At first, man thinks he controls the modem.
But after the 20th reboot, man learns the modem controls him.
— Epictetus
So here it is! working VoLTE calls with audio on linux!
What a rollercoaster it has been i'll tell you that.
The frequency between my previous posts was only a few days, as you can see from the time since my last post this has been a far harder project.
But a successful one!
Now fully powered trough my new imsd project:
https://forgejo.catcrafts.net/Catcrafts/imsd
As i said in a my previous comment no matter what i did the regular modem route wasn't working, so i had to come up with my own.
This has several advantages however, call audio is now just routed trough wireplumber & pipewire, so its integrated much better.
Both inbound and outbound calls work.
How do i get this???
The patient route is waiting until my patches get accepted upstream, a few already have and are coming in 7.3 probably (pmos runs 7.0 currently still oof), a few will probably take longer, 7.4 or beyond.
but for the ones that want to jump right on ive published everything on my forgejo:
https://forgejo.catcrafts.net/Catcrafts
I will soon be publishing a shell script that does the entire installation soon for easy installation.
Sadly there is no way to just plug in an android and do it, so there are still a few manual steps needed, but i believe the path to adoption is reducing friction as much as possible, so ill do my best to make it as easy as possible to use.
imsd
So what is an "imsd"?
its a full userspace implementation of the IMS protocol, which drives VoLTE (4G) calls.
Normally the modem firmware drives this, but this is quite difficult to work with, now it runs fully via a standard daemon on linux!
Along with several d-bus helpers that integrate it with standard plasma-dialer.
if made a APKBUILD for pmos that is mutually exclusive with 81voltd, and loads imsd instead. so installation should be easy.
Now will this actually work?
That's where you come in!
I am just one guy with one phone with one carrier.
I can say it works on the Fairphone 6 with KPN. it might work with other carriers and other Qualcomm phones aswell, so potentially this could work for the entire linux phone ecosystem, but i have no way to test that.
If you end up trying it, no matter if it works or doesn't work, please send me a message or open a PR, then we can make sure it works for everyone!
donations
I really was surprised when people asked me this, i just see myself as a guy doing this in his free time, "why would people want to send donations to me?" i thought.
I still stand by my previous point, i have a job, and this project costs me nothing except for time, i don't have any costs. So i felt kinda guilty receiving money from people.
But i would much rather spend my time making software that benefits society instead of the B2B stuff i do at my job.
I really feel greedy for saying this, but if you want to send me a thank you then that is now possible at: https://bunq.me/catcrafts
Please don't feel any pressure to do this, doesn't matter what i get im still continuing with this bring-up. And if you don't want to donate to me there are many linux organizations that could really use the support! In my eyes we are all in the same boat with the same goal.
If you do decide to, and i cannot express my gratitude enough if you do, please write in the description that it's a donation, as this makes tax easier.
What's next?
Ive got a bunch more stuff coming soon, while i haven't posted here in quite a while i've been plenty busy on the mailing list:
So except some more posts soon.
Bonus round
Having fully working hardware is great, but a phone that has no apps is pointless for most people, so i would like to start a discussion in the comments.
What apps do you need that are preventing you from switching to mobile linux?
This is awesome, I have a fairphone 5 and hoping some of this work will help the finished development for the FP5!
Sort of related: is there any interest in looking at getting bluetooth support, or bluetooth passthrough to Waydroid? I have a few medical android apps that need bluetooth in the android container to be able to actually use them, and it seems to be stalled in the Waydroid development git discussions.
Well, as I answer to this usually in fr, here in eng : usually people who go to postmarketos doesnt do this to keep anything from iphone or Android/AOSP-based environnment, eg you forget google, google service AND android-compatible apps, waydroid included.
When you leave the android ecosystem, you just forget all apps, as we did here, android/iphone apps are not permitted in our lives : we switched everything on the computer. As we repeat :
Either it's on firefox/computer, either it's via the service provider (welcome desk, atm, kiosk machine..) or it's just not in our lives.
when they reply "it's only on the app", we're proud to show-up them our 3310-like (pmos is not smartphone, as not iAndrocrap) incompatible with apps, then we just tell them "no problem, you give us the device and we install it", and they laugh until they realize we're not kidding at all.
Either it's possible to do the operation without an app, or it will be without us, period. We wont deal with "mandatory-terrorism"-forced-apps. And recommend to everyone to do so, especially for banking (our banks can manage app-free customers). It's feasible, unless you're Revolut-lost-case-fanboy.
Especially for transportation and ticketing : impossible to us to have it on a screen, it's way back to the classic paper, we can't do otherwise at all. Never on a screen for ticket, ever never. Paper only, that's it.
I think you missed the part where its a medically necessary app.
AndroidAPS
And
Xdrip+
Thank you!
Bluetooth seems to already be fully working, atleast for audio and mouse and keyboard, i'm not sure how the bluetooth devices you need work but the bluetooth part doesn't seem to be the issue.
I am not planning to work on waydroid, while i think its a good project personally i would rather spend my development time on making the linux apps that people need then getting the android apps to work.
Understood! Like I said they're medical apps for diabetes, so its not a great thing to try to make a linux-port because you have to do testing and make sure there's no issues compared to the android version.
The way the apps work with waydroid is they need direct bluetooth access, or they need a pathway for the signals to get passed through to the container, via a fake bluetooth stack.
As far as I'm aware waydroid right now just routes supported things from the host device to the waydroid container, such as networking, audio, and I guess input from keyboards, gamepads, etc. Those devices don't have direct bluetooth support in the android container, the linux host is just passing things along to the container, there's just no supported path for a blood sugar monitor, or an insulin pump info to get to the waydroid container right now.
I do suggest making a thread/post about this. Not trying to silence here, but I do believe that,
Ah yeah i apologize, i kinda glossed over that, i assume there is probably alot of certifcation that needs to be done for these apps?
They're both open source, but you're dealing with possibly killing people if there's a bug with injecting insulin, or reporting blood sugar values wrong, haha so its a feat I've steered clear of, myself.
AndroidAPS
And
Xdrip+
Well them being open source does improve the situation significantly, but i agree with your statement.
I could probably get them to run on linux but with no way for me to test and there being such a high risk that is a bit too scary for me.