#pixel9a

Now I could try to get the edgeTPU up and running on mainline, but it also runs a proprietary userspace for loading models etc.; So I did what the AI companies are doing, just on a much smaller scale: since I have root on Android, I can feed the model with a corpus of thumbnails and capture the created LTM grid. Doing that with ~1000 of my own RAW images and 3600 of Google’s open HDR plus dataset, I was able to distill the model into one that runs on CPU instead. #mobilelinux #pixel9a

Hardware video decoding works now. Firefox (non-ESR) with a patched ffmpeg (adding DRM Prime buffer support based on a patch from RPi) can now decode 4k60 without toasting the phone. Firefox ESR only does accelerated H264 #mobilelinux #pixel9a

postmarketOS ships an eSIM management app by @z3ntu@fosstodon.org and it turns out it is not too difficult to make it work with the Samsung modem #mobilelinux #pixel9a

I also adjusted the ModemManager plugin to expose both slots as their own modem instances and gnome control center actually handles this much better than I thought it would. Switching is a bit tricky, because only one can be active at a time and NetworkManager does not know about that. I have a slop patch that makes this work a little better, but I know that there’s funded work to improve dual SIM support overall, so looking forward to that! #mobilelinux #pixel9a

And since I slop-forked things anyway, I also experimented with a Android/iOS style dual sim indicator (top bar). Here’s the whole SIM switching in a screen recording. Doing that, I first ran into an issue with very choppy rendering while recording, which led me to my first upstream mesa contribution. Let’s see if it gets merged: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/44332 #mobilelinux #pixel9a

After one week of trying, I finally got suspend to RAM working, which I tried unsuccessfully months ago. Before, the only working suspend method was s2idle, so the CPU never fully turned off. Doing that, I also found a problem I introduced back then that caused UFS and serial to be flaky after resume, which is finally fixed now. What still causes issues is the Broadcom WiFi chip. It frequently dies shortly after resuming, even though it works fine for a bit… #mobilelinux #pixel9a

Hmm so overnight the phone went from 85% to 50% SoC (in ~10 hours). Looking at the logs, it tried to sleep 4 times and each time woke after ~90s. That’s probably the modem. What’s unexpected is that it did not try to sleep again afterwards until after I briefly turned the screen on. Is this a known issue with Phosh’s suspend handling? In comparison: downstream Android enters deep suspend seconds after locking if there’s no wake-lock active #mobilelinux #pixel9a

The good news is that I fixed the WiFi to still be powered in suspend and now it does not crash shortly after waking any more. So after the night everything still runs smoothly. There are still other non frequent WiFi crashes (about once in 24h idle), but other than that things are quite stable #mobilelinux #pixel9a

I’ve been looking into suspend lately and learned that there’s a small packet filter built specifically for Android in most WiFi chipsets. It’s called Android Packet Filter (https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/android-packet-filter) and it is what the Pixel 9a uses to keep WiFi connected without waking the CPU all the time for things like ARP, ICMP, IPV6 router advertisements etc.; In mainline, there’s WoWLAN, which is similar (more limited), but the BCM4383 tegu uses actually does not implement it. #mobilelinux #pixel9a

Since the code from AOSP is open source, I now have a minimal APF program that responds to ARP and ICMP for me during suspend. The phone now only wakes every ~90s because the modem tells it to. I measured a similar wakeup rate on Android, so let’s see how the battery drain over night will be. #mobilelinux #pixel9a

Nie sądziłem, że do tego kiedykolwiek dojdzie, ale rozważam zmianę telefonu tylko ze względu na zjawisko intensywnego nagrzewania się go. Mój #Pixel9a ma procesor #Tensor (G4?), który ma z tym ewidentnie problem, szczególnie w upał, przy Android Auto będąc na podszybiu. Ja wiem, że warunki trudne, ale czasem nie mogę go po prostu dotknąć i nie jest to normalne.

Dubuque Iowa #photography #Pixel9a #FilmCam #nature

Am 30. Juli 2026 verlost der Kuketz-Blog kostenlos ein Google Pixel 9a mit GrapheneOS. Mitmachen können Volljährige mit Wohnsitz in Deutschland über die Verlosungsliste. Anmeldung und Bestätigung müssen am selben Tag erfolgen. Wenn euch solche Aktionen gefallen, könnt ihr den Blog gern unterstützen. Spenden sind freiwillig und beeinflussen weder Teilnahme noch Gewinnchance. 👇 https://www.kuketz-blog.de/sommerferien-verlosung-google-pixel-9a-mit-grapheneos/ #GrapheneOS #Pixel9a #Datenschutz

In-band deep sleep works now too. That drops the idle power usage when connected to wifi (measured WLAN+BT rail only) from nearly 400mW to 130mW. Still too high compared to downstream, but a big improvement. And while both GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.8 were unable to pinpoint previous issues I've had, Fable 5 did nail it in one prompt. Not sure what to think of that... #mobilelinux #pixel9a

Update: I got the Exynos 5300 modem booting and was able to send a simple text message! Sadly, all very proprietary with no existing integration into e.g. ModemManager #mobilelinux #pixel9a

Mobile data works now with some hacks. I also found the reason for a weird modem crash. The modem requests extra carrier data over a separate oem channel in protobuf format. It retries this a couple of times and while it does, data stalls. And if those requests are ignored for too long, an internal queue fills up until the modem crashes hard #mobilelinux #pixel9a

There we go! Exynos 5300 with custom ModemManager SIT plugin #mobilelinux #pixel9a

YES! I got the full audio pipeline working and the speakers actually sound great now after struggling with it for a couple of days. A prerequisite for audio was the AoC (the always on compute chip). It also provides access to almost all physical sensors. After reverse engineering the USF (googles AoC sensor framework) and bridging it to IIO, Phosh now properly rotates the screen when rotating the device. A couple more weeks and this could be an actually usable phone! #mobilelinux #pixel9a

Oh and speaker safety is also working, so it doesn’t even fry your speakers! #mobilelinux #pixel9a

So something that wouldn’t have been possible without LLMs for me: yesterday I debugged BCM4383 wifi host wake, so the host can almost fully power down the bus and still be reachable. There’s a GPIO that triggers an interrupt when the chip wants to wake the host, but I was unable to get it to be activated. So Claude casually patched the Broadcom firmware (approach from Nexmon) to dump the ROM (not accessible over host memory). Then deassmebled the code. 1/2 #mobilelinux #pixel9a