Installing microG on Sailfish OS

Xperia 10 III, indoors: instant accurate fix. Besides that, there’s a nice feature in the UI: It tells you which apps have requested location, and which location it gave them. And you can restrict certain apps to coarse location.

Unfortunately there is no longer UnifiedNLP support, but then again it seems to be working better than any NLP providers so I’d say it’s an improvement.

Wohoo… I finally got ICA Banken working. :grinning:

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About this part, before installing Micro-G from the F-Droid store check the stable version in their website

Because F-Droid propose the last version available even if it is a preview release and even if the Unstable updates is not allowed (unchecked) into F-Droid options.

@flypig: can the Micro-G repo keeper flag as unstable the preview release in order to stop F-Droid of proposing a unrequested ubdate above stable version?

I cannot replicate your performance with my Xperia 10 II (not III), unless the fix has been done in outdoor before. In such a case, it is going to lose the fix and then the accuracy, also.

Can you help me telling me what exactly do you remember you did?

I have reported my problem here below:

About this

I have installed UnifiedNLP support but not all the sanity checks cannot be fulfilled. However, GSM triangulation gaves me a position within a 9000m (9km) range.

Therefore, fixing satellites to improve it, would be wonderful.

I have a feeling there is a slight misunderstanding here. I wasn’t talking about GPS fix but ”location fix” - perhaps there is a better term for it. What I did was simply that I 1) installed the new microG version (0.2.28.231657) 2) turned on ”request from mozilla” and ”request from hotspot” in the microG location settings and 3) started any android app which uses location.

Even though there aren’t enough visible satellites to get a GPS fix inside my house, microG can get my position within 10 meters.

Note that this only helps with android apps, as sailfish apps naturally don’t have access to location provided by microG.

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Something goes wrong with my installation¹ because here in Italy, without any GPS satellite fix I got with my Xperia 10 II a range of 9000m!²

Unfortunately, without new microG version (0.2.28.231657) the Xperia 10 II has problem in receiving from GPS satellites a reasonable precise point. This seems absurd but it is not when you think that installing SFOS on Android 12 instead Android 11, the GPS does not work at all³. Why?

IMHO, the explanation is quite as straighforward as candid, the Android system is the source of hardware configurations and thus if microG layer does not operate correctly for any reasons, those configurations would not be loaded corretly.

Please feel to correct me, this is the idea I developed reading the forum, the documentation and configuring my Xperia 10 II.


LINKS

¹ Quick start guide, immediately after the licensing.

² GPS work arounds for Xperia 10 II for low resolution issue without GPS fixing.

³ Xperia 10 ii and Android 12 - #19 by farz2farz about GPS failure in fix satellites

It has been said time and time again. The replaced Android system, nor the Android base for the SFOS port has absolutely nothing to do with the Android App Support where your microG will run.

Oppinion != fact. Read up a bit instead.

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Communication

Probably or possibly because many people arrive to the same conclusion based on the same obsevervations. This does not mean that because many people see the Sun moving, then it is the Sun turning around the Earth. Observations and facts are two distincts categories.

Moreover, if you need to repeat things then it is time to write a post about those things and pass that link to everyone faces the same question/doubt. Ouch, it will be crossposting sharing a link among many threads. :wink:

Documentation

For this reason, I took a look to the SailFish OS Whitepaper and I noticed that the origin of the project are rooted in 2004 which is about 20 years ago, while the first release of Android is reported back to September 23, 2008 which are 14 years ago.

That was about Nokia, then Jolla started over on 2013 with SailFish OS.

Xperia 10 II get into Sony OpenDevice program in June 2020. Soon later the Android App Support was introduced into SailFish OS in Q4, 2020 (c.a. 6 months later) while the Android support for automotive in 2021. We can assume that “playing” with X10 II was a testbench to move the Jolla business in a more profitable market and give up the competition with Android (totally replace it, I mean).

Present

Therefore, the most interesting things happen between Q2,2020 and Q2,2021. However, the Xperia 10 II hardware support by SailFish OS can be considered nearly completed with the microG preview release on 29th May 2023.

Hardware support

Yes, hardware support. In fact, searching in the forum you will easily found references about the microG preview release solves a problem with the GPS. Whatever you might argue: if native and Android apps, both have problem with the GPS because the release version of microG, then microG should be considered part of the hardware support under the point of functionality,

Couriosly, I received my Xperia 10 II on 26th May 2023 just 3 days before the preview release of microG came out. :blush:

System Architecture

What you have said, many many times, is depicted here at the page 18:

The Android App Support is optional and separate by everything else. In particular at page 8, FireJail is cited as network security appliance (firewall manager): “apps have been sandboxed by Firejail and core
system services by systemd sandboxing”. Unfortunately, I did not find the SailJail which is expected to be delivered sometime in the future to achieve the fine control of network activities by the users.

Technical feedback

Finally, it is your turn. Look at the image and tell me where the microG is placed in that architecture infographic. IMHO, I guess it should stay - in terms of fuctionalities - in the hardware adaptation layer and also in the layer above, like in this picture:

Confrontation

Now, it is easy to confute me. I am not interested in, where it is installed the microG software. Nor of what is supposed it should do or not do. I am interested in, placing its funtional¹ role in this diagram. :slightly_smiling_face:


NOTES

¹ functional, what in practice is able to influence in a senstive way.

Holy crap what a wall of text.

This is untrue. The “because of” specifically.

And i quote an actual Jolla-employee (emphasis mine):

Nobody got it wrong to this level before. I am starting to think you are trolling. Answering new threads is not the same thing.
How are the likes for that heavily promoted thread coming along BTW?

There is no difference - it is all imagined by you.

It sits about here:

It is just a bit of framework supporting Android apps for certain functions, nothing else.

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MicroG has nothing to do with SailfishOS or Jollas Android AppSupport and it is not needed. Location services work fine without MicroG. MicroG is in some way a replacement for the Google Play framework and some apps who use this framework do not work or miss some functionalities. For example searching for locations, showing push notifications and so on. Navigation Apps work perfectly fine without MicroG. MicroG does not interact with any native Sailfish App.

Jollas AppSupport also was released before the X10ii was released. It was available on the X10 and the XA2.

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The Jolla phone supported Android 4.1.2 way back in 2015

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This seems coherent with the solved issue reported by @lkraav refering to an Android app bolt after upgrading microG:

Unfortunately, my experience is not the same. The GPSinfo was not working at all with SaiFish OS installed over Android 12 like many others people reported.

Once I downgraded to Android 11 and reinstalled SOFS, then the GPS fixing time was inaceptable long using GPSinfo before I decided to update microG at the last preview version. Obviously, I can revert it back to the stable version and make some tests again.

Also, Pure Maps started to work correctly and do not crash with the new version of microG. Again, I can do more tests expecially outdoor because some people reported issues happening outdoor, mainly.

I would happy to change my mind because as tiner the microG role into the device functioning and thus the Android system below, as better.

I will now stop feeding the troll.

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Great, because I read that “The First Tablet with Sailfish OS” has been released on 2014. Thus, Jolla started quite immediately supporting Android, but not SailFish OS in free (as gratis) version because licensing issue as far as I read:

Please, feel free to correct me if I am wrong. :slightly_smiling_face:

The last time I switch on the GPS was to try the compass apps, some of them, at least. It was 18h ago, more or less:

Two things happen to my smartphone in this time:

  • GPSinfo has been updated from v0.8 to v0.15.1-1 and now is able to calibrate the compass
  • I have installed Google app and I granted to Google app the full priviledges, then I restarted the Android Support, then I removed the Google app (which failed and the icon remained) then I restarted the Android Support again (and the icon svanished).

After this two actions - which was completely indipendent because the first was an automatic suggestion due to the new native apps Chum market and the 2nd because I was giving a try to Google Lens app - my GPS started to work fine and also in the middle of my room it fix 3 or 4 satellites on 33 or 34 available indoor.

For sure the magic happes becuase GPSinfo calibrated the compass but compass calibration has been done also under another native apps, before.

I have a 6th sense for data leaking and about this GPS, it is triggered!

I might be wrong, I might be wrong, I might be wrong, I might be wrong, but…

I think you would do a lot of people a favor if you would ease down on all this incoherent reports/conclusions/speculations until you have more insight on how these components interact.

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I agree. :slight_smile:

I never reported this as a “fix”, merely that for me, new MicroG didn’t seem to break location working by moving away from UnifiedNLP. Outdoors, Bolt was working fine with earlier versions, too, but indoors performance is much worse.

With new MicroG, I am mainly interested if indoors fix could also become high-performing. Testing right now, it seems indoors fix is obtained in a few seconds, but something like 100m away down the street.

What’s surprising me is that we have the same hardware (X10 II) with the same SFOS version (4.5.0.19) both we use the same version of microG (last available) with UnfiedNLP services active but our experience about GPS functioning is quite different. This is the reason for which I am still doing experiment on it.

Blackbox approch is a way but on the long run, I will go for the ADB console and trying to check the system log and everything else that can put me on the right way. I will keep you informed.

By the way I am using GPSinfo v0.15 and I have noticed that it is draining the battery at a rate I never experienced before. This is another novelty in the scene.

Maybe because I also do other modifications, like suplpatcher GPS stopped working - #425 by nekron and related gps.conf changes.

This usually makes all the difference.