I’ll second your thoughts about the Bluetooth. I’ve noticed in my car that if I move the phone from the front with me to the back seat with one of my kids (e.g., so they can find videos or songs that they want to play), the Bluetooth connection to my car gets pretty bad. It’s only a couple of feet if that from my front seat cup holder (where the connection seems pretty good for the most part) to the back seat. It’s disappointing that just that difference causes such a decrease.
Also, I’ve noted elsewhere that any processing going on, especially if WiFi is enabled (connected or not), seems to interfere with data streams over Bluetooth. I don’t know if there’s a way to better isolate that to prevent the stuttering that happens, but that would be a nice improvement.
Because not everyone else is experience the same. Have you hundreds of apps on home screen or do you have a wrong scaled background picture? For me landscape mode laggs because the picture from portrait view will rendered in oversize of landscape mode. I could also disable it and have no laggs anymore.
I also watched some videos on bed with W-Lan through 4 rooms and had no lag at all (using Firefox). Phone got warm, but that’s it. People complain what they’re experience and I also do it. But those are not the same for everyone.
I’d first like to say that this is the way the phone was shipped to me + updates and hasn’t gotten better with weeks of tinkering + waydroid. No, I do not have a hundred apps on the homescreen. Maybe 10 extra. As for background picture, I have not changed it. Everyones experience may not be the same, but I know there are others with the same complaints. Watching youtube through firefox sometimes works alright, but more often than not, its choppy due to cpu/gpu lag, not wifi lag. On top of that, the optimization is so poor that I use less battery running youtube inside waydroid. But I cant use youtube on waydroid because auto-rotate doesnt work with waydroid inside PureOS and neither does bluetooth. While it may be insignificant to others, bluetooth and youtube are absolute hard requirements for a daily driver for me.
Firmware up to date? I don’t know if there is any older firmware that can cause your issue. Or
does your phone runs too hot while watching and throttle? In what resolution you’re watching? I think it makes not much sense to watch in more than 720p, since phone cannot display higher resolution (okay because of YT-video-algorithm it can make sense to watch 1080p to get details back, but anything above makes no sense).
You have a slow CPU/GPU. Same models can be “very” different. But I don’t know if that affects Librem 5’s common tasks, never tested what it can do if I really use all the power.
Point 2 is the easiest thing you can test, if you haven’t already.
Yes, as mentioned in my last post, the first thing I did was update it and Ive just updated it again in the past few days Ive been messing with it again. As for quality, I’ve never seen 1080p come up as an option and I can confirm it still runs bad on 720p. Lastly, what proof is there that some phones are just slower than others? I haven’t heard this before.
@Ick specifically referenced “firmware” which will likely not be updated by a vanilla Linux sudo apt upgrade etc.
So the first question would be: do you have the Redpine WiFi/BT card or the SparkLAN card? And the second question would then be: does your card have the latest firmware?
I’m not suggesting for one moment that any perfect firmware exists right now, but it can make a difference.
That’s a physical thing of processors in general and no issue of Librem 5. The difference just could be that other systems have enough power that you never experience a difference. You can only realize it on system that run on edge of calculation power. But let’s say it more directly: my last post was about speculative thoughts. I have not enough information to tell if something was true or not. But it’s something to begin with.
CPU’s and GPU’s are high tech where transistors etc could be damaged through a bad silicon or what ever. That’s why no CPU is exactly like the next produced on the same waver. It’s just a difference about few percent, but that could make a difference for Librem 5 - so my thoughts (also in combination with not optimized software like outdated firmware). But as I said, still speculation. First I would try to check update firmware if needed. So please go ahead with the questions of irvinewade.
I had this issue also but my workaround was forgetting the device I was trying connect to in the BT list on the phone and scanning again and reconnecting the device…all is good now with on/off/on connections now.
All Librem 5 it is pretty much same performance. At the moment it is recommended 360p to watch video as Firefox lack of Video hardware accel ATM, however recently Firefox got support for hard-accel h.264 through v4l2 api, so just wait man then you will watch videos like Butter in ur Purism Librem 5, also there are others accelerator to be enabled to L5 which will feels like Fancy.
Technically current L5-FF already have the fancy feature to decode h.264 but there are some problems because cheaper-opensource developers enabled vaapi to arm FF which is a mistake but also ffmpeg-vaapi can not be work together with ffmpeg-v4l2, so it need fixes and current L5-FFmpeg has the m2m api disabled so it need to be Enabled too. Whatever i will send the fixes at some point soon.
@Pakamper:
I tested the “real” YouTube on my Librem 5 and you’re true. Even 240p is laggier than the hell. But that’s more a fail of Googles YouTube and less of Librem 5. Using any invidious instance as front end for YouTube-Videos and commentaries shows the difference. Fast loading times, smooth scrolling, smooth videos in any resolution (instances often doesn’t allow more than 720p).
I watched a 30min video without an issue. After that I switched to Googles YouTube and tried to watch something and gave up after I saw 5fps video for 2min and trying to change resolution (was very difficult, because of lags) closed Firefox to remove Google data from browser. I started invidious again, was searching for a channel, was clicking of the search result and nothing … modem lost connection. HKS off and on and invidious was smooth and fast as before.
Just to be clear, invidious uses original videos from YouTube and loading them from YouTube-servers. The videos are NOT the issue. The issue is the way YouTube as web page is designed.
So if you’re using invidious, one of your points to make L5 daily drivable should be solved.
Edit:
Something else speaks for invidious: if you want to listen music or some talk (but only want the audio like a podcast), you can choose a audio-only stream and save a huge amount of bandwidth. Music videos are often just one picture that will be downloaded over and over again, while that audio stream just download this picture exactly one time at page load. Ideal for mobile devices and for not wasting energy for Librem 5 and for servers.
Yeah I’m not interested in using barely functional (compared to original) youtube front-ends. Tried them all, they all arent worth using at least to me. Losing the recommended page sucks… The best (but rough) experience is still in firefox. I’ve been playing with it more today, and despite draining my battery at about 1%/2min of 720 playback over cellular, the video playback itself was solid at 720p 95% of the time. But, navigating to a new video or using player controls, or generally navigating is still pretty choppy. On top of that, I ran into a weird bug where only when connected to BT in my car and running youtube through firefox, the audio bitrate drops so low its just barely in the usable range. Voices had a noticeable roboticness to them. But at least it wasnt a choppy BT connection and was good enough to not frustrate me for voices. But music would not sound good… It’s on the fringe of usable in every way. I just need those last few bits of optimization (whatever that ends up being).
Unfortunately (for both of us ) I have the older Redpine card. So I can’t give instructions. I would be finding out what your current firmware version is and then maybe ask Purism support whether a later version exists.
I found this repo with instructions on how to flash the firmware. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like a later version exists. At least from what I can see. I compared the firmware version to mine and its the same. But thanks again for the suggestion.
I see. If it’s just the “recommended page” I would copy paste the video link into Invidious (do it all the time with YouTube links from friends etc). I just think you wont feed YouTube with data anymore and get less personalized results over time.
But it may works for other things like music streaming. I tried extensions that change YouTube videos to audio streams on same page. But it never worked good (like “starting music and never touch player again until music ends and hope it doesn’t loose connection to server or you have to play from start”) and a change from YouTube and extension was not anymore (and sadly also not maintained).
However after reading your post and understand that you may don’t want to use 2 platforms. Using embed links will make videos smooth (you can use another tab). Watched one in 1080p without issues. The real issue was to navigate to the video. You may can use an ad- and script blocker to block things you don’t need and which slows down your browser. But just being said: Google often change things and that can break your settings.
Sorry to hear this.
My experience is different. I’m using piped.kavin.rocks from the L5 and most of the time I have no problems. Often, when the stream at piped kavin rocks has issues, it is caused by the fact that the selected playback instance is not up to date. You can easily check this on the properties page of Kavin and switch to another instance that has been updated.
I’ve noticed that there are moments that the modem hangs while watching a video stream. This is, as far as I know, a L5 issue and has nothing to do with Piped Kavin Rocks.
Ick and @shopping4purism I really appreciate the detailed info and suggestions, however, as someone who pays for YT premium and watches probably 6+ hours daily, I simply cannot take the inconveniences of 3rd party front ends. Its the one app I simply can’t degoogle myself from. I am just going to sit patiently as codecs and OS updates come out.
) I have the older Redpine card. So I can’t give instructions. I would be finding out what your current firmware version is and then maybe ask Purism support whether a later version exists.