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Development status of 4G/LTE support

Added by Anonymous over 2 years ago

Hello!

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who volunteers to help develop Replicant. You guys are doing a great job!

I've been following the project for some time and since my current phone recently broke, I'm thinking about getting a "new" phone to install Replicant on.

Since 3G networks are being phased out, I would like to know what the development status of 4G/LTE support is. Can we expect a working modem in the foreseeable future?

Thank you.


Replies (8)

RE: Development status of 4G/LTE support - Added by Jack K over 2 years ago

You can follow the main issue here: https://redmine.replicant.us/issues/2206

It says Note 2 LTE but S3 LTE has the same modem so progress on one will help the other.

There is also this issue: https://redmine.replicant.us/issues/1813 but it looks like that is for Replicant 6 which I think won't get LTE support. Replicant 11 is the next major version being worked on, though GNUtoo is focusing on 3G modem for now. I am trying a few bits and bobs on Note 2 LTE but I am not very skilled.

As ever, no ETAs but I imagine it will be important at some point given being 3G phased out.

RE: Development status of 4G/LTE support - Added by Blue Computer about 2 years ago

Jack, I have all the necessary hardware to test the S3 i9305, and also the Note 2 LTE N7105, can you please give me a way to reach out to you? I am able to install the regular Replicant build zips just fine, I just have no idea how to get any of yalls test builds
I want to test the current progress on 4G support for these two device. please let me know, thanks

RE: Development status of 4G/LTE support - Added by Anonymous about 2 years ago

Thank you, Jack.

Does 2G/3G support work on the I9305 or N7105 while only lacking 4G support, or do these devices currently have no radio capability at all?

RE: Development status of 4G/LTE support - Added by Jack K about 2 years ago

I think I might have replied to this elsewhere, but for others reading, there is no radio capability at all, as the LTE devices have a completely different modem chip, which is not yet supported.

Jack

RE: Development status of 4G/LTE support - Added by Josh Branning almost 2 years ago

Hi,

That's not strictly true afaik.

I compiled scintills version of Replicant 6, i9305, from contrib and SMSs and Data worked OK. [1]

Telephony also connected but there was no sound. (I can't remember if it was no sound 'just in telephone calls' or no sound 'in general' ... would need to check again).

iirc, it complained about a missing libcsd_client.so but I'm not sure how relevant that is. Joey said he pushed changes regarding a reversed engineered libcsd_client to his manifest/repos in contrib, but I see no evidence that it actually occoured in the commit messages, and like I said, it complained about it. But I'm not sure how important that really is. [2]

Some work has been done regarding audio, perhaps in the mean time, so there may be a chance of getting a complete working device w/ LTE up and running [3]. To clarify, I say "may" as in 'may be worth a try' not "may" as in 'hoping'.

Note, I'm not really a developer of Replicant, I was just testing for reproducibility.

[1] https://github.com/publicsite/ReplicantBuilds
[2] https://redmine.replicant.us/issues/2108
[3] https://redmine.replicant.us/issues/1958
[4] https://redmine.replicant.us/issues/2051

RE: Development status of 4G/LTE support - Added by Blue Computer almost 2 years ago

Josh,

Can you give me the steps/commands you used to compile this build you're talking about? I really wanna test on my own i9305, but I'm not too familiar where exactly to get the specific code you're referencing or what the build process it. I'm a bit new to this.

Thanks in advance if you can help me get started

-Blue

RE: Development status of 4G/LTE support - Added by Josh Branning almost 2 years ago

I can't give you exact steps, because the code in https://github.com/publicsite/ReplicantBuilds was written on-the-fly as stated from the readme.

But more generally speaking, you can

git clone https://github.com/publicsite/ReplicantBuilds

comment out the following lines in getDebian9.sh (so that it only builds the i9305 image) ...

cp -a getSource-4.2 squashfs-root/Sources/
cp -a do-4.2.sh squashfs-root/Sources/
cp -a build-4.2.sh squashfs-root/Sources/
sudo chroot /Sources/getSource-4.2.sh squashfs-root
sudo chroot /Sources/do-4.2.sh squashfs-root

cd to the ReplicantBuilds directory then run mark getDebian9.sh as executable (if it's not already) and then run it

*The code will probably need tweaking before it works, however. *

You can see from the getSource-6.0.sh script that there is a line ...

repo init -u https://git.replicant.us/contrib/scintill/manifest.git -b replicant-6.0

... this is where is gets the rest of (or the bulk of the) code that was used to compile the build

The code in https://github.com/publicsite/ReplicantBuilds was based on the docs at

https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Building

There are some patches to make https://git.replicant.us/contrib/scintill/manifest.git work for (or port it to) the i9305 in https://github.com/publicsite/ReplicantBuilds.

The script in https://github.com/publicsite/ReplicantBuilds called getDebian9.sh is called "getDebian9" because it downloads a Debian 9 iso that it uses to chroot and build the code.

Ideally I would like to help you more on the audio/development side of things, but the battery on my i9305 has died so I can't do any more on it at the moment really.

Cheers,

Josh

RE: Development status of 4G/LTE support - Added by Jack K almost 2 years ago

Hi Josh - sorry, yes, scintill's development branch works somewhat. I meant officially supported in Replicant. Thanks for testing that branch out.

Jack

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