Pro1x USB-C to HDMI (Mirroring)

[pingu 1]

I recently received my pro1x which is still running factory android OS.
I purchased a USB-C to HDMI adapter (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Discount-Compatible-MacBook-Surface-Galaxy/dp/B07CL2RHX5). When I plug it into a monitor or TV nothing happens. When I try from the USB preferences menu to swap control to the phone is says it "couldn't switch".

Is this something other people are encountering?

[VaZso 1,998]

25 minutes ago, pingu said:

Is this something other people are encountering?

Yes, it is (currently) not working.
I hope it can be solved later by a firmware upgrade.

[matf-kabouik 414]

It's a known issue that has been reported during testing in the last few weeks. Engineers/devs at the factory did have HDMI working, but turned out the protocol they used only work with the HDMI adapter they were using. They have showed which adapter they were using and there was nothing special about it, not a proprietary one nor something with a chip in it. Since then they have tried to change the protocol so the same HDMI adapter may not work anymore. This suggests just a software issue though, and Liangchen said it's just an issue with the protocol they used and asked them to change it. Hopefully they can fix it in firmware soon. This hasn't been pushed in latest beta versions yet, though, except one iteration that didn't solve it.

Edited August 18, 2022 by matf-kabouik

[Benni 183]

I assume that the missing OTG support is part of the issue.

 

[phoebus2000 7]

I know, another day another problem with my pgone.

Hdmi out does not work for me - I plug my adaptor into my Macbook and it is fine and displays, plug it into this phone and nothing. Tried a reboot and  no good.

 

Anyone else have this problem?

[VaZso 1,998]

12 minutes ago, phoebus2000 said:

I know, another day another problem with my pgone.

Hdmi out does not work for me - I plug my adaptor into my Macbook and it is fine and displays, plug it into this phone and nothing. Tried a reboot and  no good.

 

Anyone else have this problem?

Which phone do you have?
Pro1 or Pro1X?

Pro1 supports HDMI out but not with its initial firmware (it was started working after an upgrade later).
Pro1X apparently does not support HDMI yet, hopefully they will solve this problem in a later software upgrade.

[Benni 183]

9 hours ago, VaZso said:

Pro1X apparently does not support HDMI yet, hopefully they will solve this problem in a later software upgrade.

I think that's unfortunately pretty unlikely. If I remember correctly, the chipset doesn't support HDMI out, the vendor however claimed it was working and showed a demo with some special cable that uses a casting app [so it requires a special dongle, an app and only works for some apps (not Netflix, etc)]. Which I personally would call fraud from the vendor (not FXtech).

[claude0001 1,343]

With the original Pro1, HDMI works for me in LineageOS using this all-in-one hub:

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B093FKT9BF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

2 hours ago, Benni said:

[...] the chipset doesn't support HDMI out, [...]

Wait, what? Does that mean that things like this [iggcdn.com] will never actually work with the Pro1-X? I think that was a major feature for those who ordered with UbuntuTouch ...

Edited September 24, 2022 by claude0001

[Benni 183]

I honestly don't know - I put all I remember about the topic in my post above.

It would be great to hear anything official though.

[EskeRahn 5,464]

7 hours ago, Benni said:

the chipset doesn't support HDMI out,

Are you sure about that?
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/qualcomm/snapdragon_600/662

Quote

• Maximum Resolution: FHD+ (2520x1080)
• Maximum External Resolution: FHD (1920 x 1080)

I do not know if it is true or not, BUT it would mean that it can not just mirror the standard 2160x1080 resolution of the main display, and that MIGHT be what is preventing it from working when plugged in. So we would have to get the device into a FHD (or less) mode, for it to be able to do the mirroring.

(I have no idea if the chipset/os can handle individual images on the two)

[Benni 183]

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

Are you sure about that?

Not at all, and I'm happily proven wrong.

[EskeRahn 5,464]

 

1 hour ago, Benni said:

Not at all, and I'm happily proven wrong.

Looking for other phones with same chipset we got this list on gsmarena

I tried googling for hdmi and one of them (the motorola G30) but found nothing. I did find a fairly officially looking answer suggesting using casting instead, so that sort of points toward that the chipset might not support it, and thus the link I first found could be wrong....

[VaZso 1,998]

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

 Looking for other phones with same chipset we got this list on gsmarena

I tried googling for hdmi and one of them (the motorola G30) but found nothing. I did find a fairly officially looking answer suggesting using casting instead, so that sort of points toward that the chipset might not support it, and thus the link I first found could be wrong....

I remember when F(x)tec has announced the chipset change, there were some users complaining about the lack of external output by chipset.
...then F(x)tec told they have received a comfirmation about the chipset supports external display.

However, I don't know who told this information to F(x)tec and if that info was true or not...

[GoaSkin 15]

If I connect the phone with an HDMI display, there are neither kernel messages when I run dmesg afterwhile, nor lsusb lists any connected device.

The system device tree contains HDMI devices:

 

qcom,msm-hdmi-dba-codec-rx
qcom,msm-dai-q6-hdmi

 

But they don't seem to have any relation to the USB-C port. It looks more like if devices based on this SoC can be equipped with a real HDMI port what isn't the case on the Pro1X.

[Name_not_avail 64]

FWIW, I tried connecting my Pro1X to a USB C - HDMI adapter hub, where HDMI always output works with my Galaxy S21 5G as long as put an external power source to the USB hub.

The first thing that happens on the S21 when I do this, is that a new symbol appears on the bottom navigation bar, referring to display controls relevant to HDMI.

Interestingly, a somewhat similar thing happens to the Pro1X when I first plug it in to the HDMI adapter hub.  The "auto rotate" symbol briefly flashes at the bottom right of the nav bar (to the right of the square), but then immediately disappears.  If I unplug and re-plug, it does not reappear, but if I reboot the Pro1X and re-plug it to the HDMI hub, I get the same behaviour.

My tests like this always had the keyboard closed, FWIW.

I have not done a dmesg dump, since I have not rooted the Pro1X yet.  But that brief change to the bottom nav bar suggests to me that the phone briefly became aware of the HDMI connection, and then something in the software borked.  

If so, then I would like to believe this issue is fixable with new firmware, assuming the company stays in business long enough to develop new firmware.

[brunoais 334]

3 hours ago, Name_not_avail said:

have not done a dmesg dump, since I have not rooted the Pro1X yet.

Did you try using logcat? I usually use logcat with the command less so I can more easily scroll through it

[EskeRahn 5,464]

4 hours ago, Name_not_avail said:

If so, then I would like to believe this issue is fixable with new firmware

Very interesting. If the info I quoted earlier is true, it might 'only' support FHD, so if that is the case, we might also need a way to get the phone to crop the sides from 2160 to 1920, so it can act as FHD to be able to mirror. If we are very lucky that is enough, as you have proven that it already somehow understands what is going on.

[GoaSkin 15]

Is there any shell command to switch the video resolution of an Android device like xrandr does on Linux desktop PCs?

[EskeRahn 5,464]

3 hours ago, GoaSkin said:

Is there any shell command to switch the video resolution of an Android device like xrandr does on Linux desktop PCs?

https://nerdschalk.com/change-screen-resolution-adb-android/
Will test.... Thanks for the idea.

ADD The resolution change works - but that is not enough to get HDMI working.

adb shell wm size 1080x1920

[Name_not_avail 64]

13 hours ago, brunoais said:

Did you try using logcat? I usually use logcat with the command less so I can more easily scroll through it

I just tried logcat, but there are no interesting messages related to HDMI. It's a really short output log, nothing like as detailed as what I expect dmesg to look like.

That said, unfortunately I was not able to replicate the navigation bar glitch again when plugging in the HDMI cable, so logcat wouldn't have picked up anything interesting anyway for me. 

Disappointing, but still I'm hopeful something comes of this in a firmware update.

[phoebus2000 7]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:11 PM, VaZso said:

Which phone do you have?
Pro1 or Pro1X?

Pro1 supports HDMI out but not with its initial firmware (it was started working after an upgrade later).
Pro1X apparently does not support HDMI yet, hopefully they will solve this problem in a later software upgrade.

Pro1X, thanks for confirming. I just assumed that all USB C Android phones did these days. 

[Casey 321]

On 8/18/2022 at 1:16 AM, pingu said:

I recently received my pro1x which is still running factory android OS.
I purchased a USB-C to HDMI adapter (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Discount-Compatible-MacBook-Surface-Galaxy/dp/B07CL2RHX5). When I plug it into a monitor or TV nothing happens. When I try from the USB preferences menu to swap control to the phone is says it "couldn't switch".

Is this something other people are encountering?

Unfortunately, we quickly found that the stock OS didn't support HDMI output so we've pushed out a beta firmware to address this in the beta testing scheme. 

On 8/18/2022 at 8:57 AM, matf-kabouik said:

Engineers/devs at the factory did have HDMI working, but turned out the protocol they used only work with the HDMI adapter they were using. They have showed which adapter they were using and there was nothing special about it, not a proprietary one nor something with a chip in it

And yes, you're right. The solutions company only demo'd us with a specific HDMI cable that needs an app or apk to work with it. We can confirm this cable does work on Android OS but only with a beta firmware version (not stock). We're planning to merge the fixes made in the beta version into the stock via OTA update. An ETA haven't been decided yet but I presume it should be in the next month or so.

[claude0001 1,343]

56 minutes ago, Casey said:

The solutions company only demo'd us with a specific HDMI cable that needs an app or apk to work with it.

Thanks @Casey.

But what does this mean regarding native HDMI-support in Android/LineageOS. Will it ever work?

What about the convergence mode of UbuntuTouch? Any hope for that?

[EskeRahn 5,464]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

And yes, you're right. The solutions company only demo'd us with a specific HDMI cable that needs an app or apk to work with it. We can confirm this cable does work on Android OS but only with a beta firmware version (not stock). We're planning to merge the fixes made in the beta version into the stock via OTA update. An ETA haven't been decided yet but I presume it should be in the next month or so.

Interesting. Does the solution you got working require the phone-display to be set to 1920x1080 (see a few posts above), or does it crop the sides on then monitor? Or does it offer two independent screens?

[claude0001 1,343]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:27 PM, claude0001 said:

But what does this mean regarding native HDMI-support in Android/LineageOS. Will it ever work?

What about the convergence mode of UbuntuTouch? Any hope for that?

Replying to my own question: Seems like it doesn't look very good for HDMI-out on the Pro1X, at least when it comes to alternative OS's.

Unsurprisingly, I can confirm that my all-in-one UGREEN USB-C dock, which works flawlessly with the Pro1, does nothing regarding HDMI when connected to the Pro1X (also Ethernet does not work with the X btw ...).

After a bit of reading, I wonder whether the solution that was presented during development of the Pro1X is actually using any native "HDMI-out" features of the SoC. Rather, it seems to implement an MHL interface and needs a proprietary APK to send the screen content to the HDMI-end via USB. This might explain why Apps for playing DRM-protected content (Netflix, Amazon Prime, ...) cannot display on the HDMI screen, as admitted in the product descriptions.

Watching Netflix on a hotel TV was the only practical use I've ever made of my Pro1's HDMI-out. Bummer ...