I just received my replacement Pinephonepro system board.
I had a tow-boot bootable SD ready to begin the process but the phone now loads a Rockchip splash and then boots into Chinese Android.
It also doesn't auto-boot when plugged into power, it just charges as it is an android.
How can I force this to bootfrom SD?
I wonder if this requires ADB commands?
I also wonder if the board requires ADB unlocking now as it is loaded with android...
I do not dread/write/speak Chinese so I have no idea how to get into dev mode.


A side problem is the main camera socket keeps popping off from the new board, I tried adding a paper shim to push it down via pressure form the plastic enclosure when screwed down.  I wonder if it is broke and I need to spend $30 replacing the camera.
it also seems that the proximity detector is not fully pushed into its place as I can see the notification LED, this probably just needs to be opened and pushed down or remove the shim from the main camera.

(edit)
https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock/SD_booting
this is for rockchip not sure if it will do anything useful for me, I want to be careful that I dont do more damage.
This just seems to be a windoze SD card writer app which can flip the bootable bit

per the dev boards(r-pi like boards) stuff here https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock/dual_boot
You can flash over those board's /recovery partition, if I could get that much access from my phone

For now this might as well be bricked unless I reinsert the broken board that cant use hibernate mode and cant boot without a good smack(detached RF shield), I wonder if I can interfere with anything to force a SD boot using the serial cable?

I have a NEMA GPS dongle 

So I got the proximity / light sensor working in my Zig OS   Although the sensor seems to be always powered on, which kinda makes sense, but I somehow expected a GPIO pin for switching it off.  

Now I am looking at the gyroscope, wow it looks complicated and I am kinda glad to see the secondary I2C fusion? lines are not connected.

But here again it seems to be always powered on? (based on schematic), and I recall from my early iOS days, that gyroscopes can waste some power when always on.  Did I miss something?

Howdy.
I've come across several daily driver users who eventually state things like
Oh, I don't care about buggy wifi, slow X, crashing Y or unstable Z because I use it only for: calls, sms, contacts.
Oh, who cares about battery life, i keep it powered off most of the day etc..

my question is, what is the point of having a linux phone when use case is dumb phone features only? Why not just use some dumb nokia that runs for 7 days on a battery and call it a day? also same privacy level on those devices...

I think the cold truth is, because its too slow and unstable to do anything else then calls and sms with it, but then the loop goes back to the beginning, what is the point..

Quill OS is now available for the PineNote in a "working" state

I don't think it's worth repeating myself with what I have written on github, so here are some links:
- An a bit outdated demo: https://github.com/PorQ-Pine/docs/blob/m...ic/demo.md
- Explanation of what I'm even talking about: https://github.com/PorQ-Pine/docs/tree/main/public
- Entry repo: https://github.com/PorQ-Pine/quillstrap?...me-ov-file
- Technical explanation of Quill OS (A cool graph ): https://github.com/PorQ-Pine/docs/tree/m.../technical

We are looking for people to guide them to install it and write the installation steps along the way, so if you are interested, contact us in our discord server or in the official #pinenote

Also of course some more disclaimers:
1. Quill on pinenote is in its early days, there are many issues and minor problems like no rotation, no sleep (sleep drains the battery a lot anyway, so i did not care to add it)
2. The installation, while we used it, could have problems along the way, cant promise it would be painless, so maybe a few days without a working pinenote is possible

If you have questions, feel free to ask them here

I have a PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, Keyboard, wireless charging back cover, cases, and spare batteries for sale. PM me.

PSA for anyone who (like me) is still using an install based on the original PineTab2 image and finding that pacman won't upgrade anything today due to a "bad database" (which is actually an HTML error page).

The old danctnix server name at p64.arikawa-hi.me appears to have expired. I went looking and confirmed that it expired 2 years ago and was renewed at the time, and that archmobile.mirror.danctnix.org is the valid new server name. After updating /etc/pacman.conf to point to the new server, I was able to sync successfully again.

Looking at the component list and schematic, I was expecting to find a STK3311-A, but my I2C check returns a different product ID, unless my I2C is still broken   Can anyone confirm which chip I am trying to talk to on the PinePhone Beta v1.2b please?

I recently bought a Rock64 (4GB) board from Pine64 and I’m excited to start using it for some home server projects. I’ve mostly used x86 machines before, so I’m still learning the best practices for ARM-based SBCs. I’d appreciate advice from more experienced users here.

[*]Which Ubuntu Server version do you recommend for Rock64? I saw that there are several flavors (22.04, 24.04, etc.). Which one offers the best stability and performance?
[*]About Storage setup, I plan to run the system from an NVMe SSD via an M.2 adapter. Does anyone have experience with the setup speed, boot reliability, and any specific quirks to watch out for?
[*]I’m really looking forward to learning from everyone’s experience and getting this setup working well. Thanks in advance for your help!

Hey everyone,

I am trying to install openSUSE on the PinePhone beta and cannot get the phone to boot the image that is provided on openSUSE as of 11-13-2025.

The links to KDE and GNOME on the main article page https://en.opensuse.org/HCL:PinePhone do not even work, and I found the only image fine in the directory which is less ideal since I wanted KDE.

Does anyone have any experience with getting the install to work? Or are we just dealing with a broken image on the openSUSE site.

My process has been to use Balena Etcher to flash this image: 

https://download.opensuse.org/repositori...1.6.raw.xz

Sometimes etcher itself crashes on verification. 

When I insert the microSD card to the phone, the screen remains blank and oscillates between a green and red light, which I guess means the image failed. 

I tried this method using JumpDrive with the same result. 

Does anyone know of a solution here? I appreciate it.

DM