Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 (samsung-skomer)

Contributors

 * Linusw
 * Newbyte

Installation
The mainline kernel can only be booted through U-Boot, not directly with the Samsung bootloader. U-Boot is installed as intermediate bootloader on the boot partition, so it does not replace the Samsung bootloader entirely.

Boot into Download Mode using +  +  and follow the the NovaThor U8500 U-Boot installation instructions to install U-Boot.

Finally, just follow the Installation guide. It should be recommended that you use an external SD-Card to install the rootfs to, because the internal storage is pretty small on this device.

Mainline kernel v5.18
Working:
 * Display
 * GPU (Mali-400 MP using Lima)
 * Touchscreen
 * Broadcom WiFi
 * Bluetooth (partial; needs to be set up manually)
 * Accelerometer
 * Magnetometer
 * Proximity sensor
 * USB
 * Battery charging

Not working:
 * Audio
 * Camera
 * GPS
 * FDE (keyboard appears and is GPU accelerated with working vibrator, but device hangs a few seconds after unlocking)

Bluetooth
Currently there is some problem with Bluetooth from the command line:

# btmgmt public-addr 53:33:6d:69:6e:69 Set Public Address for hci0 failed with status 0x11 (Invalid Index)

This needs further investigation.

Bluetooth does not have any Bluetooth device address (bdaddr or "MAC address") set after boot at the moment. To make Bluetooth work, you need to manually configure one:


 * 1) apk add bluez-btmgmt
 * 2) btmgmt public-addr

where  is a MAC address like.

The Bluetooth controller should then show up in :

$ bluetoothctl
 * 1) apk add bluez
 * 2) rc-service bluetooth start

You can e.g scan for devices:

[bluetooth]# show [bluetooth]# power on [bluetooth]# advertise on [bluetooth]# system-alias golden [bluetooth]# scan on

Sensors

 * The Skomer has a Sharp gp2ap002s00f proximity sensor which only detects proximity and cannot provide ambient light measurement
 * The magnetometer is an Alps hscdtd008a
 * The accelerometer is a Bosch BMA254

GPS
This device has a CSR CSRG05TA03-ICJE-R SirfStarV 5t GPS chip. It has been added to the device tree but no userspace tests have been successful.

DSI Scaling Error in Phosh
If you are running phosh, and the scaling is wrong so that you cannot type in the password to unlock the initial login screen, this can be fixed by changing this file  like this:

[output:DSI-1] scale = 1