Hi all, this is just a question to stimulate conversations and ideas, in the hope that something useful might come out of it;

I have had personal success on an original pinephone in saving significant power by disabling cpu's, and though I do not own a pinephone pro, I just thought I would post a copy of a post I have just made in the original pinephone section of the forum, in case there is anything of value in it for the pinephone pro??

Please bear in mind that I have never used a pinephone pro, and don't know how the script could be implemented, if at all, -and what problems it might cause, so this information is simply provided "as is", for research purposes for competent developers.


Here is a copy of the post:

Post Title:  Will this battery-saving script cause problems?

Just thought I would try to get some feedback on this script that I use on an older (6 months ago?) Mobian version which saves me quite a bit of battery life.


Disclaimer: though I use this myself, I don't know if there are negative side-effects, so I'm only seeking opinions from developers, I'm not recommending that anyone should try this themselves


I only use my pinephones (2gb and 3gb editions) in a very simple way, for file-management, storage and utility purposes, like a handheld computer, not even for web-browsing, and I do not have the modem enabled, though I sometimes enable wifi to update and install programs.


I use the following scripts to enable or disable all cpu's except for cpu0



Script to disable them:

#!/bin/bash
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online



Script to enable them:

#!/bin/bash
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online


the results are surprising, as can be seen in the powersupply app, with a quite significant reduction in power usage.


Because the reduction is while the phone is in use running programs, it gives a noticable improvement in power consumption during use, as sleep mode already works well when it is not in use. I suppose it would increase my phone-use time by 1-to-several hours depending on what was being run.


Speed is not affected hugely, though there is some effect. I suppose that most programs I use are using one just cpu anyway. I have found it far preferable to have extended use time, and to put up with an occasional second or so delay in program start times etc.


Shutdown is the only thing where I've noticed a problem, and I have to reenable the other 3 cpu's to shutdown properly, or I don't see the splash screen.


Disabling and reenabling the cpu's seems flawless, even multiple times. I can't remember it failing (although maybe it happened and I forgot...).


As stated, I do not use the modem (or gps or bluetooth), and I have no idea how they would react to this.


PS: I also tried reducing the cpu frequency, but that did not reduce power very much, and had a big impact on speed, so I did not bother to try to incorporate it into the script.


Does anyone have any feedback, opinions, warnings or suggestions in regard to doing this?


Regards everybody.

Just thought I would try to get some feedback on this script that I use on an older (6 months ago?) Mobian version which saves me quite a bit of battery life.

Disclaimer: though I use this myself, I don't know if there are negative side-effects, so I'm only seeking opinions from developers, I'm not recommending that anyone should try this themselves

I only use my pinephones (2gb and 3gb editions) in a very simple way, for file-management, storage and utility purposes, like a handheld computer, not even for web-browsing, and I do not have the modem enabled, though I sometimes enable wifi to update and install programs.

I use the following scripts to enable or disable all cpu's except for cpu0



Script to disable them:

#!/bin/bash
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online


Script to enable them:

#!/bin/bash
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online


the results are surprising, as can be seen in the powersupply app, with a quite significant reduction in power usage.

Because the reduction is while the phone is in use running programs, it gives a noticable improvement in power consumption during use, as sleep mode already works well when it is not in use. I suppose it would increase my phone-use time by 1-to-several hours depending on what was being run.

Speed is not affected hugely, though there is some effect. I suppose that most programs I use are using one just cpu anyway. I have found it far preferable to have extended use time, and to put up with an occasional second or so delay in program start times etc.

Shutdown is the only thing where I've noticed a problem, and I have to reenable the other 3 cpu's to shutdown properly, or I don't see the splash screen.

Disabling and reenabling the cpu's seems flawless, even multiple times. I can't remember it failing (although maybe it happened and I forgot...).

As stated, I do not use the modem (or gps or bluetooth), and I have no idea how they would react to this.

PS: I also tried reducing the cpu frequency, but that did not reduce power very much, and had a big impact on speed, so I did not bother to try to incorporate it into the script.


Does anyone have any feedback, opinions, warnings or suggestions in regard to doing this?

Regards everybody.

as Volla Phone 22 promises freee choice of OS, removable Battery, and is not so very much more expensive than PinePhone Pro. Built in Multi-Boot may be as funtional as boot from card. Build quality wise, I am a bit disappointed by my PinePhone.
What's everybody thinking: Could this be a interesting alternative, and in which aspects?

Hi everyone, 

I've been tinkering with my PinePhone for a while and noticed that eMMC is likely corrupt/being corrupted sometimes.
I tested that by downloading files from remote host and checking if their sha256sums match, which they didn't. Also rsync just fails to copy file quoting the same mismatch error.
After running PostmarketOS update using apk update && apk upgrade it just stopped unlocking (lock screen just reappears after a valid pin code), though apk verify said nothing about that.

I'd like to know if anyone else has/had that problem and if there're any workarounds to get eMMC stable.

I managed to install NetBSD on eMMC by booting from an SD card with 9.3 arm64.img and running sysinst.

Now have trouble booting up the installed system. Tow-Boot on SPI complains

"Wrong image format for "source" command."
"Can't get kernel image!"

I reinstalled kernel just to be sure

This is almost a showstopper - the choice of keyboard layouts is very sparse in current Mobian, and I can't quite find a way to make a new one.
I read almost everything that was written here on the subject, and followed the instructions on https://developer.puri.sm/projects/squee...orial.html

The trouble is that (megi's) distro of Mobian, and a few other descendants of Debian, includes about eight keyboards for major languages, and then there's the „other“ section, where I found both of my serbian keyboards (cyrillic and latinic) listed. However, when I select one of these, nothing happens, the layout remains american. So I found that the layouts reside in .yaml files on

~/.local/share/squeekboard/keyboards

...which doesn't exist. So I made one, and edited my version of sr.yaml, put it there (using syncthing, which works miraculously). Still doesn't catch. Searching through files, I see there's some trace of squeekboard, but no recognizable keyboard files anywhere.

I'm at my wits end - was there anything changed in the mechanism? Perhaps current Mobian doesn't even use squeekboard anymore? Where are the layout files?

Is it possible to upgrade eMMC image by using the USB C port? 

There is another device with rk3566 (firefly) that supports it, but I'm not sure if this functionality is baked into the boot Rom, or does it require additional spi flash.

I tried plugging the board into a Linux pc, but the rk3566 upgrade tool didn't see any connected devices. Perhaps there is some button to press(or a pin to short to GND)? 

This would be very useful for me to upgrade the emmc image repeatedly without having to disconnect and reconnect the module.

I'm currently running Fedora with tow-boot on my Pinebook Pro, and mostly it's working great. One issue I haven't resolved yet that is specific to this distro, is lack of sound. I get the following errors on boot:

Hi,

When I run megapixels in the terminal I get the error: ''usr/share/megapixels/config/pine64,pinephone-pro-ini not found. Could not find any config file." How can I solve this problem?

Until several days ago I needed no API keys to use map auto-download for OSM tiles on Puremaps, it just loaded what I needed over wifi or 4g data.
Today after a full wipe and bookworm/mobian up-to-date install I get a HTTP 403 error and it wants a source for map files.
This leads me to install OSM scout server, which is good; I want offline maps on a daily driver device and I have not spent enough time working with nav on pinephone.
I get OSM scout server setup and I can download the world basic map files but I get no options when I click the subscribe button, nothing happens except a slight change in color on the subscribe button.
Maybe OSM is not serving map tiles today, or am I missing a step for both puremaps and osm scout server?
(edit)
It would be useful to me if anyone could verify a working install(version too) to see if they are getting their maps loading in OSM scout server or puremaps.