yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
I found out more about the Total Commander (TC) problem. Settings - Privacy - Permission Manager - Files. There is a list of Allowed and Not allowed, but TC did not appear in either. At the bottom of that screen, it says "See more apps that can access all files".

If I click that, "All files access" screen displays with a list of apps, TC says "Not allowed"! I changed that to allowed, and it works!

I guess TC is "trying" to let me allow it when it displays the Warning and then the 3 options. But then it doesn't let me click any of them.

I like TWRP so that I can backup data. But this means that I must flash a Disabler zip. The result is that data is decrypted. I wonder if this is the problem. For the offical Lineage nightly that I mentioned earlier, I did not flash that Disabler, and it does work. I guess I'll flash it there and see if that causes it.

In any case, I wonder why TC won't let me click the Allow (in Settings) choice after the Warning screen.

UPDATE: I just tried several other File Managers (not FX File Explorer..it asks me after it is installed if I want to allow file access, and I always say yes), and they all behave like TC. They all give the warning and ask for access with the 3 options, but I can't click them. So I guess I have 2 questions:

1. What causes the default setting to be Not allowed vs. Allowed for these File Managers? (Maybe decryption).

2. Even with that, why can't I click one of the 3 options?

EDIT: I did flash the zip to decrypt the official Lineage, as I mentioned above. It still works properly, i.e a Warning screen is displayed, then an "All Files Access" screen for TC , and a button can be turned on to "Allow access to manage all files". So the problem seems to be with your newest ROM, but official nightly works. As you suggested, I have not gone back to test your previous releases.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
The new build is available. It brings a lot of new updates and tweaks. Be sure to read this post, from another thread of mine, to understand what UI/UX changes are included in this build: https://xdaforums.com/t/rom-r-unoff...geos-18-1-december-12th.3693223/post-86085733

Regression: the recovery present in this build has got one little issue: the "Back" arrow, visible in the top-left corner of the screen when you are in a submenu , is difficult to press. You must tap a little bit above the arrow, not exactly on the arrow. I'm currently working to fix this issue.

I see that some people have downloaded the 2021-12-13 build I had uploaded to SourceForge two days ago. That was just an experiment I shouldn't have pushed. No worries, just update to today's build to avoid problems.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] psychic_quark:
Okay, I just tried this and EVERYTHING seems to work so far for me, no dreaded mic bug (tested with signal), no ghost touches, full speed WiFi 5, VoLTE, WiFi calling, Essential camera app, good battery life.

I haven't tested hotspot yet so can't comment on that. But other than that this looks like a very smooth, polished stock lineageos experience! I tried it with both stock and gapp'd (using mindthegapps).

Excellent job! Would love to buy you a coffee if you have a link.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Thanks for the words of appreciation. Hotspot & USB tethering works just fine, I use them quite often.

Tomorrow I'll post a flashable zip that should fix the microphone issue in case someone still has problems on this build.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] mervinb:
I have just updated my PH-1 and the initial results on speaker phone seem good. Thank you so much for trying to address this long-standing issue.

If, after a few weeks, the issue is indeed fixed for all users, is there a chance that your excellent work on the mic issue is pulled into to the official release? That would make a lot of others happy, I think.

For me, I'll stick with your version!
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] jeddy877:
Mindthegapps. I had forgotten about that.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
It is indeed possible that fixes I implement (now and in the future) into my builds make their way into the official LineageOS builds. In fact, I have already contributed the recovery visual improvements I've put into my last build (touch support in official nightlies is still WIP).

However, there is something that makes me smile about all the positive feedback on the mic issue in the last build, something that is worth explaining :)

To put it simply, there is no fix!

Since some users told me that there is no mic issue in AOSPA, I've checked AOSPA's device tree, looking for changes in the mixer_paths_tasha.xml file. It turned out that Lineage's tree has got a couple of commits affecting that file that are not there in AOSPA, so I thought: "Let's see if removing them fixes the problem". But, in the end, I forgot to revert those commits before building my latest update. So, audio setup-wise, my latest build is 100% identical to official ones and to my previous ones.

According to the discussion on the Gitlab issue describing this problem, a fix was merged into LineageOS in June 2021. Is it possible that you guys did not try any LineageOS build built after that month, and so did not actually notice the problem was fixed? Seems silly to think, but I can't think of any other explanation.

As of now, I am not facing this issue on my latest build when using the speakerphone in a normal phone call using LineageOS's dialer app. This means that June's fix works fine for me. I'd like everyone to try this specific scenario (ordinary phone call, no Telegram/Whatsapp/Skype/whatever) and report back. Thanks!
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] buckiller:
Yeah, looks like this change is the first for mata since October?

Wonder if you could look into the minimum screen brightness not being low enough ? This is the main issue for me on Lineage (in addition to the mic issue, noticed when recording videos; don't know if it was fixed by default, I just need to remember to use opencamera and select unprocessed as audio source).
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Let me add these to the list of things I have to give a look at. Unfortunately I will be very busy for the next 2-3 weeks so little will happen until mid January.

Can you describe in more detail the mic issue in the context video recording?
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] buckiller:
With Lineage I recorded some videos of some live music and noticed later the video was ruined because a lot of the audio was dipping out like it was being filtered. Tried searching for folks with similar issues and found this thread. I tried this and by selecting unprocessed as the source, it seems fixed. To test, I recorded a video of some violin type music on youtube (laptop) and could immediately notice the difference between default config of Lineage, and the unprocessed option in opencamera. Not sure if it's related to other mic issues on Lineage for ph1.

Speaker phone does not work for me on Lineage, ph1...

And again, I would really appreciate anyone looking into the brightness changes for ph1.. stock has a better, lower brightness on minimum brightness (see earlier link).
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Mario3DS:
How can I install Magisk in this rom?

forget it Imanaged to do it by myself, I had to decrypt some payload.bin file and blabla x_x

so far the ROM looks great, no chrome freezes, good performance....

thanks for your work!
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
I'm looking into the video recording microphone issue right now. I think I have found a fix.

Minimum brightness is the next thing I'll look into.

You chose to do it the hard way :) Flashing it through Lineage recovery would have been enough.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Mario3DS:
Some information about the video recording mic issue

apparently the mic sounds so bad on video recordings because the system is assigning the voice cancelling microphone of the phone to record audio instead of the main microphone you use for calls and voice messages

if you use open camera you can change this on its settings so video recording uses the main mic instead but it only works on that app
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
A new build is available! Featuring: January's security patches, some interesting kernel improvements (Linux 4.4.297, lots of useless debugging stuff has been removed from the WiFi chip's driver, some improvements in the USB controller's driver - MTP file transfer speed from PC to phone seems to have improved noticeably, let me know if you agree). The recovery touchscreen regression of the last build has been fixed (now touches are detected in the proper places). There also is a possible fix for the camcorder microphone issues.

Can you guys please try out video recording again, to check if the microphone issue is gone? Thanks.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Mario3DS:
it sounds a bit louder I think

tried it with Essential Camera app, Gcam and Whatsapp video recording feature
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] MuddyDog:
Hi, the only issue I have encountered is a long standing one: in-call audio when VoLTE is enabled fails, there is either no audio or sped up 'chipmunk' audio. When VoLTE is disabled, in-call audio works ok. This bug runs across all of the Lineage based roms I have tried (Statix, CarbonROM, Havoc, etc.)

The CarbonROM devs have looked at this (a bit) and said that this bug is very carrier specific. I am using t-mobile in the USA, which is apparently one of the affected carriers.

On the other hand, VoLTE works in AOSPA pa-ruby-1-mata-20210629-beta, phhusson's A11 builds and all of the A11 gsi's based on phhusson.

The bug presents as if the amr-wb decoder is receiving a different bitrate than it expects.

In any event, since phh et al. and paranoid android have this working, the fix exists. (or I could just change over to ATT or Verizon)
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Is the problem present on later AOSPA R builds? Or are there none?
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] MuddyDog:
I haven't seen an AOSPA Ruby build later than the 2021-06-29 beta, if there is one I'd be happy to test it. All of the AOSPA Ruby builds I tried worked... VoLTE was very stable.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Thanks. I'll investigate, and when I find out something, I will send you a test build, ok?
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] MuddyDog:
Yes, sure.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
New build available, with kernel updates (Linux 4.4.299), some patches from GrapheneOS to harden the security of some low-level system components (art, bionic, frameworks), and a small de-Googling tweak (Google's DNS nameservers are replaced with Cloudflare's).
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
@sga999

I cannot reproduce this, it must be a local glitch on your phone... TC asks me to grant access to all files, the pop up window with 3 buttons appears, and I can tap on "Allow (in Settings)" just fine.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
Good that it works for you! I believe it happens on 2 different PH-1's, but right now, the "good one" has official nightly. So I can't be sure until I try it again.

The strange thing is that I don't get this 3 button window on other devices. I have 2 Leeco's that show the Warning, then the "All files access" screen for TC with only one button for "Allow access to manage all files". I can click that with no problem.

It works that same good way with official nightly on the other PH-1. Same way on several other Android devices that I have (but I rarely use most of them). So even though you can click on the Allow (in Settings), unlike me, it is still weird that the 3 button screen shows instead of the screen I just mentioned with only one button.

I don't have any idea what kind of glitch would cause this "unclickable" problem (it isn't related to encryption/decryption), so unless I learn more, I'll have to give up on this. That's okay because I can use other apps. But I always like to pursue issues as far as I can.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
Apologies. I am able to fix this by formatting data "in a certain way". I got these 2 PH-1's at 2 different times in 2019 from eBay after reading good reviews from earlier years. I had some problems with only one of them at the beginning where I couldn't get fastboot to flash images successfully....it would stop in the middle of a big file, like system.img.

I had forgotten that strange occurrence. Merely formatting data in TWRP or Lineage recovery was sometimes not good enough. I looked back at notes and found that "fastboot format userdata" seemed to help.

I did that today on the PH-1 that has this issue where I can't click any of the 3 choices. And now it is working properly. I wish I could understand why everything else seems to work well. I would think that needing to format data in this way indicates something fairly catastrophic. Maybe with your knowledge, you can tell me how this is the only symptom that I see.

I still don't know why your Lineage displays 3 choices after the Warning, but not official nightly or ROMs for other devices. They display only one choice. Maybe you have some insight into that also. Thanks again for your help.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
The reason for the three possible choices on my ROM is that my builds feature Storage Scopes, picked from GrapheneOS.

The reason why you had to format data, and in particular via fastboot, is a true mistery. I cannot provide any explaination, not even a speculation.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
Thanks, I'll look at Storage Scopes out of curiosity. About having to format, I think there is "something wrong" with this device. As I said, I got both PH-1's from eBay, used, a few months apart. The first one never had issues. The second couldn't get through flashing large files until I did that format.

So somehow data is messed up in some minor way where most things work. I read posts back then that said there were problems with various cables with the PH-1, especially the one that came with it. I've never used those, so that wasn't my issue. Anyway, I have to just keep this in mind if something strange occurs again.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
@sga999

If you still have official Lineage & mine on your PH-1s, could you please perform this test on both and let me know the result?

Open settings, then Sound and vibration, then tap on Phone ringtone to make the ringtone selector appear, and while it is visible, switch to the Recents view (i.e. the multitasking screen). Does the screen brightness temporarily decrease?
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
I don't notice a difference in the brightness in either case. I think you mean that I should have all of the Phone ringtone choices displayed. Then I should click the recents button, which happens to be the rightmost one for me at the bottom of the screen. (I choose 3-button navigation).
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Very interesting and strange at the same time!
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Hi, yesterday I uploaded a new build with October's Platform security patches.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
@sga999 Adding to my reply to your post:

it is true that LineageOS doesn't care about TWRP and being "TWRP-compatible";

it is true that official builds include the latest firmware, while mines do not. I thought official servers had some "secret" packaging script that zipped the firmware together with the ROM, but this was just me being an idiot. I've recently learnt that I could easily bundle the firmware in my builds too, but I can't see any added value in doing so - 3 and a half years after Essential discontinued the PH-1, I guess everybody has got the latest stock and/or has already flashed any Lineage nightly released in this time frame at least once;

I'll try to inspect both bootloaders to compare them, just out of curiosity.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
There must not be many Lineage users installing TWRP or there would have been more threads/posts about this. So I agree that there's no good reason for you to include the firmware. Most people must have the "bad" abl.img installed (from installing a nightly or Feb 2020), and they aren't complaining.

I'd love to know the differences between the bootloaders, so it's great that you will look into that. Thanks!
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
FYI. About the strange Github problem where I could not see the 9-26 version in Releases, that's still true, but your newest from 10-05 does show! Followed by the 09-15 one. Very weird. Tags shows them all.

I'm not worried about getting any fix for the Total Commander (or other File Manager) with LMT problem that I mentioned a few posts above. But I thought I'd tell you this anyway. If I try the nightly Lineage, even with LMT activated and having the "Display over other apps" turned on, there is no "hang".

However, that nightly ROM does not display 3 choices after the Warning, only the All files access screen with one choice, "Allow access to manage all files". Your ROM displays 3 choices, and none of them can be selected. It seems like that might be a bug...should it hang on choice selection, even if there is some issue with "Display over other apps"? Again, I can work around it, so I don't need a fix...just letting you know.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Hi, to prepare for LineageOS 21, I have been working on a new kernel for our PH-1s.

The LineageOS team has got a common 4.4 kernel source tree that can be used as a base for all Snapdragon 835 devices, and this kernel tree implements all the security & bug fixes Qualcomm has developed for Linux 4.4 and the Snapdragon 835 SoC over the years, plus some other goodies. Our current kernel in particular lacks a huge amount of these security fixes, because the Essential devs never bothered implementing them.

So I took this base and added all the needed patches from Essential to make it run on the PH-1. The result is a brand new kernel, much more secure and with improved CPU management too (it features a better implementation of Energy Aware Scheduling). This kernel will be integrated in official LineageOS nightlies starting from the 21 release cycle.

You will find this kernel in my next LineageOS 20 build - it's working very well, but having more people test it is important! The new build will come in a couple of days.

@sga999 I totally forgot to reply to your last message. Given the very specific use case and the availability of a workaround, I will add your issue to the bottom of my to-do list. This means it is very likely LineageOS 21 will come before I have a chance to look at it.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
Terrific. I look forward to your new kernel.. and Lineage 21! No problem about the delay in looking at the issues in my last post.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Hi, a new build is available, with the new rebased kernel! All hardware components seem to be working fine, but there might be some corner-case usage scenarios that @MuddyDog and I have not covered during testing. Please do let me know if you find any bugs. All the thousands of kernel patches & improvements I had previously applied to my old kernel are of course missing from this new one. Once the new one is confirmed stable, I'll start reimplementing them.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
I have installed it with no problem, minimal testing. And I wouldn't know that your thousands of patches and improvements are missing! It's amazing that you have done that much work on this. Anyway, I don't know how to give it a good workout. I mostly do browsing, many apps, lots that require root, some of them requiring Alpha or Delta versions of Magisk.

So let us know if there are specific areas you're concerned about. Maybe that doesn't make sense because you can't know until someone tells you they have a problem!
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Pretty much this. Since we've been testing this for a couple of weeks now, and everything seems to be ok, I assume everything is indeed okay, until someone contradicts me :)
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] mateusxd:
I just updated to the latest version

Currently the one using the essential phone is my nephew and he is trying to play games ont it but some games wont work,

we tested Vampire Survivor (black screen)

Merge Arena (blue screen)

and chrome valley (black screen) (he doesnt play this one, but i do :) )

Is there any incompatibility with the essential or can it be resolved with an update?

Since he started to use the phone now, I don't know if these games worked in older versions
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
This has been reported by several users in the past. Ever since some graphics-related blobs have been replaced, some games have stopped working. I have never cared about this because I do not play any games, but I'll try to look into this issue.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
I'm having another problem with FX File Explorer. Maybe this belongs at the bottom of your list, like you mentioned earlier.

You made a change so that I could click System (Root) to get root access. But I had not tried to actually write to it. It fails...I try to paste a file that I had copied, it says that I need to Mount Read-Write. But when I try that and accept the risk, it says "The item "ROOT" is read-only. Same thing occurs with any other file in root, e.g. system/etc.

This does not occur with one of the October nightlies.

EDIT: Apologies again. I have recently been trying Magisk Alpha and Delta. The problem occurs when I'm using one of those. If I revert to official Magisk 26.3, it does not occur with your ROM.

The interesting thing is that the October nightly does not have this problem, either with Magisk Alpha or Delta. I realize this sounds crazy, but I've tested quite a bit and think this is accurate.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
I'll check, try to understand what's going on, see what I can do about it and let you know!
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] Tomoms:
Hi, a new build with November's security patches, plus many kernel fixes is available!

@sga999 Magisk Alpha seems to have been unmaintained for 2 years, so I won't care about it. I'll try FX + Magisk Delta and let you know.
[Essential Phone ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] sga999:
The XDA thread for Alpha is still "active". There was a new release 2 days ago. But I haven't looked at it enough to know about how it's being maintained. Anyway, you should get the same problem with Delta.

EDIT: Well, I keep having to correct myself. Alpha fails, but the latest Delta does not. I certainly have tried Delta several times, and I'll swear it failed. I could have been on an older Delta version, but I doubt it. No idea, but don't bother trying Delta.

So...if you don't have any interest in seeing it happen on Alpha, I guess we're done with this one. Apologies again.