Fairphone - Technical details, links and Q&A interaction with Fairphone [26 Jul 2014]

[_keesj]

GPS accuracy

To make things a little more tangible I did a ride in the car. I installed osmtracker (from the f-droid repository) on 4 Fairphones and one Galaxy SII

http://www.mygpsfiles.com/app/#DgLGaXXF

You can compare the tracks against each other and the Galaxy SII.

 

[ralf_xda]

We might also have other options (like hosting the EPO ourself) but I think it is necessary to also understand that MTK is also trying. I think we will be able to fix this with MTK.

No need to host the epo file yourself. please have a look at this post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=51859239&postcount=86

The ftp download server is hard coded in com/mediatek/epo/MtkEpoClientManagerService.smali (/system/framework/mediatek-framework.odex).
This patch changes the address from epo.mediatek.com to epodownload.mediatek.com and the download method from ftp to http which gives a perfect download speed with success on the first try.

Nevertheless I cannot see any improvements in TTFF with a fresh epo.dat file and EPO enabled.

 

[Unrelashade]

Btw for all people as information: the FP1 can handle 128 gb sd cards. Not as mentioned in the wiki only 64 gb.

Sent from my FP1 using XDA Free mobile app

Just change that, that is the purpose of a wiki! I've gone ahead and did it.

 

[haiag]

To make things a little more tangible I did a ride in the car. I installed osmtracker (from the f-droid repository) on 4 Fairphones and one Galaxy SII

http://www.mygpsfiles.com/app/#DgLGaXXF

You can compare the tracks against each other and the Galaxy SII.

Hey @keesj

Last time, when using my FP in the car and having GPS fixed, when putting in the charger to the cigarette lighter it lost the gos signal after approx. 30 sec, when disconnecting it found it again.

I tried it 2-3 times.

Anyone else can confirm this?

Sent from my FP1 using XDA Free mobile app

 

[fredflegel]

To make things a little more tangible I did a ride in the car. I installed osmtracker (from the f-droid repository) on 4 Fairphones and one Galaxy SII

http://www.mygpsfiles.com/app/#DgLGaXXF

You can compare the tracks against each other and the Galaxy SII.

Yery good idea! What i think is interesting is the difference in elevation in Fairphone and S2. It would be great to include a pro gps device in the comparison to see which device is more correct.

 

[haffenloher]

What i think is interesting is the difference in elevation in Fairphone and S2. It would be great to include a pro gps device in the comparison to see which device is more correct.

Mediatek's GPS usually provides wrong elevation data if I'm not mistaken, so probably the S2 is more correct. See also forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Fairphone_Fairphone/Guides#How_to_fix_location_issues

 

[Teeyee3k]

Last time, when using my FP in the car and having GPS fixed, when putting in the charger to the cigarette lighter it lost the gos signal after approx. 30 sec, when disconnecting it found it again.

I tried it 2-3 times.

Anyone else can confirm this?

I can confirm this. I tried smoothing the output voltage of my car usb charger with capacitors, but that did not have any affect. As soon as I turn off the engine or unplug the charger from my car, I get a gps fix again.

It usually gets a lot better once the phone is fully charged.

 

[manu_26]

Yeah. While charging sometimes the touchscreen also behaves weirdly depending how you hold and where you touch the phone. Seems to be an electrical propblem.

 

[ralf_xda]

It seems you have a bad (noisy) charger.

I own two USB wall chargers and one USB car charger. One of the two wall chargers makes the gps non-functional while charging, once the phone is fully charged gps works again. The other wall charger and the car charger both have no noticeable influence on gps. I do not own the equipment to measure the power quality but I am pretty sure that the one which prevents the phone from getting a gps fix emits noisy power while the other two do not. None of them shows any influence to the touchscreen.

There is an interesting article about this:
www . righto . com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

(pls remove the white spaces I had to include since I am not allowed to post links).

And last but not least a google search shows how common this problem is with all kind of phone brands.

 

[FP1U]

Hi there,

I recived my FP1U last week and I think I already made a terrible mistake.
I used the partition app below.
Months ago this has worked very well on my wife's FP 1st. edition.
But I didn´t notice that there is a different storage layout on the new FP.
Now I´ve got an 5GB internal storage and you can imagine I´m pretty angry with myself....
Is there a way to revert my mistake?
Looking forward to hearing from you

Cheers

Here is a step-by-step instruction to partition your Fairphone

Two things you should know before doing this:
- you will have to reset your phone completely, so all your data will be lost
- I am not responsible for any damage done to your phone by doing this

• Install and open (just click the link with your phone browser)
  [*]Choose any size, confirm
  [*]Message "Operation completed succesfully [..]" should appear
  [*]Turn off your phone
  [*]Turn on your phone while holding the volume up button
  [*]Don't worry, the next screen should look like the first attached pic
  [*]To activate those options, press your power button once
  [*]Press the volume down button until you are on "wipe data/factory reset"
  [*]Press the volume up button to select this option
  [*]Same goes for the next step, just choose "Yes" when being asked if you really want to do it.

Finished!

Credit goes to mrueegg!

 

[_tmp]

To make things a little more tangible I did a ride in the car. I installed osmtracker (from the f-droid repository) on Fairphones and one Galaxy SII http://www.mygpsfiles.com/app/#DgLGaXXF

Thanks for the test!

Yery good idea! What i think is interesting is the difference in elevation in Fairphone and S2. It would be great to include a pro gps device in the comparison to see which device is more correct.

Mediatek's GPS usually provides wrong elevation data if I'm not mistaken, so probably the S2 is more correct.

In fact the elevation data from the various fairphones is a lot better than the S2, at least in this test:

• Amsterdam average elevation is 2m so the ~60m of the S2 seem quite off.
• On http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/elevation you can upload any gps track and view the SRTM elevation profile corresponding to the stored coordinates. The values are around 0-5 meters and not around 60.
• I used the gpsvisualizer site to replace the coordinates in the galaxy s ii track with the correct srtm elevation values and added this to another gps view: http://www.mygpsfiles.com/app/#LemYkE5y

In summary the fairphone gps elevation looks quite good (keeping in mind that the vertical accuracy of gps will always be worse than the horizontal).

 

[manu_26]

This is what I get using GPS. Sometimes it's ok, but most of the time the fairphone is 20-50 meters off.

 

[drcyber]

Hey @keesj

Last time, when using my FP in the car and having GPS fixed, when putting in the charger to the cigarette lighter it lost the gos signal after approx. 30 sec, when disconnecting it found it again.

I tried it 2-3 times.

Anyone else can confirm this?

Sent from my FP1 using XDA Free mobile app

i can confirm this but once i got a fix ( plugged off) it seems to work also when i re-plug the Charger in..

 

[_keesj]

Hi,

We might also have other options (like hosting the EPO ourself) but I think it is necessary to also understand that MTK is also trying. I think we will be able to fix this with MTK.

No need to host the epo file yourself. please have a look at this post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=51859239&postcount=86

The ftp download server is hard coded in com/mediatek/epo/MtkEpoClientManagerService.smali (/system/framework/mediatek-framework.odex).
This patch changes the address from epo.mediatek.com to epodownload.mediatek.com and the download method from ftp to http which gives a perfect download speed with success on the first try.

Nevertheless I cannot see any improvements in TTFF with a fresh epo.dat file and EPO enabled.

I did some more testing with a build that fixed the EPO download. What I did was to disable APGS and test EPO based quickfix only. While EPO data will remain valid for way longer (one month v.s. 4 hours for AGPS data) getting an initial fix is slower (e.g. 45 seconds) v.s. a few seconds up to 15 with AGPS.

So:
-Enabling EPO can be useful when going on a roadtrip but expect a slower fix (e.g. 45 seconds)
-Using AGPS is critical to get good performance.(fix within 15 seconds).
-Disabling EPO is the thing to do when you are connected

*note/bugs*: It looks like just disabling EPO is not enough to get a quicker fix is you enabled EPO previousely. You also need to remove the EPO files (/data/misc/EPO.DAT and /data/misc/EPOHAL.DAT) to experience the AGPS quickfix.

 

[dbrgn]

*note/bugs*: It looks like just disabling EPO is not enough to get a quicker fix is you enabled EPO previousely. You also need to remove the EPO files (/data/misc/EPO.DAT and /data/misc/EPOHAL.DAT) to experience the AGPS quickfix.

Are you saying that AGPS only "kicks in" when EPO is completely disabled?

 

[_keesj]

Hi,

Are you saying that AGPS only "kicks in" when EPO is completely disabled?

This is what it looks like to me yes but I have no proof yet.

 

[dbrgn]

That would explain why the GPS seems to suck so much... Especially in the car. And as long as I'm in a urban / semi-urban area, quick fixes are much more important than long-term predictions.

 

[chrmhoffmann]

Teaser...

 

[Dr-Shadow]

The bootloader for now is the standard bootloader from MediaTek. We didn't change it.

In regards to the UART, I have forwarded the request to the ChangHong engineer and I will respond when I know more about the kernel driver.

Is there any news about uart ? I wonder where I should probe it on the board.

I got pics : http://goo.gl/A1zPQD

Faea F2S, uart is on TX/RX/GND

But what's about Fairphone ? There is UTX*/URX*, is this the uart ?

 

[manu_26]

Nice. CM would be awesome.