Early impressions of /e/os on FP4

I got my shiny new FP4 a week or two ago, and after some deliberation decided on /e/ as my os of choice. Having used it for some days now, here are my current impressions:

  • Overall: Good stuff! Most things work as expected.
  • Had one reboot, unclear why.
  • MMS has not been working, but I just installed Simple SMS messenger, which seems to work.
  • The dialer app had a default setting to not accept incoming calls, which I felt was a strange default
  • A Norwegian instant pay app (Vipps) doesn’t work, due to safetynet failing. I have magisk (zygisk) installed, but so far no luck there.
  • Not sure I like the Bliss launcher (no swipe up to see all apps, quite difficult to reorder icons), but not a big deal either.
  • I think I managed to install microG from f-droid, or update, or something, but it has an update available, and it fails to install (microG core services). Not sure what to do about that.
  • I have a couple of google calendars I need to share with family, and using davx^5 for that works like a charm! Apart from the odd detour into their search engine, there’s precious little google issues.
  • I still have my bootloader unlocked. I’m not sure I want to lock it, with magisk installed, etc, in case of bricking, but it also annoys me. Doubly annoying that I would have to do another full factory reset to lock it, of course.
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Turns out using “Simple SMS” didn’t fix my MMS issues, so they are still present. I don’t send much MMS myself (at least I can easily avoid it), but it’s unfortunate that if someone sends me one, I will never know. Hopefully, I can find a fix for this.

As a workaround you could try Signal and let it handle SMS, it might avoid whatever is causing the issue.

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It fails to send MMS as well, it turns out. I’m guessing signal does The Right Thing, and actually sends an actual MMS, so the whole thing will fail in the same way no matter which app is doing it.

I’m starting to think this is a problem with APN settings. I have a radio button to select which internet APN setup to use, but there is no radio button on the MMS APN.

Just a clue, if you tap on the radio button that is active, there must be an entry containing a URL in

MMSC

Many Carriers now have MMS-free service, where there is no MMS.

In this case it is a question for your Carrier whether you pay for the “full” service with MMS, in which case they can give you the correct APN.
Screenshot_20220301-094916_Settings

For instance (if we are taking about the same radio button) my carrier offers 2 services !

I was on a support call with my provider yesterday, and was told to add two APNs, one for internet and one for MMS. That’s also what I had on my old phone, which was stock android (and which worked).

Maybe I can wrestle a setting out of them where I can have both in one APN.

Did you check out that the MMS service was not fully functional? I would not expect Either / Or !

For instance (if we are taking about the same radio button) my carrier offers 2 services !

Looks the same for me, except the MMS radio button isn’t there. Maybe the MMS APN is wrong, somehow. Hmmm…

Hmm, I think I may finally have found the problem. My internet APN had a long list of APN Type, but according to my provider it should be ‘default,supl’ only (it also had mms first, which looked wrong, but removing only mms didn’t help, also had to remove hipri and ims and whatever it all was).

I’m wondering a bit about this one too, do I just leave it as “Hide this upgrade”? Also, Aurora store wants to update Google play services, which I think may be a similar thing. I’ve just suppressed that one too for now. I didn’t find play services in the blacklist manager, so couldn’t blacklist it, I think

Actually, this was wrong. I could leave everything in that list, except for mms. It’s now got ‘default,supl,hipri,blahblah’. I still don’t have a radio button for the mms APN, but it works, so that’s good.

/e/ has its own microG built in (for better or worse !). It is a hazard that you should not install things from “strange places” – I know F-Droid is wonderful !

But it is “Downloader beware” – if you don’t want Google, keep well away, but Google’s little helpers will try to get back in without care.

If you check Settings > Apps and notifications > Show all apps
you can expect to uninstall anything odd you installed. When you also

3 dot menu, top right corner > Show system you can find all the microG components you have with an /e/ icon.

:information_source: System apps are built in and you cannot uninstall them by mistake !

To check on dubious apps navigate to the App info as above > Advanced > STORE will reveal the source.

Much more info on the forum by searching or microg .

Ah, thanks. I can’t uninstall the “microG Services Core” app, seemingly, so I guess that means it’s the builtin one. I don’t see STORE under Advanced, also, so I suppose that also indicates it’s a system app.

I’m not 100% sure I ever installed it in f-droid, but at the very least f-droid wanted to (and failed to) update it. I’ll leave it there for now, I guess.

Only missing item on my agenda now is getting safetynet, but not sure I’ll be bothered to do what it takes if that involved re-locking my bootloader and starting over from scratch…

It was confirmed recently in the forum that you should not attempt to relock bootloader on FP4 with /e/ yourself. Not found !

Hmm, interesting. I’m pretty sure the recipe for installing on FP4 said to re-lock (but it didn’t include adding magisk, or course).

You are right … my memory then :blush:

did you try QKSMS which is available in fdroid app store. This is a great replacement for SMS/MMS app

I did try it for a bit (didn’t fix my issue, but of course, that was because the issue was the faulty APN setting), and it looks okay. I’m using Simple SMS Messenger now, and I’m happy with it. I’m also sorta-kinda considering using Signal, but I think I’ll leave it like this for now.

I have also a FP4 and signal works great for me

I’m happily using signal for signal things, but I’m a bit hesitant to use it for SMS/MMS. I kinda like keeping the two apart.