What are peoples thoughts on the Mecha Comet? (mecha.so)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linuxphones@lemmy.ml

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The kickstarter for the Mecha Comet just launched the other day and I am seriously considering backing it as I love the idea of the device as a whole.

Originally when I heard about the project a couple of years back I thought it would be good to have to try and replace my phone for the most part but still have a phone handset setup solely to run as a hotspot for the Comet to run through. Now with the launch of the kickstarter I see that there is actually a physical sim card slot and an LTE modem available so maybe it could be used outright as a phone without needing a second device to use as a modem!

Is anyone familiar with this device beyond the info detailed in the kickstarter? I'd be interested to hear further details if anyone has any, maybe someone here has had hands on experience with some of the units that were shown at CES (I think it was there)

Do you guys think it would be viable to use as your only handset?

I guess I'm mostly looking for more knowledgeable peoples opinions on it but also make people aware of it if they hadn't heard of it to hopefully get some more people interested as on the face of it it seems like a really interesting project!

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[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 3 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] Shatur@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

Interesting info, thank you! Is this on the mainline kernel?

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 4 points 9 months ago

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/

[-] Shatur@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

Ah, yes, I didn't expect it to run the current version of the kernel, just have patches for the latest version. This is great!

[-] flamingradian@social.sineware.ca 1 points 9 months ago

For calls on suspend (and functioning GPS, and emergency alerts, and some SUPL fixes), I'd recommend checking out the latest ModemManager commits.

I ran into another problem though (which may or may not be fixed), where travelling to a different location while suspended can cause missed calls, even after the device wakes up: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/2609

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 1 points 9 months ago

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?

[-] flamingradian@social.sineware.ca 0 points 9 months ago

Hi!

The ADSP crashes on resume if HexagonRPCD is invoking while suspended. In postmarketOS, it gets terminated before suspend.

The only unsupported camera hardware are the rear stabilizer and focus. @katzenmann made a focus driver but it can't set the focus to a value that we want.

For Bluetooth calls, @dylanvanassche made a draft MR that curently fails. It might work if ported to the Pixel 3a which only uses SLIM for Bluetooth. https://gitlab.com/sdm845-mainline/linux/-/merge/_requests/99

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 1 points 9 months ago

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.

this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026

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