3. Known issues

• The multiple clips holding the back panel can be stressed and quickly broken. Speaker is decent, but muffled on strong bass. For tactile responses on keypad presses, turn on Keypad vibration under Settings, Device, Accessibility.
  • Note that phone shutting itself down or not receiving any charges often come down to loose or dirty battery connectors or charging port and not software problem. Happened to me once, got the phone checked and repaired for less than $10.
• [MAJOR] Battery can drain heavily (from 5–7 days of 4G standby to 18 hours, or 2 hours in active usage) if you leave Wi-Fi or mobile data on at all time, e.g. to be immediately notified of incoming WhatsApp messages ⇒ workaround: turn them off if you don't plan to use Internet connection, and only turn them on periodically to check for notifications.
• [MAJOR] Keypad frequently registering multiple or no keystrokes instead of a single-press, because of keypad design and keypress timeout interval being too short in keyboard.gaiamobile.org ⇒ solution: follow this BananaHackers' guide on fixing the keypad speed
• [MAJOR] A-GPS failing to lock your current position on 4G LTE, possibly due to interferences with TDD bands ⇒ workaround: change your A-GPS APN settings under Settings, Mobile network & data, APN settings or switch to 2G/3G for the phone to retrieve GPS information properly (Settings, Mobile network & data, Carrier - SIMx, Network type, 3G/2G). Might be major issue for those in the US where 2G/3G has been shut down.
• [MAJOR] B2G takes up large chunk of memory, and RAM optimizations leading to the phone joining Doze deep sleep immediately and aggressive task killing after a few minutes, making opening or exiting apps horribly slow, and notifications—including incoming WhatsApp calls—being delayed.
  • Wi-Fi hotspot feature will stop also transmitting data packets with your other devices when you put the phone into sleep.
  • This can be mitigated by disabling the Low Memory Killer module on boot, which we'll mention in Manual patching with Android Image Kitchen below.
• Normally, you can wake up the phone from sleep by either pressing the Power, Volume up or Volume down buttons, regardless of whether keyguard is in place or not. On this phone there are no volume buttons, but some of their functions, such as triggering boot modes or waking the phone up, are mapped to * and # keys respectively. This can be problematic as those keys are located close to the bottom edge of the phone and can be randomly mashed if you store the phone in your front pockets, leading to unintended screenshots.
• If you forgot your lockscreen passcode (not SIM or Anti-Theft ones), you can bypass it by holding down the top Power button, then select Memory Cleaner and Deep Memory Cleaning.
• According to reports from GSMArena and Reddit, some call and text entries may not be registered in the log. I've not been able to replicate those during my usage however, could be related to other mentioned issues.

KaiOS-specific

• If you're setting up the phone for the first time with no SIM card, pre-installed apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Google apps may not appear in the app list or in KaiStore. After popping in a SIM, those apps will show up as normal.
  • KaiStore will show up in all circumstances, regardless of whether there's a SIM card inserted or not.
• The 8000 4G and 6300 4G runs KaiOS 2.5, which itself is based on Gecko 48 from 2016, meaning without optimizations and new web technologies, some websites like Instagram and Uber just fall apart and the overall performance is unbearable.
  • No built-in Widevine DRM decoders, which means the phone is NOT capable of playing DRM-protected content from e.g. Spotify
• [MAJOR] Some built-in apps, such as Call logs, Contacts or Music, are written in a way that is performance-intensive and not optimized for the phone, causing slow rendering and system lags if you store a large number of contacts (technically infinite but 100 recommended), call logs (max 40), music files or other items in a list.
  • Performance issues has been addressed on later versions, for now you should opt for alternatives such as arma7x's K-Music in KaiStore if possible.
• [MAJOR] Sending text messages don't automatically convert to MMS in group chats. You'll have to add a message subject or file attachment before sending to manually do so, otherwise your message will be sent separately to each individual in the thread. Receiving works flawlessly.
  • Group messaging over MMS has been properly implemented as a feature on later versions.
• [MAJOR] Alarms can be delayed, unable to go off or go off unexpectedly if the Clock app is killed. Before going to sleep, make sure to open the Clock app and lock the phone without pressing the End call key or closing the app.
• Predictive typing mode doesn't last between inputs, meaning if you switch between input boxes, it'll return to the normal T9 mode.
• You cannot change message notification tone or alarm tone on the phone outside the defaults provided. This is because both are not managed by the system, but by the Messages and Clock app themselves.
  • To change them, you'll have to use ADB to pull sms.gaiamobile.org and clock.gaiamobile.org from /system/b2g/webapps, extract, edit the audio files and repackage the apps, then push them back under /data/local/webapps and edit the basePath in /data/local/webapps/webapps.json to reflect the change (see BananaHackers' guide for instructions)
• D-Pad shortcuts and app shortcuts in the carousel menu (when you press Left on the home screen) are not customizable. The former has been addressed on later versions, but to change them on this phone you'll have to edit launcher.gaiamobile.org.
• Built-in email, calendar and contact syncing function with Google account may completely fail at times. Use IMAP and import contacts instead.
  • T9 search in Contacts app is missing. For those missing the feature, there's a port called FastContact by Luxferre that you can sideload to use as an alternative.
  • E-Mail app lacks many crucial enterprise features, such as OAuth2 secure sign-in.
  • Speaking of built-in Calendar app, if you manage to opt for syncing your Google account with the phone, only the calendar with your email address as its name will sync.

WhatsApp-specific

• 8MB download/5MB upload limit: This is to avoid 'out of memory' errors with the nature of WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption. All things sent through the app's servers—including photos and videos—are encrypted on device, and to decrypt them bit-by-bit would take huge chunks of memory, which isn't suitable for KaiOS devices having hardware as limited as 256MB of RAM.
• Pairing account with the WhatsApp Web interface or desktop applications is NOT possible, due to KaiOS devices' limitations on background processes and battery life, which prevents the feature from syncing decryption keys and mirroring messages & calls from the phone.
  • On a related note, you cannot sign into another device, pair with those interfaces and then sign into the KaiOS version of WhatsApp. Attempting to do so will result in the renewal of the decryption keys and all other devices being forced to log off automatically.