Camera(s) not working?
#1
Question 
Hi all,

my Pinephone UBPorts Ed. has arrived today.
I tried to check the camera with the app built-in, but the screen stays black!
Maybe it is a stupid question, but: Is there a hint to activate it?
The hardware switches in the inside of the phone are all in the state of delivery, I have not changed anything.

Regards
Udo
#2
(06-08-2020, 02:11 PM)UNi Wrote: Hi all,

my Pinephone UBPorts Ed. has arrived today.
I tried to check the camera with the app built-in, but the screen stays black!
Maybe it is a stupid question, but: Is there a hint to activate it?
The hardware switches in the inside of the phone are all in the state of delivery, I have not changed anything.

Regards
Udo

it is a work in progress .......i dont think it is working yet
#3
(06-08-2020, 02:11 PM)UNi Wrote: Hi all,

my Pinephone UBPorts Ed. has arrived today.
I tried to check the camera with the app built-in, but the screen stays black!
Maybe it is a stupid question, but: Is there a hint to activate it?
The hardware switches in the inside of the phone are all in the state of delivery, I have not changed anything.

Regards
Udo

As the ubports blog post mentioned when you bought the pinephone the phone is not daily driver ready for everyone (there are some that might be willing to put up with these bugs and missing features and use it daily, and there's others that wont be able to and should wait for more updates). There is not camera support, power management is a work in progress, GPS might not always work, there is not support for direct media transfer over USB in ubuntu touch right now, no MMS (multimedia SMS messages) support, and there's still lots of bugs.

Despite the hardware being production ready, the software is still essentially in beta.

https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blog-1/...e-open-271

Quote:The Ubuntu Touch image that will ship on the PinePhone will be highly functional, but not necessarily 'daily driver'ready - depending of course on your requirements. It will support all core phone functionality, such as outgoing and incoming voice calls, SMS texts and LTE. In addition, it will have GPS location and GPU hardware acceleration for the system and its apps. That said, some features - notably camera support, battery life conservation and USB Host [that means plug and play for perhipherals such as mice] will still be under active development at the time of shipping.
#4
(06-08-2020, 02:50 PM)Aberts10 Wrote: As the ubports blog post mentioned when you bought the pinephone the phone is not daily driver ready for everyone (there are some that might be willing to put up with these bugs and missing features and use it daily, and there's others that wont be able to and should wait for more updates). There is not camera support, power management is a work in progress, GPS might not always work, there is not support for direct media transfer over USB in ubuntu touch right now, no MMS (multimedia SMS messages) support, and there's still lots of bugs.

Despite the hardware being production ready, the software is still essentially in beta.

https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blog-1/...e-open-271
Overall I think this is a solid start and have been impressed with the build so far. Very much beta; I doubt this phone will be used as a daily driver for quite some time. Cameras definitely do not activate even after multiple minutes of waiting.
#5
(06-08-2020, 04:47 PM)plainenough Wrote:
(06-08-2020, 02:50 PM)Aberts10 Wrote: As the ubports blog post mentioned when you bought the pinephone the phone is not daily driver ready for everyone (there are some that might be willing to put up with these bugs and missing features and use it daily, and there's others that wont be able to and should wait for more updates). There is not camera support, power management is a work in progress, GPS might not always work, there is not support for direct media transfer over USB in ubuntu touch right now, no MMS (multimedia SMS messages) support, and there's still lots of bugs.

Despite the hardware being production ready, the software is still essentially in beta.

https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blog-1/...e-open-271
Overall I think this is a solid start and have been impressed with the build so far. Very much beta; I doubt this phone will be used as a daily driver for quite some time. Cameras definitely do not activate even after multiple minutes of waiting.

I tried all hardware switch combinations. The camera stays black.

Maybe some future update will fix that. There are only two issues keeping me from using this as a daily driver:
1) Camera
2) Headphone Jack
#6
Thx for all the replies so far.
So it has been a "stupid" question of mine. Wink

Currently I am waiting for the delivery of my SD card and an additional SIM for my mobile contract.
More testing of mine will follow up when I will have got these.

Q: Is it possible to check the hardware (not only the cameras) apart from the use of Ubuntu Touch?

I would like to be sure the hardware of my particular Pinephone is working well. Then I could report software bugs more easily, as I would know it is not an hardware issue.
#7
(06-09-2020, 12:27 AM)UNi Wrote: Q: Is it possible to check the hardware (not only the cameras) apart from the use of Ubuntu Touch?

I would like to be sure the hardware of my particular Pinephone is working well. Then I could report software bugs more easily, as I would know it is not an hardware issue.

There's the factorytest image from PostmarketOS. https://images.postmarketos.org/pinephon...t43.img.xz is the latest one. Just flash it to an SD card and put it in the phone. It will boot from the SD card if an OS is on there.
#8
Thx, I shall try this one.

OT: Sorry for alle the newbie questions. I am not yet familiar with mobile Linux devices - the Pinephone is my first one -, but I am eager to learn and to contribute experiences.

My "background":
I am using GNU/Linux on the desktop/notebook for the last 9 years. I am not a hacker, rather a normal user, but I am using the command line sometimes also.
My recent project is to learn Python incl. PyQt5. In the past, I was coding with Delphi/ObjectPascal and later on with Lazarus/FreePascal.
#9
(06-09-2020, 03:04 AM)Did you ever get it working. I keep seeing updates about camera improvements, yet mine still doesn\t work. Wrote: Thx, I shall try this one.

OT: Sorry for alle the newbie questions. I am not yet familiar with mobile Linux devices - the Pinephone is my first one -, but I am eager to learn and to contribute experiences.

My "background":
I am using GNU/Linux on the desktop/notebook for the last 9 years. I am not a hacker, rather a normal user, but I am using the command line sometimes also.
My recent project is to learn Python incl. PyQt5. In the past, I was coding with Delphi/ObjectPascal and later on with Lazarus/FreePascal.
#10
(06-09-2020, 12:27 AM)UNi Wrote: Thx for all the replies so far.
So it has been a "stupid" question of mine. Wink

Currently I am waiting for the delivery of my SD card and an additional SIM for my mobile contract.
More testing of mine will follow up when I will have got these.

Q: Is it possible to check the hardware (not only the cameras) apart from the use of Ubuntu Touch?

I would like to be sure the hardware of my particular Pinephone is working well. Then I could report software bugs more easily, as I would know it is not an hardware issue.
From your post it sounds like youve just used it out of the box. Its worth noting this is probably an old rudimentary build. You should probably flash the latest build to an SD card and enable OTA dev channel for updated builds. Currently back cam is working, but backwards and low res. If you wish to test more features of the hardware you can install other OSes which have more functions working. Same thing, download from the repo, flash to an SD card. With the pinephone SD cards function like a live drive. It will book whatever os you stick in. All settings and data will be saved to the sd. The build preinstalled on your phone's emmc is unlikely to get used much if ever. Its really a fall back/ proof of concept / place you can tinker if you have lots of time. It will function like a small computer, but phone functionality will come from your SD card distros.


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