Librem 5 Daily Usage poll

All of my issues with missed calls went away when I turned on volte. Might be something to look into.

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Still not sure if I’m about to buy this pocket Power Hub: https://www.hypershop.com/collections/black-friday-doorbusters-deals/products/hyperdrive-60w-usb-c-power-hub-for-nintendo-switch, but anyway linking this product (while currently on sale). Main difference should be that it provides 45W on its USB-C PD port (instead of 30W, in comparison with the Zendure SuperHub), and probably 100% compatible when used with the Librem 5.

Per the OP’s request, here are my experiences trying to use the Librem 5 as a daily driver:

I spent about a month tuning, tweaking, installing, reinstalling, building from source, etc. etc. until I had the minimum viable set of apps and web-apps available and ready for my personal preferences and needs. Once this was done, I decided to take the plunge and swap my main SIM over to the L5. There were some outstanding minor issues that I wanted to fix eventually, but they didn’t hold me back from trying to fully use the device as an all-day phone.

Within the first two days, I had some deal-killer problems. They were these:

  1. The cellular modem has a tendency to quietly drop off and no longer be recognized by the phone. When sitting idle, not being used, the modem will simply disappear. Toggling the hardware kill switch will bring it back, but this means that I have no faith that an incoming call will make the phone ring, because I have no faith the modem will actually be visible to the OS at any given time.

  2. The Librem 5 will sometimes shut itself down for no obvious reason. I went to sleep with it powered on and in standby, with a power connection, and when I woke up it had shut itself all the way off. This was a problem for me as I’d set an alarm on it to wake me up, and I overslept by 45 minutes.

I love this little device and will keep using it, and keep chivvying it along toward an ultimate usability goal, but for me it’s just not there yet with respect to core functionality.

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  1. The cellular modem has a tendency to quietly drop off and no longer be recognized by the phone. When sitting idle, not being used, the modem will simply disappear. Toggling the hardware kill switch will bring it back, but this means that I have no faith that an incoming call will make the phone ring, because I have no faith the modem will actually be visible to the OS at any given time.
  2. The Librem 5 will sometimes shut itself down for no obvious reason. I went to sleep with it powered on and in standby, with a power connection, and when I woke up it had shut itself all the way off. This was a problem for me as I’d set an alarm on it to wake me up, and I overslept by 45 minutes.

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To be honest, the same two gripes apply to my Pinephone. At least with the L5, you can toggle the switch! Of course, my Pinephone sort of fixed :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: the problem – the modem completely died. No recourse on the Pinephone, but if it happened on the L5, I could easily replace the modem.

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Pinephone running which operating system?

Anyway this makes me hopeful that whatever makes the modem disappear can be fixed in (free!) software, if it was a hardware issue it would not appear on both L5 and Pinephone.

Hope to find time to dust off my Pinephone and see if I can reproduce the issue there.

This looks like a problem with the battery calibration. Try to reset it: UPERFECT X Mini lapdock works with Librem 5. Also, the battery is not expected to last the whole night reliably yet AFAIK.

I am skeptical that this is the issue, since the shutdowns I am talking about happen when the device is not on battery power, but instead connected to mains power via the cable and charger supplied by Purism. I will give it a try anyway, though.

Scepticism is appropriate but clearly the exact flow of energy in the system depends on the software reading the battery charge level correctly. Maybe it is possible, if the calibration is badly borked, for the software to get confused.

You can in any case eliminate that question or doubt by removing the battery and running off mains (overnight). While on mains, you should be able to remove (at the end of the day) and insert (next morning) the battery without shutting down.

Another possibility is whether it is shutting itself down due to thermal issues i.e. overtemperature. However the log should show that if that is the case.

DIDN’T LAST A WEEK, NOW A BRICK.

Received mine, managed to test convergence for a couple days with an old HDMI usb-c hub I’d been using with my current android phone. Wasn’t happy with solution as L5 wouldn’t charge through this hub, neither would my android. So i decided to hopefully “upgrade” the hub, i bought two different HDMI usb-c hubs, a Baseus and an Anker, that claimed to support up to 100w PD which i supposed would be enough to get a charge on the L5. Also purchased a 130w power supply, to supply said power. Only the Anker hub recognized usb devices, not the Baseus. Neither hub provided a charge, and upon connecting the Baseus hub the battery started fritzing out. After a couple restarts, a rapidly draining charge, and one last attempt connecting the Baseus hub the phone stopped working. Tested the battery with a voltmeter, battery was dead, phone stopped charging without even a red light indicator coming on while connected.

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Sounds like your hub killed your battery.

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Try with a 1000w charger.

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I suggest contacting support@puri.sm in order to troubleshoot this. I wouldn’t be calling “brick” just yet.

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That would be the hope, it’s possible the power controller survived, but i won’t be holding my breathe.

Ah… Mobian Phosh.

My thoughts exactly!

And I hope to have my Librem 5 in a couple of weeks! :boom:

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i would try the L5 included charger and cable and use the regular method to make it charge the battery again when deeply discharged (remove battery, hold volume up, plug in charging cable, insert battery, release volume up button).

If it is a evergreen tyically it will charge again, leave phone charging for 20min or so then push power button long press once, than release and one more time. If you havent done that already and simply dont rely on the hub to charge it.

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Did you know that LIbrem 5 can work without a battery, from the power cord?

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Yep tried that didn’t work.

I did not know that but if that’s true that’s definitely not a good sign because I’m pretty sure i tried that too…

I’ll have to try again when I can.

[Sometime later]: Sure enough. Power controller must be fried too.

I was also experiencing unstable video signal with my USB-C hub: glitches like flickering, blanking, displaced picture, horizontal bars,etc. They seemed to happen randomly, one day it could work perfectly and the next it would be a mess. In my search for a pattern I tried the hub without external power supply, different power supplies providing either 5V/500mA or 5V/1.5A, changing the order I connect cables, different HDMI cables… When I thought I had found the culprit, corruption would appear again.

Finally I was playing with different resolutions to maybe find a workaround and I think I found something in dmesg:

pureos kernel: [drm] Mode: 1920x1080p74250
pureos kernel: [drm] hpd irq
pureos kernel: cdns-mhdp-imx 32c00000.hdmi: [drm:cdns_mhdp_set_host_cap [cdns_mhdp_drmcore]] Using 2 lanes
pureos kernel: cdns-mhdp-imx 32c00000.hdmi: [drm:cdns_mhdp_train_link [cdns_mhdp_drmcore]] Starting link training
pureos kernel: [drm] Connector status: 1
pureos kernel: [drm] HDMI/DP Cable Plug In
pureos kernel: [drm] Mode: 2560x1080p185580
pureos kernel: [drm] hpd irq
pureos kernel: cdns-mhdp-imx 32c00000.hdmi: [drm:cdns_mhdp_set_host_cap [cdns_mhdp_drmcore]] Using 2 lanes
pureos kernel: imx-dcss 32e00000.display-controller: Pixel clock set to 185625 kHz instead of 185580 kHz.
pureos kernel: cdns-mhdp-imx 32c00000.hdmi: [drm:cdns_mhdp_train_link [cdns_mhdp_drmcore]] Starting link training
pureos kernel: [drm] Connector status: 1
pureos kernel: [drm] HDMI/DP Cable Plug In

After the pixel clock message, the HDMI output is orders of magnitude more stable. I have had maybe one short screen blanking since then. I am able to trigger the pixel clock change by changing twice the screen resolution, in my case:

Initial 2560x1080p (glitches) -> 1920x1080p (glitches) -> 2560x1080p (clean)

It is not a solution but maybe this workaround is helpful for you or somebody else.

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I already shared most of what I want to say in my Librem 5 thread, but I will say this here as well. I believe with some of the patches coming down the pipe the ability to daily the Librem 5 is going to be greatly improved, and it will be mostly possible for people to do that very thing. That is big, and I really want to thank all of the developers working on this. Please continue to keep up the great work!

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