Experience so far with Pro1X

[david 929]

23 minutes ago, Hook said:

I'm on LOS 20 now and don't remember clearly the settings on stock... LOS has a control panel for notification lights under settings and they seem to work, though I just leave it on auto.  And stock should have some setting under Settings->System-> Language and Input for keeping the soft keyboard off when using the physical keyboard, but  maybe I'm misremembering and spoiled by LOS.

 

Does the LOS firmware still not allow for rooting?  That is what kept me away from it in the past.

[AndytheNoob 36]

1 hour ago, david said:

How are you having your USB-C modules repaired?  By whom?  And how did you get 2?

Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences.  That GPS issue has me a little worried.  Given all the trouble with call quality and LTE issues, I've started to think I may need to carry a wifi hotspot all the time when away from home, and rely on wifi calling. 😞

 

David

Hiya David

I began having some problems with the Pro1: Mic wouldn't work when using as a phone, had to use speaker mode. Also my USB charging port starting wearing out, I had to put a weight on the cable to make the connection, even then it was insecure and prone to stop charging occasionally. Also my minijack port starting misbehaving, (I use that a lot as I'm a sound engineer).

So from F(x)tec I bought a new minijack port and their very last USB-C module, which also has the microphone on it.

I installed the two new parts and the phone worked great, I could make calls and talk like a pro, I was happy as could be, until I tried to charge it. The USB port on the new part was duff.

So I sent it to a PCB and micro soldering company called Electronic Partners.

https://uk.electronic.partners/

When it came back the USB-C port was perfect, better than the original... But the mic didn't work (I've had that Pro1 apart so many times now that I fear for the case)

I tried calls, nobody could hear me, and I tried the recorder on Lineage... Nothing.

I put the old USB-C module back in and viola! The mic worked perfectly but the USB-C port is still duff.

- N.B. At this point I figured out that all of the mic problems I was previously experiencing was most likely due to a compacted build up of pocket fluff in the minijack port. I now keep a little bung in the one on my Pro1X to stop that happening again. 

As such I have sent them both back to Electronic partners to be repaired ad the old Pro1 sits in a box, sans USB-C port.

 

Yeah, your WiFi hotspot might be a good shout, though do try without for a couple of weeks first, see how you go.

Edited June 2, 2023 by AndytheNoob

[Hook 3,020]

41 minutes ago, david said:

Does the LOS firmware still not allow for rooting?  That is what kept me away from it in the past.

LOS has always allowed rooting.  I suspect you mean do they still have the simple rooting utility they used to supply for SU.  No to the latter, but Magisk works fine and, if you are mainly just interested in SU authorization like me, Magisk is similarly simple to use.  Simply flash the magisk apk you get from the link below as a zip using adb sideload.  You then open or download  and open the Magisk Manager app and click install. It will offer an automated option... do that and it will do all the boot sector hoop-jumping itself, reboot and bam!, you're done and you never have to open magisk manager again.  You can assign SU to any app that asks for it.

https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/releases/

 

 

[david 929]

5 minutes ago, Hook said:

LOS has always allowed rooting.  I suspect you mean do they still have the simple rooting utility they used to supply for SU.  No to the latter, but Magisk works fine and, if you are mainly just interested in SU authorization like me, Magisk is similarly simple to use.  Simply flash the magisk apk you get from the link below as a zip using adb sideload.  You then open or download  and open the Magisk Manager app and click install. It will offer an automated option... do that and it will do all the boot sector hoop-jumping itself, reboot and bam!, you're done and you never have to open magisk manager again.  You can assign SU to any app that asks for it.

https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/releases/

 

 

I used to be more in the know on this stuff, but I've been away from it for a while.  How is the above different from how rooting works on stock Android?

My memory was that the developers in charge of LOS weren't going to allow for rooting, because they felt it would lead to too many defects being reported that were due to messing up the system when rooted vs true bugs in LOS.  This is dealing with 2 year old memory cells (memory cells in my brain), so I could have remembered incorrectly.

[Hook 3,020]

6 minutes ago, david said:

I used to be more in the know on this stuff, but I've been away from it for a while.  How is the above different from how rooting works on stock Android?

My memory was that the developers in charge of LOS weren't going to allow for rooting, because they felt it would lead to too many defects being reported that were due to messing up the system when rooted vs true bugs in LOS.  This is dealing with 2 year old memory cells (memory cells in my brain), so I could have remembered incorrectly.

No, as far as I know, they just stopped producing the means of doing so themselves.  You can probably also root stock using Magisk the same way, but I didn't try until I moved to LOS. 

I don't think there is actually a way to prevent rooting once a phone is unlocked other than adding something that would actively block it.  That would not go over well in the ROM flasher world.

[Rob. S. 1,660]

16 hours ago, AndytheNoob said:

GPS on this device is far inferior to my Pro1

15 hours ago, david said:

GPS issue has me a little worried

My experience based on one Pro1 and two Pro1X phones (both blue, QWERTY, 8/256 GB) suggests that GPS accuracy (and maybe more) is prone to some sample variation between phones. My first Pro1X was like @AndytheNoob's. Recorded GPS tracks while hiking are probably never as straight as someone might expect, but that Pro1X showed far stronger deviations from it than the Pro1. Also, and again other than the Pro1, driving on a road with another road running in parallel in maybe something like 50 or even 100 m distance frequently made the navigation on the Pro1X jump around between both, not being able to decide on which road I actually was, something I rarely ever saw with the Pro1.  

On my second Pro1X, though, everything GPS related is back to normal again. 

15 hours ago, david said:

started to think I may need to carry a wifi hotspot all the time when away from home, and rely on wifi calling

That's exactly what I'm doing, it works pretty well for me and I've decided that I can live with it (rather than living without a physical keyboard 😉)

Funnily, my impression is that what my second Pro1X gained in GPS precision over the first one (sold, in the meantime) has been lost in voice and data reliability. Thanks to the 'LTE Discovery' app in 'No-LTE cycle' mode, the first one had mostly seemed able to work reliably enough at least with data (I don't do much talking with my phones, so my experience might be too limited for a concluding verdict there), both for itself and as an AP for other devices. The second one, though, is unusable most of the time by itself, so I always carry a small mobile wifi router. Only when I'm away from my home region here in Germany I might get lucky when there are more Pro1X-friendly LTE bands in use, like the past two weeks when I was traveling through Croatia*.

* The fun thing there was that roaming, which I thought should be a EU-wide thing independent of someone's domestic mobile provider, gave me a connection far more reliably with my T-Online SIM in slot 2 than with my primary Vodafone SIM... 

Edited June 3, 2023 by Rob. S.

[Adrienspawn 126]

On 6/2/2023 at 3:04 PM, Hook said:

I'm on LOS 20 now and don't remember clearly the settings on stock... LOS has a control panel for notification lights under settings and they seem to work, though I just leave it on auto.  And stock should have some setting under Settings->System-> Language and Input for keeping the soft keyboard off when using the physical keyboard, but  maybe I'm misremembering and spoiled by LOS.

 

Since you're on LOS20 too, how's your camera functionality? It's been super buggy for me no matter the app. That and not always charging.

[Hook 3,020]

9 hours ago, Adrienspawn said:

Since you're on LOS20 too, how's your camera functionality? It's been super buggy for me no matter the app. That and not always charging.

This is, of course, on the Pro1x, not the Pro1 (I have Droidian on my Pro1 right now), but camera seems fine using open camera. 

[Adrienspawn 126]

3 hours ago, Hook said:

This is, of course, on the Pro1x, not the Pro1 (I have Droidian on my Pro1 right now), but camera seems fine using open camera. 

Ah! Still not used to having to differentiate between the two. Finally removed Open Camera as it was buggy after the June 5 OTA while GCam seemed to be fine. Crossing my fingers the issue is resolved but it wasn't uncommon for it to function occassionally. 

[claude0001 1,341]

After using my Pro1-X for a few months, I confess that I am preparing to move back to the (SD835-)Pro1.

Things initially seemed to work out after I had fixed my GSM/LTE connection issues by replacing the antenna board of my Pro1-X. However, in day-to-day use, the device simply couldn't compare to my Pro1. Some of the things that eventually turned me down:

• This is actually more a problem of Android 9 vs, Android 13, but it still bugs me a lot: Setting up my Linux-in-a-Chroot setup on the Pro1-X was possible, but turned out to be much less functional compared to the original Pro1 (which I used with Lineage 16/Android 9). Mostly, this is due to recent versions of Android enforcing SAF access to the SD card for all processes. However, also the Pro1-X's CPU was struggling under some of the things I threw at it. Expert fact: Yes, I did disable phantom process culling (introduced in Android 12).
• The ambient light sensor seems completely useless. I'm not sure if this is a hardware problem of the Pro1-X or a software issue of Lineage 20.0 (which I used throughout my tests), but the result is that the Pro1-X's display is most often unreadable in plain sunlight, and hurtingly bright in dark environments. This just doesn't work.
• Seemingly no-one took care of porting @tdm's Lineage keyboard driver to the Pro1-X. Hence much of the cool features I was used to simply do not work: Fn+Space cannot emulate the power button, Fn+Top Row does not send F1-F12. On the Pro1, I use these all the time. 
• Believe it or not: the Pro1-X's camera is even worse than the Pro1's. When using OpenCamera, focussing often "hangs", making "sports" shooting virtually impossible. With the built-in LOS camera software, this does not occur, but use of the Camera2-API is then not possible. Last but not least, the Pro1-X's shutter button is not dual-action, which makes its purpose uncertain at best.
• The Pro1-X's speaker still clips when the device is fully-charged, which makes watching videos a frustrating experience in that state.
• Even though I initially did not think of this as important, the missing HDMI-out feature of the USB-C port is really disappointing in the end. So many cool things could have been done otherwise ... 😞
• I managed to work around the battery-depletion issue by implementing my own software daemon (in my GNU/Linux subsystem) that will shut-down the device before running low on energy, but this comes at the cost of using my battery only to 80%. And -- honestly -- I had really expected a vendor fix for this. This bug bricks the phone for average-joe. Come on guys ...

End of story:  I am currently re-fitting my (SD-835-)Pro1 for some more years of usage, and have just purchased another pre-owned Pro1 as a replacement device. Watch out for some more Lineage-16.0 ROMs for QX1000...

Edited March 26 by claude0001