Xperia 10 III support

Today in the morning I was expecting an important SMS. When I woke up it wasn’t there, so I tried to call the person who was supposed to send it. Despite normal indicators in the status bar showing good coverage (3G at that time), several attempts to make a call resulted in “Network error” message. I needed to use another phone to make a call. I was told that the SMS was sent to me half an hour earlier, and the sender even got the receipt confirmation. But I never got that SMS. I could make calls on the X10 III only after reboot.

Let’s see in further use if it was indeed a network problem or was it the X10 III acting up.

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How do background android apps work on your 10mk3?
Element (matrix client) deoesn’t update anything from the net 'til I manually select it’s window.
Seems like background network is disabled.
It wasn’t like that earlier.

In Settings → Apps → your android app → Allow background services to start on bootup. Is that turned on?

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No idea if it’s related, but I have twice received a text from the network operator promising a future text containing network setting. Neither of those texts has ever arrived:

No, it is turned off. As it always was on my phone.
AFAIK it has nothing to do with background services of running apps.

Consider installing (@peterleinchen 's fork of) Defender, it’s available both in SailfishOS:Chum and on openrepos.

It’s not a browser plugin so it can’t stop some specific Javascript tricks (e.g.: it won’t block Youtube pre-roll ad video), but it works at the /etc/hosts level (it change name resolution, a bit like a Pi Hole) and thus can also block ads elsewhere than browser (e.g.: it can be made to block apps in Android apps, too).

Defender doesn’t work anymore. (Sailjail incompatibility issue?) There are no sources in “Adblock Lists”.

Is there a workaround?

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Yes, there’s a work around. Let me check my notes.

Indeed the main problem is that the UI itself lacks the permission to access a few files it needs, due to not requesting the proper permissions. (and actually, I’m the one who filed the issue, but kind of forgot about this part :sweat_smile: ).
This only affects the UI (the list picker). Not the functionnality of defender itself as that is running in background services that rewrite the host file.

Basically the main work-around is:

Edit the file manually

The settings are stored in file .config/harbour-defender/defender.conf. Either copy it from an rsync backup / from your Jolla 1 phone. Or manually edit it and set the lists you want to sourceenabled = yes. Example:

[SETTINGS]
wlanonly = no

[stevenblack_unified]
sourceenabled = yes

[cameleon]
sourceenabled = no

[disconnectme_simple_tracking]
sourceenabled = yes

[disconnectme_simple_ad]
sourceenabled = yes

[mvps]
sourceenabled = no
…

To force updating the lists after that, run as root (this is the service that normally runs on a timer):

systemctl restart harbour-defender.service

Or alternatively as a user (this is how the UI passes the refresh instruction to the the above root servce):

touch ~/.config/harbour-defender/update

In theory, it should also be possible to patch the missing functionality (use Python functions instead of calling external wc -l) and run harbour-defender on the command line, directly instead of inside a sailjail.

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Thank you for explaining this. Now all i need is a full list of sources (or a copy of defender.conf with full list). Where could i apply that?

Edit: I managed to extract defender.conf from the RPM.

Edit Pt.2: And it looks it now updates the hosts file. Much obliged.

Edit Pt.3: Made a rookie mistake and forgot to backup the original /etc/hosts, so could someone pass that?

Sorry, upload is impossible.

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6

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harbour-defender stores a backup in /etc/hosts.editable.
The final /etc/hosts is simply generated by concatenating this editable file with all the ad-blocking entries.

Original content is:

127.0.0.1		localhost.localdomain localhost
::1		localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
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Does anybody here use Element app? Do you have background notifications working? “Allow background service” is on, but it updates only when I open the app from tabs.

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I assume you mean Element from F-Droid. I haven’t installed it yet, but I experience same problems with other apps running on Android. Like banking apps not showing pop ups when transactions have passed. Or ProtonMail not showing a message when new e-mail has arrived. But: K-9 Mail works like a charm. WhatsApp most times okay, but I doubt whether it’s always working.

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If you install microg and enable Cloud Mesaaging, then enable microg and that app to start services at system startup (in SFOS settings), then Android notifications became very reliable for me.

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It wasn’t enabled in my microG settings, hopefully this is it.

I use it and it behaves the same for me. (Unlike WhatsApp, which always has its background services active, no matter what I try.)

Using it for a few days now.
Huge improvement coming from a 10 v1, much(much!!) faster, battery life doubled. Was never happy with the 10 I in that regard(Android support started with whatsapp and Signal active), was hard to get a full day on a charge with moderate use. Now with the 10III( higher capacity battery of course) this will(should) never be a problem.
Also, the audio quality seems fine, at least for the few calls i’ve made(I specifically asked).

It’s not perfect though , my SIM card only works in cardslot 2(luckily it does have 128GB storage), and browser still occasionally crashes. Activesync still is buggy.
However, overall very happy with Sailfish again. It seems the extra horsepower makes the experience much better overall, at least for me.

I have the ugly situation that there is no audio and camera support in Aliendalvik for Signal and Conversations.
I can’t record audio messages and take photos directly.
Is there anybody else with this faults?

Works fine for me(in Signal). You should probably check if Signal has the correct Android permissions(camera and mic).
Sometimes these permissions get denied automatically i’ve noticed .

Permissions are ok. I checked it twice.