Pine and the distro makers have unfortunately "jumped the shark"
by trying to offer phones that might someday be competitive with Android/iOS i.e.
fast, responsive, good for gaming, amazing camera etc.

But this is not really what a Linux user wants. A Linux user wants different things from
the majority of users.
He wants:
1. to tinker first and foremost, configuring the phone in novel ways, starting with a functional phone not one with broken software;
2. to achieve privacy, and feel assured his data won't be exfiltrated to "the cloud", and use apps like Signal for Internet calling;
3. to write code for the phone, maybe write code on the phone itself.

But to gain adoption by Linux users the phone has to be able to
1. make calls reliably,
2. do SMS reliabily
3. and charge normally.

These 3 things should have been the top priority of Pine and the distro makers, but seem to have not been.

The distro makers apparently want to provide a nearly identical
experience and feature set to mainstream phone OSes (why?), and they have
loaded their GUIs down with bloated/slow software, rather than writing lean and fast
code using the bare bones approach e.g. with Xlib alone.

It is no big surprise that phones feel slow when they are using
KDE plasma or Python apps.

Pine for its part has failed to provide the basic hardware setup of a phone that:
A. charges normally without having to ever take out the battery;
B. has an EEPROM to store calibration data. They don't perform camera calibration at the factory
like ever other phone maker does, which means the camera
will never be calibrated because that can't be done at home.

In short, the Pine phones are a misfire, not conceived with the customers' needs in mind,
with bad distros brought by organizations not committed to the task and instead
committed to the wrong goals.

I just received my new pinebook pro in 08/2022. After installing the ARM Manjaro Gnome desktop OS to eMMC booting from Manjaro SD card, the PBP started with the new OS. After a couple of system starts, the PBP booted showing the u-boot screen, then showed a blinking cursor in the upper left corner and just stopped with a green-orange-blinking power LED. This has not changed since then. The following paragraphs describe my attempts to fix the problem.

I tried booting from SD card (the same card that worked before) but it doesn't work anymore. I tried different Linux distros to create a bootable SD card using Balena Etcher, e.g. Manjaro Gnome/xfce/KDE and Armbian (new and older versions).

After that, I opened the back cover to check the eMMC switch (no. 24 regarding the PBP wiki). But the new PBP does not have the switch as described. There is another switch (turned by 90 degrees to the original one) which is covered/sealed by a transparent material. I compared the switch to my other PBP (2020 model) and it looks different in my new PBP.

Using a USB eMMC adapter, I flashed several Manjaro and Armbian linux distros on the eMMC and inserted it back into the PBP. My PBP does not boot anymore: not with the eMMC and not with a bootable SD card.

When I insert the eMMC of my old PBP, the PBP boots to an older Manjaro KDE plasma. Keeping the old eMMC in the PBP, I tried to boot from SD card to flash a newer distro to the old eMMC. But it did not work. The PBP only starts from the old eMMC and not from any inserted bootable SD card. The problem with the old eMMC is that wifi is not working (not showing any networks). I do not dare flashing the old eMMC using the USB eMMC adapter...

Is it possible that the new eMMC has a failure and how can I check?

I read a lot of threads in the forum, on reddit and other web sources but all described steps and tips did not work for me. Is there a better way to flash a linux distro with u-boot etc. to eMMC? I also read that it is possible to boot the PBP without eMMC. That does not work with my PBP. Has this changed with the new model? I highly appreciate any tips and hints on how to proceed with my new PBP.

fresh install on danctnix's phosh Arch image everything works as normal except none chatty notifications.

I have extended the feedbackd config to sound on missed as well as new sms and IM these work as inconsistently.

if the screen is locked and no existing (dino-im in this case) notifications have sounded then the sms sound plays (the screen doesn't turn on)

if I am in different app screen on no sound is played notification is displayed.

if a voice/video call comes through on the app no sound is played regardless of state, visual notification is displayed.

have tested incoming call event with fbcli and chatty both work (chatty also turns on screen).
below is a capture of the dbus event it appears to invoke incoming-call sound but no audio ring is played the screen doesn't turn on.

any ideas where I should look next ?

signal time=1660509632.125137 sender=org.freedesktop.DBus -> destination=:1.90 serial=2 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus;
  string "Dino"
  uint32 0
  string ""
  string "SENDERADDRESS"
  string "Incoming call"
  array [
      string "default"
      string "Open conversation"
      string "reject"
      string "Reject"
      string "accept"
      string "Accept"
  ]
  array [
      dict entry(
        string "sound-name"
        variant            string "phone-incoming-call"
      )
      dict entry(
        string "urgency"
        variant            byte 2
      )
      dict entry(
        string "image-path"
        variant            string "call-start-symbolic"
      )
      dict entry(
        string "desktop-entry"
        variant            string "im.dino.Dino"
      )
  ]
  int32 0

Hi,
What is the status of being able to make reliable calls on the PP and PPpro?
By reliable I mean:
- Calls go through
- Calls are not disconnected for no reason
- Audio levels are fine (sending and receiving).
- Both parties can hear each other.
Thanks.

Pinebook Pro, ordered in mid-2020 but used very lightly since (mained for about 2 weeks). US ANSI keyboard. Comes with a 256GB Samsung Evo SD card that has a fresh install of Manjaro XFCE on it.

Hoping to sell for $175 150 shipped to the US.

Images: https://imgur.com/a/PT3Co5j

Images:

• Note that the laptop has issues booting from the internal eMMC.The eMMC itself seems to be OK when removed from the laptop and plugged into a computer using the USB adapter, but I could not get the laptop to boot from it, and it’s not visible from an SD-card booted Linux instance. It’s possible the port is damaged in some way, or the issue is fixable and I just don’t know how, but I wouldn’t count on it. The eMMC itself has also been wiped.
  
• Upgraded the trackpad firmware.
  
• Comes with a USB eMMC adapter and serial console adapter from the Pine Store.
  

So I've been debugging various things on my RK3566 based soquartz and standard debugging is becoming insufficient for my needs. Hardware tracing would be really nice to have and there is Coresight ETM support in Linux.

However before I spend lots of time trying to get it working can someone clarify for me if RK3566 actually has a functioning Coresight ETM component? If yes, is it version ETMv4 and what subcomponents it has(trace funnel? anything else)?

The RK3568 (that is supposedly very similar to rk3566) TRM document claims rk3568 has DAP-Lite2 debug component which is described on ARM;s website as "a simple debug component with no tracing capability."

So if there is no tracing capability why does the ROM table contain tracing components for each CPU? (listing below)

A couple days ago I received my Pinebook Pro. Immediately after first boot I started to hear an occasional startling sound coming from the lower half of the machine. It is the kind of sound that reminds me of a speaker getting its cable pulled out (although much "smaller" sounding of course). On the other hand, it plausibly sounds like a fan having a malfunction -- I have not heard a fan on this during use so far, presumably it has one?

If I had to guess, it is coming from the lower left side, e,g, under the caps lock and the meta key. It happens randomly, but at least 5 times in a couple hours of use.

Any ideas?

EDIT:
fwiw, https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...#pid111949

Got the new PBP this week. The first couple of hours went well getting setup. Have had the following issues:

1. random humming for a few seconds followed by a popping sound coming from speakers.
   
2. Then did not plug in before battery drained and next time I tried to boot after charging for a few hours, got the green power-on light but nothing on the display. I know the battery is charged so I suspect something on the software side has gone amiss. I ordered the emmc-usb adapter in order to flash new os. Will try that once I get it
   
3. Today while booting off the Fedora32 image on an SD card, I got the popping sounds again and the keyboard dies.
   

Hello,

I've bought the wifi+blueooth module for the RockPro64 board (https://pine64.com/product/rockpro64-1x1...-0-module/).

I have been struggling to make Bluetooth audio work with it. It stuttered a lot, but yesterday I found a solution. Please test it and report back, I need feedback from a few people so I can submit a kernel patch with enough confidence.

Quick explanation: A patch that fixes the stutters on ROCK Pi 4 boards, also based on the rk3399 board with the same BCM4345C5 Bluetooth device, also on UART0, has been submitted last November: https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/lin...tions.com/

This fix sets the correct right max-speed and compatibility configurations for the Bluetooth device to work correctly. It is already present for the Pinebook Pro. The same fix needs to be applied for the RockPro64.

I'm using Armbian, so the following instructions might need to be adapted for other distributions, though the fix not to be specific to Armbian and the instructions might be generic enough.

I attached 3 files to this post. Please remove the .txt extensions when downloading them. Here's how to use them.

Testing quicky

First, I only tested this on linux 5.18. This is not the default kernel version on Armbian for the RockPro64. The default kernel is 5.15. To install version 5.18, you can use the armbian-config tool which will install the linux-image-edge-rockchip64 kernel. 5.15 might work but I haven't tested it.

So:

• Backup your stuff. We are messing with boot files.
  
• If you haven't already, install linux 5.18 (the linux-image-edge-rockchip64 kernel, which can be installed using armbian-config)
  
• Download the rk3399-rockpro64-v2.dtb and rk3399-rockpro64.dtb files attached to this post. Remove the .txt extensions.
  
• Then, as root (add sudo as needed):
  

Attached Files

  0001-arm64-dts-rockchip-Fix-Bluetooth-on-the-RockPro64-bo.patch.txt (Size: 1.57 KB / Downloads: 418)
  rk3399-rockpro64-v2.dtb.txt (Size: 78.48 KB / Downloads: 479)
  rk3399-rockpro64.dtb.txt (Size: 78.48 KB / Downloads: 493)

A few months ago, I got a PBP, which I love! I do want to replace the factory loaded Manjero with Ubuntu. Please advise the procedure for this.

After never having used Linux before, I installed Ubuntu on a an old wounded Windows 11 machine without really knowing what I was doing and it worked!

I am this inclined to invoke the boot menu on start-up (is this ALT + F2 on PBP?) and install from the USB drive I used for the Win 11 machine.

Please advise.

- John