It seems that BBB works well on laptop/desktop operating systems but much less well on mobile operating systems - eg IOS and Android. Is this the case, and what expectations do we have that this will quickly change?
I was in a BBB meeting today (World Social Forum for Transformative Economies, commons movements) and some folks on Android (Chromebook) were having a hard time with audio devices and stability of BBB generally.
From my own experience with IOS (iPad not iPhone) I’ve abandonded attempts to use BBB on that device - even tho it would be v helpful. The handling of audio channels on that OS seemed especially flaky. And the app froze often in the browser.
If BBB isn’t reliable on mobile operating systems . .
a) We should warn people or their experience will put them off
b) We will miss a whole lot of potential users
Do you know which web browsers they were using and which versions of the browsers? My guess is that perhaps they are not on the latest versions?
The latest versions of Firefox or Chrome should be fine… I suspect it will be not be the OS that is the problem, but rather the old web browsers that are in use on these platforms…
I don’t know what browsers were being used. But my own flaky experience, in IOS on the iPad was with current versions of both Firefox and Safari.
Firefox told me it wasn’t going to work very well and suggested I use Safari. Safari kept falling over. I gave up.
Do you know which version of Firefox you were trying with?
If you visit this URL it will tell you the User Agent sting that your browser sends in HTTP requests:
Are you using Safari 13 or older? If so perhaps try with the Safari Technology Preview version?
I tried to dial into Hypha’s BBB today using my IPhone and I could not get sound at all. This happened last time as well.
I used the ‘Privacy Mode’ of Iphone just to make sure there is no caching issue - it didn’t make any difference.
So yes, there is some problem with IPhone. I want to do more research.
Posting reply in case anyone else had this issue and comes across this!
The issue that the permission for the browser to use your camera/mic is done at the OS level on iOS
Access to the camera and microphone are selected in Settings>Privacy, then select Camera and Microphone.
How hard it would be to make a very basic android app for BBB or even better to have BBB support output to Jitsi app?
@zblace The people to speak to, I think, might be Fairkom and/or Mconf. They’re BBB hacker old-timers See Global BBB gathering 21jun2021 - #2 by mikemh Being global-South (Brazil), Mconf has lots of users who only have smartphones.
I think this line of development is an important opening move in engaging global-South/North infrastructure issues, as a matter of design justice. The global-North privileged norm of a laptop and decent bandwidth shouldn’t be assumed across our user community - even in the ‘north’? Broadly see for example Tactical Tech report, Smartphone lifeline @shibco
A subsequent question is: what does our meet.coop UI/UX look/feel like on smartphones? There are countries and regions where folks don’t have laptops but almost univerally have phones. What do we know about this demographic? @3wc for example, lives in such a region I think? Personally, I feel pretty unsure of how BBB will perform under IOS/Firefox, and so avoid it.
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I have used BBB on a Samsung S6 and Samsung S10FE many times for BBB calls. The interface is responsive and fully featured so you get the same stuff as you would on a desktop. Just smaller. I will admit i have not actually interacted with the interface to much as most of the time i was driving and the using my car’s hands free environment which aside from some road noise works great.
The only issue I have had in the past is general browser compatibility at the phone level. This is not a BBB issue but individual browser not properly built do deal with these things. Similar issues on jitsi web interface. I dont think these issues have existed latly, but in the past i would have to switch to another browser to get the best experience (Internal Samsung crome based browser vs chrome vs Firefox). But if i recall correctly this was more of an issue of trying to get the audio going through my car’s hands free.
The audio is pretty good even when traveling. I have truned off 5G as it would disconnect often but on LTE i cant complain.
The odd time that connection quality was an issue, i would dial in and use my phone without audio to see the slides and cameras and such.
If I had to make a wish list
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I wish the screen did not go blank after a period of time. Unlocking is a pain and cant be safely done on the road. I end up using my car’s mute button instead.
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Press to talk would be a nice feature.
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Easier way to switching camera/mic input, but this is also an would like on the regular bbb environment.
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I should also note that for a period of time the audio in my calls was very robotic and hard to hear over the cellular connection. I’m not sure what combination of things cause that but it magically went away.
Hey folx any updates on this front in 2022?
I would love to hear of Android app for BBB audio+screenshare
(think I can live without talking-heads video feature)
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Tried a couple of meet.coop meetings from Android in the past few weeks, I hear sound test and notification “ding” noises, but no audio from participants. Firefox & Chromium. Anyone got any good debug / fix suggestions?
Hi
If this is of some use, I tested on Android 9 with Chrome 118 and it works fine. I can hear and speak well and video quality is ok. On Firefox 118 I couldn’t hear but clicks and pops.
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