Modem woes and reliability

I have a sparklan card.

I have been wondering about this too.

I tried doing this with the command line as well and it does not reveal the available networks with a scan. Which makes me wonder how it even finds networks. I’m having a very weird problem with my phone. So it registers with the network in town where I work but as I travel home about 50 km away it loses registration even though it is still on the home network or should be. My SIM works fine in other phones so it’s definitely the L5. The errors I’m getting in the journalctl is “reject cause: roaming-in-location-area-not-allowed” and “ps-services-in-location-area-not-allowed”

It doesn’t make much sense to me because the phone works in one area but not another? The same network is available but the phone thinks it’s roaming I think. When it’s searching for an operator it gives errors “Current operator MCC/MNC is still unknown” which makes no sense because it works in town but not at home. I also tried enabling roaming and that didn’t help either.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be going on here?

Today, again, out shopping, I had to HKS the cellular modem to be able to check something online - leaving me to wonder how long I had been online by that time.
I get the impression it has something to do with switching antenna’s. (Just a stab in the dark.)

All and all, this happens too often, and it is becoming an irritant. Pioneering the L5 is an adventure, but it would be nice if the absolute basics (the phone bit) would have been covered by now.

Yes! Also bloody annoying: every single time you reset the modem, the yellow exclamation mark pops up, and you have to disallow/allow the roaming option in the settings.

try with volte disabled and see if the modem is more stable.

Yeah I tried that per support but it was just as messed up. I’m going to reflash to see if something is just wrong with the flash they did before sending it back.

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indeed. In all honesty, this should have the top prio. without this there is no phone and no trust in the device (at least for me)

the rest seems mostly fine (except firefox addons screenflicker/problems which makes addons pointless), so improvements should be put on the backlog until the critical modem bit is fixed.
Pinephone with mobian has the same type of issues.

Also today:

  1. phone was empty in the morning and shut down after reboot:
  • no modem/gsm
  • mmcli -m any --reset -> error couldn't find modem
    
  • killswitch did not work
    

10-15 minutes later the modem reappeared

  • i tried the mmcli -m any --reset again
  • modem was found and reset, but doesn't show in the UI. seems to take a long time to get
    
  • killswitch no result
    
  • back 5-10 mins later
    

2 hours later

  • phone is on the charger
  • no sim ui icon
    
  • mmcli reset modem takes a long time before it reappears
    

In the afternoon:

  • my family can’t reach me again because nothing rings/registers.
    i collected the logs and will mail support but this is a mayor hindrance to this becoming viable
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I don’t have an answer for this modem reliability trouble, but am thankful that you are posting about it. I sold my Librem 5 a couple years ago because it was not ready to be my daily driver for many reasons, and I follow the project once in a while on here to see how it’s going. I really want it to succeed so there is a follow-up model that I could buy and use full time. Your mention of your old Windows phone resonated with me because no smart phone has come close in my experience to the excellence of their keyboards and predictive typing and spell check. And other things. My family and I still talk about how great they were compared to the Androids and iPhones we migrated to years ago. I’d be delighted to have a Linux-powered computer in my pocket that had the interaction design and UI of Windows Phone 8 but FoSS underneath. I wish you well getting your modem to work better.

I was actually recently thinking of writing/posting to microsoft. Just to float the idea that maybe microsoft should try to make a new phone, or just throw its weight behind the linux phones. I mean we really need a good alt to the google/apple duopoly

Just imagine a linux phone as stable as those windows phones made by nokia. With easy interop with both linux and windows desktops. Maybe get some of that accessible .net programming support for super fast app dev.

Personally the biggest problem with the windows phones was the sudden shift/restrictions in .net development. Microsoft was emulating apple and google instead of just doing a windows desktop with calling thing.

Developing for those phone was a just horrendous. I love programming in .net and i just hated all the forced restrictions of async and the terrible UI xml stuff. that is why the software lagged i think.

When i compare that to how easy it is to develop stuff for the linux phones so far. i think that is where they failed and the linux phones can succeed. There is so much choice to develop with, gtk, python, java, .net, it’s all good. just pick your favorite

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I’ve also received my second L5 back from the EU repair center.
The symptoms you describe are more or less the same as I am struggling with.
Modem connectivity is most of the time a no go.
No Mobile network detected or if detected, unable to connect to any site, or falling back to 2G, or staying on 4G while not registering on the provider network. Toggling all buttons (roaming on/off or Mobile data on/off, or HKS) Most of the time it does not change things.
Strange enough, sometimes I do get a working connection but that will be over after the L5 switches to idle (screen off, no suspend).

Did you re-flash the phone and did it improve things?

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Totally WRONG. :wink:

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I reflashed with no change in behaviour. Very puzzling.

I’ve sidelined it for now as it’s totally unreliable at the moment.

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Have you had any success in resolving your issue? I’m still going back and forth with Joao about it and he is discussing with the devs. What is the firmware on the cell modem on your L5?

not yet, havn’t heard back from Joao from support yet
firmware is up to date, i posted it somewhere above i think

Ok, I was just curious if they had you roll back the firmware or something.

nope nothing yet

Hi raenrfm,

Support is in the process of sending me a replacement modem (for testing).
As soon as it has arrived and replaced, I will report back.

The modem you have now is it the original or was that also a replacement?