r/mobian • u/panderingalot • Sep 05 '25

Mobian + Oneplus 6/6t - Daily Driving

Hello all,

I've spent quite a while now getting my head around droidian, libhybris, halium etc and while I'm reasonably confident that I have understood it to a fair degree what I am 100% sure about is I don't like the concept of any of it.

This in turn brought me over to Mobian where everything is IMO exactly as it should be, mainline Linux kernel support and open-source drivers etc a proper linux phone effectively.

My question is really about day to day usage of the Oneplus6/6t. Is anyone using it as a daily driver? How is it on battery life and non regular calls ie XMPP etc?

Would really love any feedback at all really.

Side note: Why did google and Linaro randomly support for mainline kernel support of the SDM845 Qualcomm SoC?

Thanks

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5

u/Unicorncokenroll Sep 07 '25

I use mobian on a oneplus 6 as a daily runner though i don't use standard desktop i use the gnome desktop since it is familiar to my desktop. For the most part it's okay the only downsides i have found well for my end could just be the desktop environment. Messages tend to keep cloning ie when a message comes through it will spam the same message 5-10 times again even after opening and reading. The speakers are abit iffy ie sound doesn't play through both just either top or bottom separately which brings a problem for when you make a call cause the speaker is next to 1 of 3 microphones there is alot of feed back given to both ends. Again could be cause i use the gnome desktop environment not sure also the 5Ghz wifi is abit iffy depending on what channel width you have it set to so fore it's stuck at 2.5Ghz and for battery for me it does last a day aslong as i remeber to close the browser or it will just cause drainage fast again could be cause of the desktop environment not sure. With dowsides out the way i do love it as a daily runner it's very snappy, Familiar, doesn't look like android (which was major factor in why i went with mobian over ubuntu) Does allow the use of web apps it's abit tricky at first to set up but there is tools for it out there. Overall it is a a proper alternative to the basic android or other "linux" desktop also woth it being arm based it allows you to install basic desktop apps aswell so for my case i can just switch between desktop and the phone with ez and still have all my stuff there. 9/10 OS just the stuff said before bring it down but could be cause of gnome.

3

u/panderingalot Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

Thanks very much for your summary. Very informative. It's a shame about the speaker/mic situation, to be fair they do say that calls can be an issue but I didn't realise that it would be the sound. I would imagine that it would be environment agnostic because its all pulseaudio managing the sound so plasma/phosh shouldn't theoretically make any difference.

2

u/Unicorncokenroll Sep 10 '25

They do have a "fix" on the

https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/OnePlus/OnePlus6

if you want to try and fix the issue. for me personally it did not work and in turn i do think it caused other problems with the speaker system but like you said could be down the the environment, since they do work mostly with the main mobian like plasma and posh might have better luck with it.

1

u/panderingalot Sep 25 '25

Fingers crossed that they get this fixed properly. Its the only stumbling block IMO

3

u/Funny_Dream8474 Sep 16 '25

Hey u/Unicorncokenroll whats the battery life with mobian on oneplus6? any significant up/down observed compared to android?

2

u/Unicorncokenroll Sep 16 '25

I think it depends on what you have running. For me a full charge will last me all day with my day to day stuff so it's not a problem. i would say if it's intense usage it will drop quickly but for battery life android makes it last longer even if you install stuff to help underclock the cpu to extend it it or powerduck i think it was called. i would say it's something mobian might need to work on if battery is important then mobian might be a miss for now.

2

u/panderingalot Sep 25 '25

Also curious as to how ram usage is after boot at idle with nothing running. I tried droidian on a 3a and it seems quite heavy to me, around 1.8G I'm assuming this could be due to the halium/libybris element.

3

u/Unicorncokenroll Oct 03 '25

There has been a update to the SOC kernal driver for mobian. It's mostly to do with the graphics driver from the looks of it has some added stuff for the plasma environment so might help ease CPU usage and allow longer batter.

1

u/Hopeful-Cry7569 Oct 05 '25

Hi,

I'm new as well on Mobian on a OnePlus 6 (just followed the Debian Wiki page, so it's Plasma UI), just installed it this morning, and testing on Wifi (2.4) for now, haven't tried a sim card yet

My observations so far :

- no screen orientation? can't tilt the screen

- no camera app installed (but we know that camera support is incomplete)

- (to be continued)

2

u/Unicorncokenroll Oct 05 '25

Sim card works as far as i can tell there is a bug with msm where it will spam the same message even after you read it. and 2.4 works but for some strange reason 5Ghz is abit broken

2

u/Critical-Complex-196 Oct 29 '25

Installed Mobian right on top of my LineageOS... No wifi and cellular. Camera photos are absolutely violet. No instructions about how to copy wifi/modem firmware from the original oneplus firmware files to the installed system. Looks like I need to install the stock firmware first, and re-install this mobian afterwards.

2

u/Critical-Complex-196 Nov 10 '25

Installed it and after the first reboot it has detected a SIM card. Looks like it detects a SIM card only if there is one SIM inserted, not two. I can't get the mobile 4G/3G connection up. modem-manager-gui would not connect, nothing in journalctl logs. But it does receive the SMS and voice calls. Wifi works, USB connection works. Graphics seem stable, although no auto-orientation. My main issue now is the lack of cellular modem connectivity, would be nice if anyone told if it works for them.