I just got mine today and everything has worked perfectly, including banking apps! I have been using iPhones my entire life.
The only thing I haven't managed getting to work is a step counter/pedometer. Tried to install a few apps but neither of them seem to work. Do you have any tips?
@disevani have you tried any banking apps? I read they can be problematic. Unfortunately I would not have a way around that - a second device is an emergency option but I would prefer not to.
Will try it out the upcoming days. I'm planning to make a little review in a few days, answering all questions/suggestions!
@disevani fantastic :)
Just so you don't have to wait a few days: I was able to install my banking app in Murena's App Lounge, and setting it up and using it for a bit works just as well as my Nothing Phone! Honestly very suprised myself...
In my review i'll let you know if this continued being this good!
@disevani nice! thanks for checking! I would think if it installs, starts and let’s you set up the login it should be all good :) (Im not in any rush!)
You can use the plexus app off f droid to see. Maybe they have a website too. The app let's people upload reviews from their degoogled phones to tell people if a certain app works or not.
Which country are you from? Are train company apps working? I'm in sweden with an old phone supporting murena/eOS, but two train apps are not working.
I'm from the Netherlands, public transport apps seem to work fine here (i tried the NS, NS international and 9292 apps). If you share the name of your apps, maybe i can try it on mine.
I thought I had an issue with two transport apps, but one appears to work now. If you are willing to try I'd apprichiate it. The app is Mälardalstrafik, and when I do searches by going to "Tickets", then "Buy Movingo", " Continue without login", then it just shows the progress animation and then times out after a while.
I'm able to continue to the point where i can choose 'from' and 'to', after doing the exact steps you've said. But after inserting 'Arboga Station' to 'Flen Station' (or any other stations), i get "oops, something went wrong. Please, try again!". Clicking on 'Retry' does not do anything.
So yeah, this does not work. But if it's a Murena only issue, i can't tell.
Thanks for checking! I have tested it on other non-/e/OS phones and the search works there. So it is something murena specific. Thanks again for checking.
In Finland, public transportation works fine. Trains ok and local busses in Turku and Tampere are ok. Who is making public sector apps in Sweden?
SJ - Biljetter och trafikinfo worked with me. didn't try to pay. my phone is Samsung S10 with /e/OS 2.8
Thanks for checking. I did have an issue with SJ and also Mälardalstrafik where search results did not show up for some sesrches. I double checked SJ now, and indeed, it works. I checked Mälardalstrafik again, and it does not work still (only normal searches work, not "Buy movingo" searches). I thought it was an overall issue with train apps, but then it appears to just be Mälardalstrafik then.
Did you find if it somehow lets you manually select frequency bands without rooting?
I've found some Motorola phones have this in *#*#4636#*#* menu, even with Qualcomm SoCs. I didn't take a screenshot when I was testing one of them, but found one online:
If I remember right, these can be removed/added in one of the options under 3 dots in upper right corner.
Unfortunately, only available for 4G/5G, but that's where it matters most anyway. What I really disliked however is the lack of "reset" option, and nowhere did it list all supported bands. They are added and removed from the list shown by typing in a number into a field.
This is how it looks on my current phone in separate MediaTek app (*#*#3646633#*#*):
Far better design than Motorola, though I am not sure if it's right to blame them on design of hidden menus.
Lastly, for mmcli which may be usable on PinePhone, it's --set-current-bands=[BAND1|BAND2...] option.
Anyway, it did prove itself quite useful, especially indoors and moving vehicles to get more bandwidth at the cost of reliability and battery life.
I hope the screenshot is uploaded correctly, but you can change your preferred network type! And a whole bunch of them...
Edit: this can be done by;
Settings->Network&Internet->Sims->name Sim you inserted->Preferred Network Type
It did, but this is just network type. I meant specific frequency bands.
For example (4G, my phone doesn't do 5G), indoors I may get automatically placed into Band 20 (800MHz) with less bandwidth and more load. This was especially a problem when I tried O2. During the day, I'd see around 3Mbps in this band, which was what I'd get indoors. Manually I could switch it to B3 to get the max limit of 20Mbps for the cheap plan I was trying.
Another example would be Telekom. When in a train or car, I get placed into B20 usually. In this case I get some 25Mbps, so it's fine. BUT, in certain cities they have B7 where they run 20+20MHz LTE-A, and that usually gets me 130 - 150Mbps. Pretty damn big difference.
Oh, also not all settings in the selection you posted are valid. I think they're just what's in Android. My phone also lists "NR" for example, despite not supporting it.
Other than this menu, the same thing is controlled in Settings under "Preferred network type". Although this still gives more control.
Fun fact: Disable 2G option was only available since it seems Android 12, but via this hidden menu has been available for... probably all the time.
Effectively the same setting on my Android 2.3.6 phone:
Hm. I can't figure this out at the moment, and my lack of knowledge regarding this doesn't help much either. I will come back to you if i find anything other than "allowing 2G" (or if i can't find anything at all)
So far i see no way to change band modes. The list i provided is the only thing to change anything network related (i turned off 5G using that list). If anything comes up later, you'll be the first one to know.
If any FairPhone is reading this, and I have been saying this for years! You release a sub 6 in (5 or 5.5 in best) you will triple your sales instantly!
I would be a fan of a smaller Fairphone too! 5.5 to 5.8 would be my sweetspot, but compared to most recent phones (my Nothing Phone 2a for example...), the Gen 6's 6.3 inch is already much more enjoyable.
What about NFC transactions? What option is there?
in the App Lounge, Murena's native app store, Google Wallet is present. Since NFC is also present and MicroG is installed by default, i think that should work. I have never used it, but i'll try it out! If there are any other options, i will include it in my review in a few days!
If you could try the Sofi banking app, it usually raises an error on GrapheneOS when you attempt to use the sign in screen.
This appears to be the first app i've encountered that is not willing to install, at all.
I'm able to find it in the App Lounge, but clicking 'install' sends me to the Google Play Store page, where i can't do anything other than reading its store page.
I'll look into this, hope i can add that to my review soon.
Thanks! I'll look out for it. And hopefully a means for you to be ablw to install it.
I really appreciate you taking the time!
How's /e/os? Last time I tried it was after the FP4 release up until lineage OS supported it. Back then I absolutely hated it. They tried to imitate iOS so hard they even copied their shortcomings. Like not having widgets for example. To make matters worse they even took perfectly fine Open Source apps like Etar calendar and patched out the widget support as well.... Absolutely bonkers move. Ditched it as soon as Lineage for MicroG was available and am still using that on my FP4 to this day. The same Google free experience, but saner (IMO).
How is the OS years later?
I'm thinking of buying the same phone, but I can't decide between Android and e/os. Apps that I'm most worried about not working:
I also use my phone to stream to a Chromecast, don't know if that's supported. Also, how do you like the phone so far?
I'm able to install and run Triodos. I don't have an account so i can't tell if everything works in the app, but since all apps that were able to install and run also actually worked, my guess is this won't be a problem. My banking app, Rabobank, works flawless.
Since i also use Digid, i can confirm this works without issues.
I installed NPO Start, this also works like a charm.
I don't have a Chromecast, so i'm not going to be able to tell you if this works, but my best guess would be that it should.
The only troubles you can experience would be if apps and services require things like Googles Billing API, which are not present. Doing some In App Purchases and some banking/financing apps use this API, so they might not work. So check the internet to see what other Triodos users are saying about this... Maybe it's possible to spoof this, but personally i'm not willing to go to such lenghts (for my personal usage, at least). I got the Murena version to deGoogle after all...
The phone itself has been an absolute pleasure to use. Snappy perfomance, the smaller 6,3inch screen looks and holds fantastic, battery life is awesome, e/os is simple but decently customizable and fast. Bugs are very minor so far. Will talk all about this either today or tomorrow in the review i was planning to post here!
Thanks for testing it out! It's quite a relief to know those apps work. I don't purchase anything through the Play Store either, so that won't be a problem.
Good to know you enjoy the phone so far. I'll keep an eye out for your review.
You are the right person at the right time for me! 🙏I'm looking the same but nervous to make the jump. Playstore apps that I cannot get away from are below. If you have chance to try or experiment, I would be very grateful.
Qobuz for my music Banking apps Car EV charging apps Uber & Bolt for taxi when I'm in different countries / cities RethinkDNS and firewall app to close down leaks and block ads
Alright, that went quick.
I've installed and used every app requested (at least the ones that let me use the app without account, althought i tried the 'use Google to sign in' in Qobuz, which worked perfectly fine!).
Since i don't have any experience with any Car EV apps, i just installed the ones from Volvo, Tesla and FastNed (for charging points around the erea). I don't have an account for Tesla and Volvo, but they installed and booted without issues. And so did every other app and service! And the apps that didn't require an account, ran just like any other Android phone i've ever used.
Murena's App Lounge heavily relies on Google Play Services API, as well as the ones needed for F-Droid, etc. I suggest reading through this link to understand a bit better why everything should (and does, so far) work;
https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/app_lounge#how-does-it-works
Additional, if you need the apps from Google Playstore that you've paid for, simply log into your Google account when you first set up App Lounge. The App Lounge is also usable without an account, for this just sign in as "Guest".
If you still use Google for Agenda, Contacts, etc, this will all work on Murena's apps too!
You are great indeed. Thank you. I need to read the page you linked, but I think you have found my next phone. Very grateful.
Happy to help!
Will try it out for you! I'll let you know very soon.
I have banking apps and all apps I can think of installed nicely with MicroG (S10+murena). But struggle with in game purchases becuse the lack of google payment layers in MicroG. Does these work with you or with someone else?
I tried buying some Minecoins in Minecraft to see i could. So far, no luck.
I'll try different options. Will include this in my review too!
Thank you Disevani. I think this is Google Billing API issue, Billing license or/and Signature Verification are been checked by the game and since they are not genuine google ones in MicroG, they fail. There might be some kludge way to go around that but they broke the idea I am using degoogle. (Magisk + GMS + spoof or Sandboxed Google billing enviroment)
You're right. The point to go for Murena was to deGoogle, so i'm okay to take my losses somewhere. Thanks for this reply, it's going to help me explain to others in my review why it doesn't work.
Good one. I'll try it out.