Traveling Experiences

Howdy,
So we decided to take a bit of a vacation, and decided that the only electronic device I would take with me was a librem 5. Here’s my experiences:

One thing worth noting before continuing is that I’ve mainly used the librem 5 as a phone, and text tool day to day, so the big change here was accessing internet and other things. It’s also worth noting that before this, I would have not brought a phone at all on travel (didn’t have one), and would use a laptop only for electronic devices (and usually it stayed in the hotel room).

The Good:

  • 4G internet was really fast. I guess because I was in a more populous area than where I live, but the 4G seemed just as responsive for browsing as my laptop at home. (4G at home is really slow, and often takes minutes to load a page)
  • Getting use to epiphany, I really grew to like it. It took me awhile to figure out how to do tabs and bookmarks.
  • I found the todo application really useful for doing things like writing down my family’s order (to let them go elsewhere while I bought food).
  • Location tracking without the gps worked a lot better in the more populous area. It was able to find where I was within about 30 feet of where I was standing every time I looked. (didn’t try any navigation though, as I was skeptical it would work well)

The Bad:

  • Several times when I pulled out my phone, I found it wouldn’t turn the screen on. I had to hold down the power button until it powered off, and booted it up again. Didn’t look at logs, but this was really annoying.
  • The phone really needs a lock or something on the minimize button on the bottom when typing. I keep accidentally hitting that when trying to type something (like when searching the web)
  • When browsing the web while charging it, I found that it actually loses charge when doing that… (using stock charger)

Annoyances

  • Attempting to bookmark npr.org, and edit the name of the bookmark causes epiphany to crash. My guess is it’s the extra long name that’s the cause?

General use things I learned

  • wifi works considerably better when using the 2.4Ghz bands (I was using 5Ghz before and the damn thing only really got a signal when in the same room as the wifi router!). Learned this as I was surprised that I got a good signal on the hotel wireless, and decided to investigate further when I got home.

Edit: I am a bit curious how other people use a phone while on travel. What things they feel a phone needs (aside from the obvious navigation).

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From what I understand, 5Ghz doesn’t travel as far or through walls as well as 2.4Ghz. It can be improved by increasing the transmit power, if your router has such a setting.

As for travel, my main uses for a phone are:

  1. SMS/MMS (…and maybe a phone call or two)
  2. Maps/Navigation
  3. Email
  4. Camera
  5. Internet, to briefly check transport schedules, verify addresses of restaurants, museums, hotels, etc.
  6. Occasional use of specific commercial apps (airline, hotel, etc.)
  7. VPN service, to protect my browsing over public/hotel WiFi.

This all requires a modem and SIM card that will work in the region of the world I travel to, when going overseas. (I don’t like to rely on WiFi alone.)

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P.S. I nearly always travel with a small laptop, as well, so that handles most of the internet searching I need to do on the road.

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That has happened to me too.

At the same time, that button is convenient for when it is intentionally used i.e. to push the keyboard aside and get more screen real estate for display. Needs consideration.

What is this thing called “travel”?

That’s surprising.

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Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.

Could you add your notes about the battery life/usage/hours lasted and battery pack used if any?

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Sadly I didn’t take particularly good notes on battery life, but did not bring a battery pack.

It did fully discharge once when arriving home. I don’t remember when I unplugged it or if it had switches on or off. It was likely around 8 hours when I looked at it to charge, but I can’t say for certain. Likely left the wifi and cell modems on, but I don’t remember.

I was pretty religious about any time we got back to the hotel to charge the phone.

Sorry, that’s the best I can give you

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When you say it wouldn’t turn the screen on, are you sure the phone was powered on at that moment? I mean, could it be that it had powered itself off earlier?

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Reasonably certain, as I believe holding down the power button should have powered it on in that case.

(If you hold down the power button and it’s off the green light will come on,and it turns on)

I had to hold down the power button, wait, then had to hold it down again to get it to power on.

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Do you by any chance have automatic suspend enabled in the power settings?

Nope, it’s disabled.

Digging in the logs here’s what I see before the last boot that wasn’t the running out of battery. Which is almost certainly the mentioned issue:

Aug 11 12:16:50 librem ModemManager[724]: <warn>  [modem1/bearer1] reloading stats failed: QMI operation failed: Transaction timed out
Aug 11 12:17:01 librem CRON[5704]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=0)
Aug 11 12:17:01 librem CRON[5705]: (root) CMD (   cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Aug 11 12:17:01 librem CRON[5704]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel: rcu: INFO: rcu_preempt self-detected stall on CPU
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel: rcu:         0-....: (1 GPs behind) idle=762/1/0x4000000000000004 softirq=278238/278239 fqs=75389 
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:         (t=162780 jiffies g=586405 q=10077)
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel: Task dump for CPU 0:
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel: task:kworker/0:2     state:R  running task     stack:    0 pid: 5162 ppid:     2 flags:0x0000000a
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel: Workqueue: usb_hub_wq hub_event [usbcore]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel: Call trace:
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  dump_backtrace+0x0/0x1e4
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  show_stack+0x24/0x30
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  sched_show_task+0x15c/0x180
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  dump_cpu_task+0x50/0x60
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  rcu_dump_cpu_stacks+0xfc/0x144
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  rcu_sched_clock_irq+0xacc/0xe50
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  update_process_times+0xa8/0xf4
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  tick_sched_handle+0x3c/0x60
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  tick_sched_timer+0x58/0xb0
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  __hrtimer_run_queues+0x18c/0x3a0
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  hrtimer_interrupt+0xf4/0x2cc
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  arch_timer_handler_phys+0x40/0x50
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  handle_percpu_devid_irq+0x94/0x280
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  __handle_domain_irq+0x8c/0xf0
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  gic_handle_irq+0xc8/0x148
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  el1_irq+0xbc/0x154
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  _raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore+0x18/0x5c
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  usb_hcd_submit_urb+0xdc/0xa60 [usbcore]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  usb_submit_urb+0x19c/0x5c0 [usbcore]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  usb_wwan_indat_callback+0x50/0x170 [usb_wwan]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  __usb_hcd_giveback_urb+0x98/0x150 [usbcore]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  usb_giveback_urb_bh+0xb8/0x120 [usbcore]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  tasklet_action_common.constprop.0+0x100/0x130
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  tasklet_action+0x34/0x40
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  __do_softirq+0x120/0x3e8
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  irq_exit+0xf8/0x100
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  __handle_domain_irq+0x90/0xf0
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  gic_handle_irq+0xc8/0x148
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  el1_irq+0xbc/0x154
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  _raw_spin_unlock_irq+0x1c/0x60
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  schedule+0xf8/0x110
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  schedule_timeout+0xa4/0x1d4
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  wait_for_completion_timeout+0x8c/0x110
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  usb_start_wait_urb+0xec/0x170 [usbcore]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  usb_control_msg+0xc8/0x144 [usbcore]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  hub_event+0x8c4/0x18cc [usbcore]
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  process_one_work+0x204/0x4dc
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  worker_thread+0x148/0x47c
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  kthread+0x15c/0x170
Aug 11 12:18:14 librem kernel:  ret_from_fork+0x10/0x34
-- Boot facfc953c38a467d8ba744e240719f33 --
Aug 11 12:45:23 librem kernel: Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x410fd034]

I’ll note with the mention of cron hourly, the /etc/cron.hourly/ directory is empty, so I think that’s just coincidental.

Annother log entry on boot before that:

Aug 10 18:52:09 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:09 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:10 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:11 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:12 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:13 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:13 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:14 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:15 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:16 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:52:17 librem iio-sensor-prox[625]: Failed to read input level at /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/30800000.bus/30a30000.i2c/i2c-1/1-0060/iio:device0/in_illuminance_raw>
Aug 10 18:53:00 librem kernel: qmi_wwan 1-1.2:1.4: nonzero urb status received: -71
Aug 10 18:53:00 librem kernel: qmi_wwan 1-1.2:1.4: wdm_int_callback - 0 bytes
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel: rcu: INFO: rcu_preempt self-detected stall on CPU
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel: rcu:         0-....: (2614 ticks this GP) idle=386/1/0x4000000000000004 softirq=131649/131649 fqs=9377 
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:         (t=21007 jiffies g=267877 q=3294)
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel: Task dump for CPU 0:
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel: task:kworker/0:1     state:R  running task     stack:    0 pid: 2948 ppid:     2 flags:0x0000000a
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel: Workqueue: mm_percpu_wq drain_local_pages_wq
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel: Call trace:
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  dump_backtrace+0x0/0x1e4
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  show_stack+0x24/0x30
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  sched_show_task+0x15c/0x180
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  dump_cpu_task+0x50/0x60
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  rcu_dump_cpu_stacks+0xfc/0x144
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  rcu_sched_clock_irq+0xacc/0xe50
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  update_process_times+0xa8/0xf4
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  tick_sched_handle+0x3c/0x60
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  tick_sched_timer+0x58/0xb0
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  __hrtimer_run_queues+0x18c/0x3a0
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  hrtimer_interrupt+0xf4/0x2cc
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  hrtimer_interrupt+0xf4/0x2cc
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  arch_timer_handler_phys+0x40/0x50
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  handle_percpu_devid_irq+0x94/0x280
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  __handle_domain_irq+0x8c/0xf0
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  gic_handle_irq+0xc8/0x148
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  el1_irq+0xbc/0x154
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  __inval_dcache_area+0x48/0x5c
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  dma_map_page_attrs+0x138/0x210
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  usb_hcd_map_urb_for_dma+0x34c/0x480 [usbcore]
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  xhci_map_urb_for_dma+0x180/0x2d0 [xhci_hcd]
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  usb_hcd_submit_urb+0xbc/0xa60 [usbcore]
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  usb_submit_urb+0x19c/0x5c0 [usbcore]
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  usb_wwan_indat_callback+0x50/0x170 [usb_wwan]
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  __usb_hcd_giveback_urb+0x98/0x150 [usbcore]
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  usb_giveback_urb_bh+0xb8/0x120 [usbcore]
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  tasklet_action_common.constprop.0+0x100/0x130
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  tasklet_action+0x34/0x40
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  __do_softirq+0x120/0x3e8
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  irq_exit+0xf8/0x100
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  __handle_domain_irq+0x90/0xf0
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  gic_handle_irq+0xc8/0x148
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  el1_irq+0xbc/0x154
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  drain_local_pages+0x60/0xa0
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  drain_local_pages_wq+0x34/0x70
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  process_one_work+0x204/0x4dc
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  worker_thread+0x2cc/0x47c
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  kthread+0x15c/0x170
Aug 10 18:53:11 librem kernel:  ret_from_fork+0x10/0x34
-- Boot 2c02b4163eb748c1941f979247853fdb --
Aug 10 18:56:49 librem kernel: Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x410fd034]

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Im curious to hear more about your (and others) experience using maps and location with the librem5. Which app are you using, PureMaps?

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It’s on my list to play with more. Right now I don’t have it working though.

Here’s a topic on it posted recently Librem 5 GPS/Location Tracking

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Reminds me of HF vs VHF. You can get HF depending on the skip zone of the continent you’re on. You can get VHF ground propagation depending on the weather and maybe bouncing off a cloud.

Thanks for sharing. Folks like me who haven’t gotten theirs yet appreciate the real-world usage reports you don’t get from review channels. :slight_smile:

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This has been bugging me for a while. Out of the box, I configured my Librem 5 to use the 5 GHz band - but the signal range was not very good e.g. no signal where I had my charger, which was a pain. I could have put in a second WAP but …

Spurred on by your post, I changed my Librem 5 to use the 2.4 GHz band instead. Not only can I now get signal where I have my charger but it looks like time-on-battery has increased too. Not dramatically but enough to be helpful.

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Glad you found it helpfull! Yeah I was having that same exact issue. I was using a dell ethernet/power thing so it could be backed up and get updates while charging.

The sad thing is with the Librem 5 is knowing that it’s the first mass produced version, I’m expecting problems that may not be fixed until later hardware versions. Thus things like this are sometimes assumed to be that sort of issue without realizing there is a fix.

The good news is that so far I’ve seen no real examples of that. Yes, there are lots of gaps in the software. (Maybe there’s some weird stuff with USB bus speed. I can live with that.)

(I was using a dock that does not have an ethernet port so was using a USB-to-ethernet dongle plugged in to the dock, which is another solution.)

I can’t see a way to directly specify the frequency on the phone. (At least, not in the GUI.) Do you have your Wi-Fi configured so that it uses a separate SSID / network name for each frequency band?

My Wi-Fi is configured so that the same SSID is used for both 5GHz and 2.4GHz. This works well for my laptop. The Librem 5 does have worse 5GHz reception than my laptop, but the main issue I get is that it takes too long to switch to 2.4GHz when the 5GHz signal strength has decreased, such as when I walk into the living room. I usually find it quicker to go into the settings and manually disconnect and reconnect to the Wi-Fi network, rather than wait for it to go over to 2.4GHz of its own accord. (At least, I presume this is due to the 5GHz signal strength. I never actually checked which frequency it was using.)

Oddly, it is currently sitting about 60cm from the Wi-Fi AP, which is where it was when I last rebooted it, and it’s telling me it’s put itself onto 2.4GHz, even though it should have perfect 5GHz signal here. This is actually great, because it means it won’t have issues switching from 5GHz to 2.4GHz, but I’ve no idea why it’s done it. :man_shrugging:

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My wifi is setup with separate SSIDs for each. Told the librem 5 to connect to the 2.4Ghz one, and it stays on it. I don’t think it will try to switch on it’s own unless it loses signal.

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Yes, I do. I do that for ease of management so that I can easily know and control what is using what (I have lots of SSIDs and lots of devices).

If you choose to advertise the same SSID on both bands, which is perfectly valid, then I’m sure there would be some way of controlling which band is used on the client side (e.g. at its simplest disable 5 GHz on the client side) but I don’t know what the incantation is. Maybe use nmcli to look at 802-11-wireless.band ?

Adding: If you directly edit the xyz.nmconnection file, you may be able to add band= in the [wifi] section but I don’t know what syntax you need for the value. Also, if you edit such a file, you will either need to reload or reboot.

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