Parking my Pro 1 for now

[ToniCipriani 194]

...and going back to my BlackBerry Priv. It's been an interesting year and a bit with the Pro 1, but I don't think it's working out.

• Software is just... I don't know, unfinished. It's more than a year, some glaring bugs are still there, apt-X, taking two tries for the launcher to minimize properly, inability to press Shift + Num for the corresponding symbol, you name it. My Priv is still on Android 6, but at least BlackBerry had the decency to keep it updated (close to) monthly and most bugs were ironed out before they pulled the plug. I know inevitably someone will tell me install Lineage/Sailfish/whatever. But sorry, I use my phone for BYOD at work so I need factory software.
• Landscape is still the wrong layout for a phone, I don't care what you guys say. Android was simply not designed to run on landscape, tried everything from forcing landscape using Tasker, but a large handful of apps just won't bulge. Either it just rotates back to portrait and stay there, or the moment I do anything with the slide, app restarts and wipes out everything I've entered. And I don't enjoy reaching for modifier keys at all. As I mentioned before, for shell or desktop-like usage, it's great (Termux came in handy a few times for work, and RDP works nice with a desktop-like experience), but otherwise it's wrong, wrong, wrong. Opening the slider, rotating, then start typing (and stretching my hands) is not better than just sliding open and typing. And the capacitive gesture of the BlackBerry keyboard for scrolling is just far superior than using alt+arrow keys and hoping the app handles it correctly.
• Reception is horrendous. Zero bars and inability to have a phone call in the same spot with the same SIM where the Priv and the One Hyper a usable signal.
• And don't make me mention my ongoing screen problems and F(x) keep pushing my support ticket back. I contemplated ordering my own screen to fix it, but second thought it's not worth my time.

When my replacement screen comes in, I might put it up for sale, I know some of you are looking for a 835 unit instead of the replacement SoC. Otherwise I wish F(x) good luck. Maybe I'll dig it back out from my drawer if I do finally run into something that doesn't support Android 6 and there's no workaround. But even then I might just get used to using a touch screen and use my One Hyper before I want to use the FX again.

[Slion 1,201]

I understand your decision, I do. Especially if you were running stock Android 9.

Though I find Android in landscape works well in most apps. Even the apps that do not support it still mostly work for me when using FxService force landscape mode. Then again, maybe you use a different set of apps than I do. For instance I hardly do any social media, and mostly use the keyboard in a browser that has been optimized by myself for use with landscape keyboard, namely Fulguris.

However phone call quality is indeed terrible, radio interference in speaker being the worst issue for me. Though I find overall call quality is a bit better on Lineage 18.1 those radio interference just can't be helped, it's an hardware design issue.

Then there is the fact that even on Lineage OS you need to invest a lot of time to fix inconvenience and fine tune it so that it works flawlessly. The out-of-the-box experience can be suboptimal especially if you need to input non-english language.

It is a phone I would only recommend to enthusiasts with enough time on their hands. The amazing thing is that with Lineage OS pretty much anything can be fixed and improved since the source code is there for you to modify, however you need some serious software engineering skills, a lot of time and dedication.    

Edited October 7, 2021 by Slion

[Slion 1,201]

On 9/28/2021 at 10:36 PM, ToniCipriani said:

know inevitably someone will tell me install Lineage/Sailfish/whatever. But sorry, I use my phone for BYOD at work so I need factory software.

There are guides explaining how to get pretty much any Play Store app to work on Lineage OS. I too was not optimistic about that but for now it works fine, though as already mentioned multiple times above you will need time and patience to get it working. I too use my Pro1 for work and the dual authentication app Duo works fine as does Microsoft Teams.

[Slion 1,201]

@ToniCipriani If you want someone to take your Pro1 off your hands I might be interested 🤪 

Edited October 7, 2021 by Slion

[VaZso 1,998]

1 hour ago, Slion said:

However phone call quality is indeed terrible, radio interference in speaker being the worst issue for me. Though I find overall call quality is a bit better on Lineage 18.1 those radio interference just can't be helped, it's an hardware design issue.

About call quality... one of my friends told me the in-call quality is worse since I am using LineageOS after stock.
I may try it later using another phone under LineageOS and stock again but he showed me it is very noisy (background noise "hiss?") even if we are speaking on my primary and secondary phone number.

It is very significant together with his latest phone while it feels better on his older phone but it can be heard on both phones while these phones can call each other without any similar noises.

1 hour ago, Slion said:

The amazing thing is that with Lineage OS pretty much anything can be fixed and improved since the source code is there for you to modify, however you need some serious software engineering skills, a lot of time and dedication.    

It would be good to find out if microphone issue can be solved somehow...
I could not find any applications which can record audio without noise filtering, so Pro1 has very good image quality but unusable audio recording.
Basically close speech is understandable, farther speech is somewhat understandable but music is completely smashed, I haven't heard worse audio recording for music on any phones. Maybe my Moto G6 had similar recording but I could select unprocessed audio on that which solved this problem, here it does not help.

I really hope sound driver has an option for recording without noise filtering as it is basically a BLOB.
It seems there are some audio sources but I don't know how to capture them...

[Slion 1,201]

6 hours ago, VaZso said:

would be good to find out if microphone issue can be solved somehow...

Maybe start a topic and try to involve some LOS folks. It could be the drivers and/or hardware are just bad, or it could be something else is amiss.

It would be awesome if the community could somehow investigate audio recording issues on one hand and call quality on the other.

[ToniCipriani 194]

On 10/7/2021 at 4:45 PM, Slion said:

I hardly do any social media

Ironically all my social media apps (mainly Twitter and Sync) both works perfectly fine. It's banking apps mostly that has the most trouble. I'm already using Tasker force landscape to allow rotation in most apps, but some just crash or reset when it tries to rotate, and doesn't scale properly, resulting in hidden buttons. Rotate it back, app restarts.

Quote

It is a phone I would only recommend to enthusiasts with enough time on their hands. The amazing thing is that with Lineage OS pretty much anything can be fixed and improved since the source code is there for you to modify, however you need some serious software engineering skills, a lot of time and dedication.

It's not the time I don't want to invest (you're looking at someone who actually went ahead and used ADB to fix problems on a 6 year old phone, my Priv was actually randomly rebooting until I spent hours tracing down what was the issue), but the fact is I have limitations on running non-stock software for BYOD, which is my other bread and butter use case. If they just gave up the garbage IDEA stock software and worked directly with Lineage to make it the official out of the box software and have all the Google blessings, it could have worked for me.

Edited October 17, 2021 by ToniCipriani

[Hook 3,021]

Honestly, this is why I happily carry two phones, a Moto G8 Power and my Pro1.  My Moto is my phone phone.  Phone calls, sms/mms, Android Auto hands free functions, all my stubbornly portrait apps which are mostly bank and commercial apps I mostly use out in the world anyway.  My Pro1 I use for writing, editing, notes (including a Bonsai like hierarchical note app that along with Textmaker gives me the basic capability of Scrivener across 3 platforms), browsing, email, ssh, things I would never do on a portrait phone even with a keyboard (I find portrait keyboards frustrating-- just too small for real work with my hands). The Pro1 does have a T-mobile SIM, but it is mostly for the cheap data, I don't even give out the phone number.  Plus, future proofing is a bit easier.  What I do on the Moto will be most affected by changes in versions of Android.  If I need to update, it's just a $200 phone.

The Moto is great at the very functions that the Pro 1 is sketchy with, and the Pro1 gives me capability no other phone can touch. The minor extra fuss involved in carrying two phone is far outweighed by such exquisite capability.  Maybe if I had worked harder I could have made the Pro 1  less sketchy, especially after leaving behind IDEA's Android 9, but the longer I use the two phone solution the happier I am with it.

I understand that not everyone wants to do this. 🙂