HP EliteBook 850 G3

Hardware	PCI/USB ID	Working?
GPU (Intel)	8086:1916	Yes
GPU (AMD)	1002:6604	Yes
Ethernet	8086:156f	Yes
Wireless	8086:24f3	Yes
Cellular	03f0:9d1d	Yes
Bluetooth	8087:0a2b	Yes
NFC		No
Audio	8086:9d70	Yes
Webcam	04f2:b51d	Yes
Memory Card Reader	10ec:522a	Yes
Touch-pad		Yes
Fingerprint Reader	138a:003f	No
Fan Control		Yes
TPM		Yes
Smart Card Reader		No
Battery		Partial
HP Docking		Yes

General

The HP Elitebook 850 G3 is a business grade workstation laptop released in 2017, the laptop is very durable and the ecosystem of HP devices are a well fit for a neat portable system. Most of the internal parts are cross compatible with the generation 4 (G4) Elitebooks and can easily be upgraded and be swapped in and out for wanted/remove unwanted features.

Firmware

UEFI / Secure Boot

Secure Boot and TPM backed disk encryption is tested and works. Enrolling custom keys for secure boot is supported but is not tested, proceed with caution.

Configuration

AMD Graphics

The AMD Radeon R7 M365X is supported by both radeon and AMDGPU drivers, but AMDGPU driver performs better. Read AMDGPU to configure the driver in your system.

Fan Control

Warning: Without configuring software the fan speed will sit at its lowest speed setting and thermal shutdowns are frequent. It is important that it is configured before any heavy load is put on the system.

Fan control requires additional software to be configured. Install nbfc-linux^AUR read Fan speed control for more information.

# sudo nbfc config -s "HP EliteBook 850 G3"

Cellular

NetworkManager uses ModemManager for mobile broadband connection support.

Setting up usb_modeswitch does not set up the modem properly. Add the following udev rule & script to manually configure the modem to operational mode,

/etc/udev/rules.d/99-hp-modem.rules

ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="03f0", ATTR{idProduct}=="9d1d", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/hp-modem-setup.sh"

/usr/local/bin/hp-modem-setup.sh

#!/bin/bash

echo 0 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-3/bConfigurationValue
echo 2 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-3/bConfigurationValue
echo 1 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-3/bConfigurationValue
echo 3 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-3/bConfigurationValue

Give executable permissions to the modem set up script, reload udev and trigger an usb even to set up the device:

# udevadm trigger --action=add /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-3

Confirm that the modem is set up by running:

$ mmcli -L

Touchpad

To enable synaptics intertouch on Synaptics TM3140-001 for a better touch pad experience:

# modprobe -r psmouse
# modprobe psmouse synaptics_intertouch=1

If all works well you can make the changes persistent in next boot by adding the driver parameter to Kernel parameters.

Hardware & Software Features

Keyboard Pointer

The keyboard nipple/pointer is tested and works, both the rows of touch-pad mouse click buttons works.

Battery

Setting charging thresholds on the fly is unsupported. HP Intelligent charging can be used on windows to change battery health configurations on the fly while powered on. However battery health configurations (Maximize for Duration/Health, Let HP Manage..) could be set in the firmware setup. Maybe a UEFI variable + reboot mechanism of some sort can be developed as a workaround.

HP Docking

The docking port on the right side of the device below the sim card slot is and older docking standard that is now discontinued. To recognize whether the device is docked or not the path to the device can be found out by running:

$ find /sys/devices/platform -name dock -print -exec cat {} \;

A list of tested docks are listed,

Dock	Working?
HP UltraSlim Docking Station (B9C87AA#ABA)	Yes

Systemd + Udev

Below commands guides on how to setup docked and mobile targets with udev on a systemd configured system to aid with other tasks in the system. This can flexibly be used to for example mount file systems when docked or de/activate other systemd units that match the device profile when docked / mobile.

/etc/systemd/system/docked.target

[Unit]
Description=Laptop Docked Target

/etc/systemd/system/mobile.target

[Unit]
Description=Laptop Mobile Target

/etc/udev/rules.d/99-dock-detect.rules

# trigger an action(a) when the SMSC USB5534 hub in the dock is added

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add",    ATTR{idVendor}=="0424", ATTR{idProduct}=="5434",      RUN+="/bin/systemctl start docked.target"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="remove", DEVPATH=="/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-4", RUN+="/bin/systemctl stop  docked.target"

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add",    ATTR{idVendor}=="0424", ATTR{idProduct}=="5434",      RUN+="/bin/systemctl stop  mobile.target"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="remove", DEVPATH=="/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-4", RUN+="/bin/systemctl start mobile.target"

Here is an example use case where hpfall can be deactivated when the system is docked.

# sudo systemctl edit hpfall.service

### Anything between here and the comment below will become the contents of the drop-in file

[Unit]
Requires=mobile.target
BindsTo=mobile.target

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target mobile.target

### Edits below this comment will be discarded

HPFall (HP 3D DriveGaurd)

The laptop built to work with hard drives has an accelerometer to unload the drive head to prevent damage to the hard drive. If you have a harddrive the same feature is implemented by hpfall and is tested and works, follow the guide in hpfall to configure. The accelerometer can also be used for other purposes, values can be read using the jstest utility from the joyutils.

$ jstest /dev/input/js0

NFC

The NFC device on the board is unsupported by the NFC software/firmware stack.

Fingerprint

The fingerprint device "Validity Sensors, Inc. VFS495 Fingerprint Reader" does not work, as the firmware is proprietary and it's functionality is obscure to be integrated to the linux pam components. There are reverse engineered drivers that work with older kernels and older versions of libcrypto and other dependencies but later versions of packages seems to break commonly linked resources.

Function keys

Tip: All the function keys and empty function keys can be configured to toggle/control various system components of your liking.

• Super+PowerButton to switch power profiles
• Super+AudioButton to switch main audio output/input source
• Fn+F1 to toggle fan speed modes

Key(s)	Control Action	Status (assuming appropriate software)
Fn+F1	Suspend	Sleep / Suspend the device to RAM by default, can be configured for hybrid sleep if set up.
Fn+F3	Keyboard Backlight	Toggle keyboard backlight levels. (Off, Low, High)
Fn+F4	Monitor Modes	Switch between monitor modes. (Extended, Mirrored, Joined, etc.)
Fn+F5,Fn+F6	Brightness Control	Main / In-built monitor brightness control, down and up respectively.
Fn+F8, Fn+F9	Volume Control	Volume up/down control respectively on the main audio output source.
Fn+F10	Mute Audio Input	Toggle to mute the main audio input source. (Turn on/off mic)
Fn+PrintScreen	Screen Capture	Triggers screen snipping/capture.
RadioButton	Radio Control	Toggles all radio devices on/off. (Cellular, Wifi, & Bluetooth)
AudioButton	Audio Mute	Toggles all audio outputs on/off.