KDE Connect 1.10 Released To Improve The Android Device Integration

[starshipeleven]

As for Bluetooth compared to Wifi on power consumption, on a quick search I found this article where it says that Bluetooth is 26% more power efficient:
http://www.clearevo.com/ecodroidlink...y_consumption/

bluetooth is quite slower than wifi though, so for file transfer and other bandwith-intensive tasks you will be using less power on wifi.

[Vistaus]

I had those same issues and they seemed fixed for me now on Android Pie.

As for the connection. Bluetooth would use more power if your phone and computer are on the same network already. It is more efficient to do these things over the WiFi router but I agree it would be great if the option of Direct WiFi or Bluetooth was there for when on the move.

But I use my phone as a mobile hotspot, I have no Wi-Fi over here. So how do you propose me to use KDE Connect then if my laptop is only connected to my phone and my phone is only connected to mobile data? Sure, Bluetooth uses more power, but it's the only way I could ever use KDE Connect.

[Vistaus]

bluetooth is quite slower than wifi though, so for file transfer and other bandwith-intensive tasks you will be using less power on wifi.

True. I can't speak for others, but in my case, I would only use KDE Connect for notifications and stuff, not for file transfers (I rarely do file transfers and when I do, I'll just grab a USB cable).

[starshipeleven]

But I use my phone as a mobile hotspot, I have no Wi-Fi over here. So how do you propose me to use KDE Connect then if my laptop is only connected to my phone and my phone is only connected to mobile data? Sure, Bluetooth uses more power, but it's the only way I could ever use KDE Connect.

Wait a sec, the "mobile hotspot" is Wi-Fi, wtf is this "I have no wifi" thing you are saying.

KDE Connect works fine in that situation as all devices involved are within the same local area network (all devices connected to your phone's mobile hotspot will be in the same LAN). I just tested it here with my work phone, Huawei P10 lite with stock firmware running as AP (yes it will tell me that "it appears that you are connected over modem, you need local area network") and my personal phone running LineageOS. They can pair and work. I didn't test with the Linux PC as it is a desktop and lacks wifi capability.

Maybe it's your blackberry that is trying to keep you too safe? See if you can disable advanced options in the wifi or add an exception to its "firewall" (aka give KDE Connect permissions that are currently blocked)

[fuzz]

I would also like bluetooth. The times when KDE Connect would be most useful to me are at work, where the multiple different wireless networks are segregated and devices can't talk to each other on them anyway.

Plus I usually have my phone on a VPN connection, even at home, which often causes local WLAN issues.

[fphillips]

It can be used on Gnome with the GSConnect Gnome-shell extension.

[MagicMyth]

But I use my phone as a mobile hotspot, I have no Wi-Fi over here. So how do you propose me to use KDE Connect then if my laptop is only connected to my phone and my phone is only connected to mobile data? Sure, Bluetooth uses more power, but it's the only way I could ever use KDE Connect.

I don't think you have quite understood me. I'm not saying Bluetooth is a bad idea or should not be supported. I'm simply saying the argument that it should be done for efficiency is invalid. You won't convince the developers to implement it for that use case reason. If instead the use case is: it is common enough for people to not have their phone and laptop on the same network (e.g: when doing work on a train (something I used to do a lot) ), then you have a convincing use case for the developers. When trying to convince developers to implement a feature you want, it is a good idea to take a bit of a political and economical approach to it. Try to come up with an important use case that motivates the developer enough it out-ways the inertia of attempting the feature (yes sneaky I know ).

BTW though it's been mentioned in the thread there is a bug report for the bluetooth feature I have not seen the link posted so here it is:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=330536

I had forgotten but looking at the report again reminded me they have implemented Bluetooth support but it is not compiled by default due to a lack of testing. I know it is challenging to do but if people who want Bluetooth connecting don't put the effort into testing it then the devs won't finish it because (as they have mentioned) they never use Bluetooth.

I'm curious though if it can work over tethered access? I know from experience it did not in the past and as starshipeleven mentioned it can over a phone's WiFi hotspot, I wonder if it doe there too now? Though I would expect it may not as I don't think it creates shared network and the hotspot method may not work on all phones depending on the phones routing/firewall rules.

[Vistaus]

KDE Connect works fine in that situation as all devices involved are within the same local area network (all devices connected to your phone's mobile hotspot will be in the same LAN). I just tested it here with my work phone, Huawei P10 lite with stock firmware running as AP (yes it will tell me that "it appears that you are connected over modem, you need local area network") and my personal phone running LineageOS. They can pair and work. I didn't test with the Linux PC as it is a desktop and lacks wifi capability.

But I only have one phone. You have two phones, that's a major difference.

[Vistaus]

I don't think you have quite understood me. I'm not saying Bluetooth is a bad idea or should not be supported. I'm simply saying the argument that it should be done for efficiency is invalid. You won't convince the developers to implement it for that use case reason. If instead the use case is: it is common enough for people to not have their phone and laptop on the same network (e.g: when doing work on a train (something I used to do a lot) ), then you have a convincing use case for the developers. When trying to convince developers to implement a feature you want, it is a good idea to take a bit of a political and economical approach to it. Try to come up with an important use case that motivates the developer enough it out-ways the inertia of attempting the feature (yes sneaky I know ).

BTW though it's been mentioned in the thread there is a bug report for the bluetooth feature I have not seen the link posted so here it is:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=330536

I had forgotten but looking at the report again reminded me they have implemented Bluetooth support but it is not compiled by default due to a lack of testing. I know it is challenging to do but if people who want Bluetooth connecting don't put the effort into testing it then the devs won't finish it because (as they have mentioned) they never use Bluetooth.

I'm curious though if it can work over tethered access? I know from experience it did not in the past and as starshipeleven mentioned it can over a phone's WiFi hotspot, I wonder if it doe there too now? Though I would expect it may not as I don't think it creates shared network and the hotspot method may not work on all phones depending on the phones routing/firewall rules.

But starship comes up with the example of using two phones, one connected to mobile hotspot from phone 1. But I only have one phone, so my one and only phone is the mobile hotspot and thus not connected to Wi-Fi. So his point is moot. If I did have two phones, I wouldn't even have posted in this topic 'cause I know that would work.

And I tried to compile KDE Connect with the Bluetooth backend, but it threw so many errors during compiling, I figured they weren't finished with the backend yet so it wasn't supposed to compile in the first place. Was I wrong?