Yes it was and Android support is even planned as well, according to the README. But this is very early days for this client, so it’s not there yet. Just as Flatpak support is also not there yet, as the dev hasn’t yet figured it out fully according to the recent commits.

Tried it on my Linux tablet. Works well so far, only very few rough edges (for which I have opened issues).

As you mentioned Modem Manager, do you know whether there’s a way to make the device always use a specific SIM slot booting up? It always starts the modem on the eSIM, so I have to switch to the physical SIM.

The term would be “close to mainline”, some patches are still being sent upstream and getting merged. You could use a fully mainline kernel, but the sdm670 repo has better support for now. At least the day when everything is upstreamed will come.

https://gitlab.com/sdm670-mainline/

Hey, great to see you here, flamingradian.

For the others: The one that did sooo much work getting the kernel running well on the Pixel 3a :D

Maybe you can elaborate a bit on the camera and what’s missing there to take full advantage of the camera and what’s missing for Bluetooth calls.

I haven’t really followed those topics.

And for sensors, I have another question: When I start hexagonrpcd on Mobian, the whole device seems to completely lock up. The screen just will be stuck until the battery runs out. Is that a Mobian issue or a kernel thing that also happens on pmOS?

It mostly works fine.

Note what doesn’t work well…yet:

• camera: There are some wip patches, so that should improve in the next weeks. Currently photos do not look very good.
• phone calls: Only through the phone, speakers and headphone jack, but not yet via Bluetooth
• battery life: I think it’s better than on Android
• phone calls on standby: That’s wip and will come, but for now you’d have to disable standby. Battery life is still what I’d describe as “good”, especially considering the age of the Pixel 3a

The issue with waking up for calls is that you need to tell the modem what events you want to wake up for. Currently it is either “everything” or “nothing” and waking up from everything means constantly waking up as the modem reports the signal strength. That “filter” is currently being built, but I haven’t followed it closely so no idea whether it is ready now.

If it is, I’d make sure this gets into Mobian, but not sure who’s working on it and who to ask.

I just wish I could have Secure Boot on a Mac, that’s the reason I don’t have one running Linux, currently on a ThinkPad X13s with a Snapdragon SoC. Encryption without something like Secure Boot… nah.

Once that’s a thing, though, it gets very interesting to me.

Oh and forgot to add:

6.12 is a longterm support kernel, it’s probably a kernel from the SoC vendor that’ll get some patches until 6.12 is EOL and then that’s it.

I bet that thing will be trash in two years or less. Doesn’t matter that the hardware is interesting.

I want to update a device I use and not replace it when the manufacturer decides to no longer release updates, often after just two years or less.

Therefore I need mainline kernel support.

That’s why I use a Pixel 3a with Mobian, which I’ve ported. I can just use it with a mainline kernel. And that’s why I’m working on mainline support for the Xperia 10 III.

I don’t want to use a device that’ll become a security nightmare after a while, it doesn’t matter how great the hardware is if I cannot use ut safely.

I’ll get interested if it at some point has mainline kernel support.

Let me know if you try it again, would like to know if that’s something that I can recommend to those that are still on Windows.

Well, of course it seems outdated, Ubuntu 24.04 was released two years ago. :p

I prefer just reusing the same software I use on my desktop, which is what I’m doing on my phone. I’ve ported Mobian to the Pixel 3a for precisely that reason.

I want the same software on the go.

Then it is just a different philosophy, mine is: Do one thing and do it well :D

Why would I want to write and read blog posts in my messenger? It’s great to see this client being actively developed, I just wonder about the use-case.

Android is a Google project, you’ll always keep fighting your upstream.

Don’t worry about having people to talk to, XMPP is going through a renaissance!

Nowaydays XMPP uses OMEMO. It’s what Signal uses, but made to work with XMPP and with a different name for legal reasons.

OTR is not what you should use nowadays, it’s been broken.

XMPP hasn’t been very mobile friendly around a decade ago, which has in large part been due to OTR, which only works with two devices and both have to be online. Also, there hasn’t really been support for offline message storage.

A lot of other things have improved and nowadays XMPP is pretty much the most battery friendly option out there and Conversations can even be a UnifiedPush provider. Which makes sense as both Google’s and Apple’s push implementations are based on XMPP, so we know it works well.

What do you like about it?

That’s why we need to decentralise communication everywhere.

Good luck trying to surveil all of XMPP. It just does not work. The server operators could be forced, but the client developers would just not release an update with a backdoor and instead just stop developing their clients.