Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Value Edition (samsung-serranove)

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Note This page is about the dedicated port of this device. There is also an optional generic port available for this device - see Generic MSM8909 (qcom-msm8909).
Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Value Edition
Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Value Edition
Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Value Edition
Manufacturer Samsung
Name Galaxy S4 Mini Value Edition
Codename samsung-serranove
Released 2015
Type handset
Hardware
Chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 (MSM8916)
CPU 4x 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53
GPU Adreno 306
Display 4.3 inch 16:9, 540 x 960 AMOLED
Storage 8 GB
Memory 1.5 GB
Architecture armv7
Software
Original software Android
Original version 4.4.4
FOSS bootloader yes
postmarketOS
Category community
Pre-built images yes
Mainline yes
postmarketOS kernel Mainline
Unixbench Whet/Dhry score 886.7
Optional Generic Port Generic MSM8909 (qcom-msm8909)
Features
Flashing
Works
USB Networking
Works
Internal storage
Works
SD card
Works
Battery
Works
Screen
Partial
Touchscreen
Works
Multimedia
3D Acceleration
Partial
Audio
Works
Camera
Broken
Camera Flash
Broken
Connectivity
WiFi
Works
Bluetooth
Works
GPS
Works
Modem
Calls
Works
SMS
Works
Mobile data
Works
Miscellaneous
FDE
Works
Sensors
Ambient Light
Broken
Proximity
Broken
Hall Effect
Broken
This device is based on the Snapdragon 410.
See the SoC page for common tips, guides and troubleshooting steps
Note Note: Even though MSM8916 is capable of aarch64, the firmware of this device was never updated with aarch64 support. Therefore, this device can only boot mainline on armv7 at the moment.

Contributors

Users owning this device

  • Bastindo (Notes: White GT-i9195I, works, good condition)
  • Jakko
  • Kreyren (Notes: Mint condition including the original box and flip case, projected to be used as a part of every day carry emergency kit and subject to NixOS contribution)
  • Minecrell (Notes: GT-I9195I)
  • TryzenAlpensky (Notes: GT-I9195)


Installation

lk2nd is a secondary bootloader that provides a standard fastboot interface, which can be used to boot postmarketOS without Android boot flashed or pmbootstrap flasher flash_kernel.

  1. Download lk2nd-msm8916.img from Releases page on Github.
  2. Boot your phone to bootloader (Odin/Download) mode by holding Volume Down and Home while powering up.
  3. Follow lk2nd instructions to install lk2nd. Basically flash it to the boot partition (heimdall flash --BOOT lk2nd-msm8916.img)
  4. Follow Qualcomm_Snapdragon_410/412_(MSM8916)#Installation to install postmarketOS.
Note Note: Enter lk2nd fastboot mode by pressing only Volume Down + Power (without Home). Pressing Home additionally will bring you to the Samsung Download mode.

Touch keys

For configuration of the touch keys, see Tm2-touchkey.

Display brightness

The brightness of the display can't be adjusted, this is not available yet.

Flash LED

Currently WIP. It can be controlled with SG Micro SGM3140 charge pump LED driver[1].

Suspend

Suspend is not yet fully implemented. It's recommended to disable suspend. See Qualcomm_Snapdragon_410/412_(MSM8916)#Suspend.

Mirrored screen on Plasma Mobile and GNOME mobile

On samsung-serranove the display natively shows everything in flipped/mirrored way. To compensate this, the kernel cmdline in /etc/deviceinfo contains video=540x960,reflect_x. In Plasma Mobile the screen handling is done by KScreen. As KScreen didn't support flipping/reflecting in Plasma 5, everything was shown mirrored. Since switching to Plasma 6, screen flipping is technically possible but isn't applied automatically. The issue is tracked in pmaports#1340. To solve the problem it's being worked on the panel kernel driver of samsung-serranove (Jakko).

As it turned out, also GNOME mobile is affected by this. While Phosh and GNOME use "mutter" as a Wayland compositor, GNOME mobile uses "mutter-mobile", which is in an experimental state and currently not capable to flip the screen.

Hardware Acceleration in Firefox

As of 04.01.2024 it was observed on phosh that firefox-esr has a broken UI on launch, this has been linked to the hardware acceleration currently tracked on #2332!pmaports and including a hotfix and on https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/10374.

Official Support Checklist

1. Fix pmaports#1340 (Breaks gnome, gnome-mobile and plasma-mobile usability)
2. Fix pmaports#2332 (To be decided, if it turns out to be a mesa bug then it would have to be fixed otherwise minor issue)

Other components cannot be fixed due to lack of firmware source code and signing keys from Samsung including the limitation to use armv7 instead of aarch64 architecture

References