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Topics - Zarhan

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31
I've now been using Cosmo as a daily driver for a week now. I wanted to write a short summary on my experiences and things that I've picked up especially since I came from Nokia N900 (Maemo). Some of this is really basic Android stuff of course.

I'll start with the bad, since those points are rather small overall:
  • Planet Computer's communication and delays - not exactly the most responsive manufacturer.
  • Device is a bit too big and heavy. Trying to use this for prolonger periods of time results in pain on the wrist due to the static strain (holding that 320 g on one hand while touching or typing with the other). On weekend, I spent a two-hour car (as a passenger) passing time and by the end my left hand was sore. For quick checks or with a table to place the device - no problems whatsoever.  I would have preferred a bit more compact keyboard, but it's not like there's much options in this space...
  • Certain stuff needs a bit more finish: Cover display likes to keep the CPU awake, costing power, the LEDs don't seem to really be customizable, documentation is missing...these will probably be fixed down the line. Right now I can get my battery to last for two full days, so it's okay-ish.
  • I haven't yet figured what exactly would be the best way to open the phone. The device is heavy but there doesn't seem to be any obvious indentations for "grab here to open". So I'll just lift the cover however appears best at the time...
The rest is pretty much all good, at least after a few configuration settings or necessary apps.
  • Community at OESF Forums: Wonderful. Thanks for all the hints, everyone (esp. regarding rooting and Devuan installation).
  • I was one of the lucky ones in the sense that my device's construction doesn't seem to have any flaws (no camera glass falling off etc). Hope it sticks.
  • Landscape mode Android is not supported on nearly all apps. So far I've just uninstalled if the app shows as ugly. There are plenty of alternatives in play store.
  • Related: Many "mobile sites" are apparently built for portrait as well. Workaround is to always request "desktop" view. At least with Firefox, you can use addon or just set your user-agent to spoof a desktop browser.
  • My apps so far that I've "settled on" (not counting e.g. games - those are bound to come and go):
    • Magisk for rooting. MagiskHide seems to work just fine for my banking app at least.
    • SMS Backup & Restore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?...store&hl=en - I wrote a couple of Python scripts to extract my MMS & SMS messages from my N900 and convert them to the XML format of this application. The XML is reasonably readable, so I might keep this even for future backups even if it displays ads.
    • Nova launcher. The builtin launcher has the Google search bar, and also does not really seem to work in landscape mode. Also, lots of widgets are not really so good looking with the default launcher.
    • Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Teams). So far I've mostly used Outlook & Teams. Outlook's default calendar view doesn't really work properly except in portrait mode, but the widget works. Luckily, supposed "3-day view" that actually shows the entire week works great. Other Office apps work just fine. I've also participated in MS Teams conferences.
    • Opencamera for camera works OK although I'm also struggling with what should the settings be (see https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=35912 )
    • Notificon: This nice app allows you to customize sounds of notifications and also put them on a weekly/daily schedule. I use this to block MS Office's (work-related) notifications on weekends and outside of business hours. You can also set notification sounds per app if the app doesn't allow you to customize them directly.
    • Google Maps seems to be fine for navigation, including in car. Compass seems to work ok-ish even without calibration. I don't have a car mount, but there's a small cubby in my car where I can just put it on the rest.
    • Termux for Devuan installation (see thread on the forums) and generic command line hacking around. Unfortunately, Termux doesn't seem to have locale support. I occasionally need to connect to machines that use e.g. ISO-8859-1 (Latin 1) charset instead of UTF-8, and end result is ugly if there are any non-ASCII chracters. Due to this, I've also installed ConnectBot SSH client.
    • Firefox for browsing, with Saka key & UBlock addons at this point.
    • Flym as RSS reader. This one seems to be one of those that support landscape a bit better, although still not quite optimally in my view. Still, works for now.
  • Other points
    • I have created separate desktops for Work (Contains shortcuts to MS Office, Outlook's Calendar widget etc), Generic (has weather widget from Foreca, file manager, calculator, clock, maps etc), and Fun (essentially games). This approach seems to work for me. The Dock has phone, messaging, contacts, Firefox and Play store (I'll probably remove Play store from there after I have a stable set of apps).
    • Creating a throwaway account for Google services and turning off all tracking options is probably the best of all-worlds where I can be part of Android ecosystem while still giving Google as little as possible. Yes, I get it's still a bit silly considering I'm ok with Google maps (even though I turned wifi-based location off), but can't have everything.
    • The display text sizes seemed too big despite setting the font sizes to smallest in the settings. Using Fn+Shift+C/Fn+Shift-V you can adjust the text to be small enough.
    • As a method to stave off the RSI, I installed Saka key addon to Firefox. This allows (almost) full keyboard-based browsing. This allows me to hold the device with two hands, without having to have the other hand touching the screen. E.g. hitting "ff" will enumerate all clickable elements on a website, each with a letter, that I can just press to follow a link.
        => I haven't been able to find a key combination to move focus to the URL/Location bar! Using CTRL+N (new tab), qq (move to previous tab), CTRL+W as a workaround.
    • The display is in some cases a bit TOO wide. I also cannot get "reader" view to work on most websites. End result is that sometimes layout is wrong. As a workaround, I use splitscreen to limit the application width. The sad part is that many websites are fixed-width.
    • All basic call functions work ok, including conferences etc. Controlling call via CoDi seems to work as well, although I noticed that occasionally my face accidentally hits one of the call control buttons. I've learned to just keep the phone half a cm apart so I don't accidentally hit any of the controls. Would be better if the display would just turn off if by face is touching it. Purpose for the ambient light sensor?
As a summary, I'm satisfied with my Cosmo. It still needs a bit of polish, and I hope the later firmware updates will address that. I've been more or less waiting for a device like this ever since E90 just became too troublesome (Symbian....) to use, and I can now finally retire my N900 (or rather, keep it as a backup device).

32
Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / Compass calibration
« on: February 15, 2020, 08:50:48 am »
How am I supposed to calibrate the compass? Google maps instructs me to do this figure-eight track, but the accuracy never improves. I've also tried rotating the phone along all of it's axises individually (720°), but the accuracy as reported by google maps is always "low". Is there some trick to this?

33
Cosmo Communicator - Android / Phone locking when closing lid
« on: February 10, 2020, 07:56:35 am »
Hi,

  is there some way to prevent Cosmo from locking itself when closing the lid while keeping the ability to lock the phone from the keyboard?

  It seems that closing lid causes "power button" event to be sent to the Android.

  I would prefer my Cosmo to lock itself when I explicitly lock itself from keyboard. If I have set "Power button: Immediate lock", I can lock the screen *either* by pressing fn+ESC *or* by closing the lid. I'd like to lock to activate only when either timeout has passed (I've set this to 10 minutes) or explicit button press, but not due to me closing the clam.

  Is there a key to explicitly lock the phone that is *not* bound to closing it?

34
Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Cover LED indicators and Ledison
« on: February 04, 2020, 09:02:58 am »
Is there any official word on what the different LEDs on the cover mean?

There are three LEDs.

From thread https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=35920 I could find the list of colors on the single LED near camera (thanks, PJS!)

Quote from: PJS
From what I've seen, here's what I've been able to tell the LED indicates:

 - purple            = the Cosmo is on wifi
 - blue              = the wifi hotspot is on
 - flashing yellow   = missed call
 - green (on power)  = the Cosmo is fully charged
 - yellow (on power) = the Cosmo is charging

Anyway, does anyone know more, or an official source?

Also: What are the colors of the fingerprint sensor LEDs?

I've noticed some patterns, like

- 2x blue = unlocked
- 2x red = locked

But nothing conclusive.

Also, I've tested out the LEDison app. I couldn't really see the effect. I tried a really simple app notification: Gmail with a specific pattern and sent myself a test message. Anyone else got Ledison working?

35
Cosmo Communicator - CoDi / Codi contacts list filtering
« on: February 03, 2020, 12:58:05 pm »
Has anyone yet figured out if there is any way to filter the types of contacts that end up in CoDi phone directory?

I just noticed that after importing my contacts list, same people appear sometimes several times in a row - listing all the various phone numbers present for the contact. This includes even *faxes*.

If we could just decide to only sync e.g. certain types of phone numbers that would be a start, or even better, if we could decide which contacts are visible in the menu (e.g. starred ones), that would be great. Alternate would be that if I select a name, the CoDi would provide a list of all the phone numbers under that name instead of just concatenating them all into a flat list.

As a workaround, I'll probably make my calls with the device open and just use the "recent calls" option on the cover display since it covers the most frequent contacts anyway...

36
Cosmo Communicator - Android / Smarter keyboard backlight
« on: February 03, 2020, 10:44:50 am »
Hi,

  Is there a setting for this somewhere? I coudn't find one.

  Essentially, there is already a sensor checking for ambient light and adjusting screen brightness accordingly.

  Can this same sensor be tied to keyboard backlight?

  I don't want or need keyboard backlight during daylight hours, but when it gets dark I'd like the keyboard to light up.

  Failing that, I'd like the keyboard to light up if I start typing on it and shut itself off after a short timeout (like 10 seconds). This way I can see what I'm typing, but the keyboard does not draw attention when I'm e.g. watching a  video or navigating a website by touching the links.

37
My charger provided with Cosmo (EU) emits high pitch whine if not under load. (How high? It's below threshold to be picked up by my cheap Logitech mic, but I'd say somewhere in 12-14 kHz range - near upper limit of human hearing)

Has anyone else noticed this? Essentially: Am I the only one with a charger that has whining capacitors?

I know it's not exactly dangerous or anything, and I guess it's a way to remind me to unplug it. However, if this is not a "standard" feature then I'd rather get a replacement. If everyone else has the same issue then I guess I just live with it and maybe get another charger.

38
Cosmo Communicator - Android / Scaling issues in landscape mode
« on: January 30, 2020, 06:55:57 am »
Hi,

  is there any kind of way to fix scaling of various widgets that you can place on your screens?

  E.g. Foreca weather app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?...ather&hl=en

  Install, then deploy the larger (4x2) widget on your screen.

  When in landscape mode, the icons for following days are miniscule and barely legible.

  Press Shift+fn+R to rotate the screen and they appear just like they should.

  Or is this just a matter of picking and choosing apps that properly support landscape view?

39
Cosmo Communicator - Android / Vibrating physical keyboard
« on: January 29, 2020, 09:18:55 am »
One thing I kind of noticed immediately with my Cosmo: Whenever I type something on the physical keyboard, the whole device vibrates. Is there some way to turn this haptic feedback OFF for physical keypresses?

Running firmware V15 (since cannot update to newer one, apparently), if that makes any difference.

I don't mind the feedback for touchscreen.

40
Cosmo Communicator - Android / Transferring texts and contacts to Android
« on: November 20, 2019, 02:16:30 pm »
I have an N900 as my daily driver. It has SMS and MMS history from quite a long period. I can export the SMSes in CSV format easily (it's just an sqlite database).

What's the best method to transfer these to Android (preferably without some paid app).

I found this https://github.com/teleshoes/Android-SMS-DB-importer but not much else.

Same applies for contacts. I can always export them to the SIM card of course and import back in, but SIM card only allows you to have one phone number per contact and not ancillary info (company, etc). I can export them as VCFs from the N900.

I'd prefer to avoid syncing them via a Google account. In fact, I hope to run my Android with minimal interactions with google, except for Play store.

41
Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / Belt cases for cosmo?
« on: August 17, 2019, 03:33:13 am »
Now that we are getting closer to production run, has anyone discovered any good candidates for carrying cases/pouches for Cosmo?

That 17,14cm length is going to be a problem, since I really haven't been able to find anything good at least in Finnish market Even "XXL" size cases seem to be too small (typically they appear to have dimensions of with about 14-16 cm width).  E.g. this one https://www.insmat.fi/fi/tuote/insmat-exclu...ottokortti-rfid is "only" 165 mm.

Even cases compatible with Samsung Galaxy S10 plus don't work - S10+ is smaller...

Having a window for the external display would be nice too, but not really mandatory, but a quick access+protection are the primary features here. Belt clip is also something I prefer since I don't like shoving a phone down my pocket.

Closest I could find are these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tactical-Smartphon...hone&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mopaclle-Holster-P...one&sr=1-13

But if anyone has already found a good solution for e.g. their Gemini (which has same dimensions) that is easily obtainable, please share.

Thanks.

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