blockers.
The Android emulation is necessity in today's world, also because not all Android applications have usable desktop equivalents (e.g. AFAIK there is no substitution for OsmAnd+). The emulation works relatively well, most applications, even the proprietary ones, work for me. However it happens from time to time that it crashes or freezes and refuses to run applications. The phone must be restarted (perhaps running `waydroid container restart' several times helps too) to remedy this, which is annoying because it often happens in the worst moments, e.g. when trying to present a ticket in public transportation...
Battery life is not great. Even after fresh boot and when not doing anything with the phone and whatever settings I tried, it takes about 1% of battery per hour, which is much more than my previous Android phone with a smaller battery. With occasional use, the fully charged phone lasts no more than two days.
Overall, I'm positively surprised by the phone. Despite its caveats, I can use it; it's amazing that I can run Linux applications there and I wouldn't like to return back to Android. And the feel that the vendor works on helping the users rather than on restricting them and that things are going to be only better in future is wonderful. Thank you for returning my lost hope that there can be a normally usable Linux phone!
pdm said
I bought the phone second hand and this is my experience after more than one week with it. All the hardware works, with the exception of the second SIM slot. Calls and data work too, here in the Middle Europe. The system is also nice, I could switch from my Android phone to Furiphone the next day after buying it. There are many bugs but no blockers.The Android emulation is necessity in today's world, also because not all Android applications have usable desktop equivalents (e.g. AFAIK there is no substitution for OsmAnd+). The emulation works relatively well, most applications, even the proprietary ones, work for me. However it happens from time to time that it crashes or freezes and refuses to run applications. The phone must be restarted (perhaps running `waydroid container restart' several times helps too) to remedy this, which is annoying because it often happens in the worst moments, e.g. when trying to present a ticket in public transportation...
Battery life is not great. Even after fresh boot and when not doing anything with the phone and whatever settings I tried, it takes about 1% of battery per hour, which is much more than my previous Android phone with a smaller battery. With occasional use, the fully charged phone lasts no more than two days.
Overall, I'm positively surprised by the phone. Despite its caveats, I can use it; it's amazing that I can run Linux applications there and I wouldn't like to return back to Android. And the feel that the vendor works on helping the users rather than on restricting them and that things are going to be only better in future is wonderful. Thank you for returning my lost hope that there can be a normally usable Linux phone!
Where did you buy it secondhand and whats the going rate 🙂
Waydroid: It has many small improvements in Update 13.0.2 and will get more in the future releases. We need it for ourselves also as this phone is our own daily driver also.
Battery has had some improvements. More will come.
Sim2 has been disabled until we resolve some calling/sms/mm and band issues. Also some apps need to respect the extra sim which is work we have to do to mod them.
FLX1STL said
First thoughts after receiving the phone and booting up for the first time. As described solid and nice feel, not a light weight. First boot up updates via wifi, smooth experience. Screen brightness adjustment does not work (no change when using the scroll bar). When the phone is off and on charger the screen will always show battery status in high brightness. I have not yet found a button to turn off that screen (without switching it on).Same issue as described before: no cell phone signal with ATT SIM which works flawlessly with the Librem 5 or Pinephone or Brax X2. Probably the bands, only 4G and 5G available in the US (I had not yet a 5G phone to test).
I hope that the modem will eventually offer more bands or options, but this limited band availability is not unique to this phone. Volla Quintus might have the similar limitation.
Some initial testing with customer units has it mostly working but its not 100% yet. Update 13.0.3 will resolve these band issues.
Where did you buy it secondhand and whats the going rate 🙂
My colleague has found out that he didn't have enough time to play with the phone. Rather than leaving it mostly unused on his desk, he offered it for a price affordable for me.
Just got my device! My overall impressions after about 10 minutes are *very* good especially since I bought this knowing it is basically a dev device at the moment. Please do not take the following as nitpicking because these are minor things but things which I feel would enhance the experience for less technical users out of the box (granted most people running this are technical users)
- Absolutely LOVE the shared folder between Android and Linux.
- NFC pass through to waydroid is nice
- Didn't expect to, but I really like the programmable button
- Still need to dig into it more but I will likely use it for running some python scripts I have made
Would really love but don't expect:
- Pinephone's Glacier UI (Sailfish UI FOSS replacement) SFOS gestures are just so smooth an natural
Nitpicks:
- There is a disconnect between the Store and CLI. Store told me I was fully up to date on trixie. CLI with sudo apt update/upgrade resulted in 427 package updates.
- Furi has some neat theming; why not include some generic sounds for call/sms/etc
- Add fingerprint enrollment to the welcome launcher.
- Default install type from the store IMO should *not* be flathub since you guys want as snappy and good an experience as possible.
- There is no NFC toggle in the top menu (tweaks also does not have a way to enable one). I don't use NFC much, but when you need to it would be nice to toggle instead of dig through menus
Further questions:
- Is there BLE passthrough to waydroid?
- Does the USB-C support HDMI out? Convergence on the pinephone was laughable. It would be very usable with this.
Keep it up, I can definitely see this becoming a daily driver if/when VoLTE drops and US bands are enabled. I will probably tinker tonight and see if I can get various rtlsdr tools working
The phone must be restarted (perhaps running `waydroid container restart' several times helps too) to remedy this, which is annoying because it often happens in the worst moments, e.g. when trying to present a ticket in public transportation...
- NFC pass through to waydroid is nice
- Is there BLE passthrough to waydroid?Sword said
Just a correction here. We don't use Waydroid. See the App related FAQ items here https://furilabs.com/faq/ for more details.
wayne said
The phone must be restarted (perhaps running `waydroid container restart' several times helps too) to remedy this, which is annoying because it often happens in the worst moments, e.g. when trying to present a ticket in public transportation...
- NFC pass through to waydroid is nice
- Is there BLE passthrough to waydroid?Sword said
Just a correction here. We don't use Waydroid. See the App related FAQ items here https://furilabs.com/faq/ for more details.
From running sudo apt list --installed, lots of "waydroid"
waydroid-sensors/trixie,now 0.2.0-4+git20240808235106.a2b0286.trixie.production arm64 [installed,automatic]
waydroid-system-33/trixie,now 4+git20240601034656.c28ef7c.trixie.production arm64 [installed,automatic]
waydroid-vendor-33/trixie,now 4+git20240601034656.c28ef7c.trixie.production arm64 [installed,automatic]
waydroid/trixie,now 1.4.1-7+git20240810202506.7be8ffc.trixie.usermanager all [installed,automatic]
FAQ says an optimized fork of waydroid, got it.
Sword said
wayne said
The phone must be restarted (perhaps running `waydroid container restart' several times helps too) to remedy this, which is annoying because it often happens in the worst moments, e.g. when trying to present a ticket in public transportation...
- NFC pass through to waydroid is nice
- Is there BLE passthrough to waydroid?Sword said
Just a correction here. We don't use Waydroid. See the App related FAQ items here https://furilabs.com/faq/ for more details.
From running sudo apt list --installed, lots of "waydroid"
waydroid-sensors/trixie,now 0.2.0-4+git20240808235106.a2b0286.trixie.production arm64 [installed,automatic]
waydroid-system-33/trixie,now 4+git20240601034656.c28ef7c.trixie.production arm64 [installed,automatic]
waydroid-vendor-33/trixie,now 4+git20240601034656.c28ef7c.trixie.production arm64 [installed,automatic]
waydroid/trixie,now 1.4.1-7+git20240810202506.7be8ffc.trixie.usermanager all [installed,automatic]
FAQ says an optimized fork of waydroid, got it.
I never bothered renaming them as we were busy with fixing other stuff
The CLI tool is mostly the same syntax wise, the dbus interface is fully revamped and the system and vendor image are also fully revamped with thousands of lines of changes (something like 3000ish just in system image)
It will soon be renamed and parts we don't need ripped out as it no longer follows the way waydroid is developed and maintained.
