This is my opinion. I own 2 original generation Pinephone v1.2b. I like the idea of the keyboard case, especially the addition of the battery. I waited on buying the keyboard case, as I didn't want to be a beta tester (I'm glad I waited). After witnessing the problems that others have experienced, I won't be purchasing the keyboard unless it is redesigned.

I think the Pinephone keyboard is a great accessory, but the POGO pin connection was a poor choice. I think it should be connected to the phone via USB and provide a USB hub.

Changing the Pinephone / Keyboard interconnection from POGO pins to USB has the following Pros & Cons:

Cons:
* A redesign of the keyboard's phone interface circuit would be required. (A USB circuit, and hopefull a hub so other USB devices could be attached)
* A redesign of the Pinephone mounting in the keyboard would be required.
* The keyboard battery level would have to be displayed on the keyboard itself.

Pros:
* No issues with poor contact with the POGO pins.
* Ability to use the Pinephone's USB port for peripherals (if a USB hub is added to the keyboard).
* No circuit redesign required of the Pinephone to prevent power feedback into keyboard if the phones USB port is used.
* The redesign of phone mount could allow for the back of the phone to remain in place including the LoRa and Fingerprint covers.
* The redesign of phone mount could allow for easier installation/removal of Pinephone from keyboard. (You could slide the phone out of the keyboard case to make/make a phone call - No spudger needed)
* No special keyboard driver to code and maintain.


Mark

Hello All,

Without having to trial load all the PinePhone releases...

Is anyone using a release that the phone works fine and the mute function also works?

Only standing requirement I have to ditch the iPhone, need a reliable phone call and mute function.

I'm on Manjaro Posh Beta 23 now and it is not working due to the Call app has bugs. Not sure when this will get resolved.

Thanks!

Hello everyone!

One year ago I ordered and got my PBP and original USB-C Docking Deck from PINE64 store. I never tried to connect any displays via docking deck to my PBP until this moment, Ethernet too. Now I tried to connect and can't get the image from PBP and can't configure working ethernet profile. Charging, storages is working. But HDMI and Ethernet are not (link leds blinks). Please give me advise (or share the link to guide) how to work with decking dock in a case of HDMI and Ethernet (how to configure it out). Thank you.

OS - Manjaro

UPD - hdmi of docking deck works with macbook (via thunderbolt port), Ethernet doesn't work.

Back in the day, when you had a computer with slow CPU, minimum RAM or small hard drive, people made "tiny" or frugal Linux distros
that gave you a full-ish Linux but left out bloated software like KDE that ran slowly.

Is there such a frugal or tiny Linux distro for the Pinephone or Pinephone Pro that strips away resource-hogging software that
slows things down unnecessarily?

Hi,
Does either the Pinephone or Pinephone Pro offer conventional OpenGL support, or are they limited to OpenGL ES?
And is there any hardware acceleration?
Thanks.

I broke stuff.
Booted from JumpDrive, saw what looked like two partitions (I guess they're actually separate emmc drives?) exposed (apart from the SD card), in frenzy formatted the first one to vfat, flashed system to the second partition with dd.
Pinephone doesn't start. I guess the first partition is a boot partition and I broke it. I can't find files that should go onto the first partition in order to fix it.
What should I do?

Just wanted to  add some information  for those that are looking to  delve into the  phone lapdock  realm.   As many have asked about  does it work for PinePhone Pro.  and had many mixed reports of  usb-c docks  work and not work and Nexdock and Uperfect lapdock owners asking does it work and seeing it mostly not work  etc...  

the following is the current state i have working....  noting that things are fluid with rolling distro's so  it may break for a while in the future.... but usually it only gets better....

I am using the DanctNix  arch plasma for pinephone pro  then updated to the latest... 
data from  information panel on plasma:

Operating System: Arch Linux ARM
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.94.0
Qt Version: 5.15.4
Kernel Version: 5.17.6-1-danctnix
OS-Type: 64
Processor: 4 × ARM Cortex-A53, 2 × ARM Cortex-A72
Memory: 3.8 GiB


for the lapdock i am using the Uperfect X lapdock  its practically the nexdock 360 minus one usbc port. the cables that came with the lapdock are from ugreen.

and the biggest thing is that cable orientation matters....  so once i  got the cables at each end in an orientation that worked. i added a simple dab of nail polish.  as to reduce future setup frustrations...

I also tried a Satechi brand short cable and it worked as well but only when the satechi logo is facing "out/towards the user"...

also i found that if things were not looking right after plugging in the cables  pressing the power button quickly to lock the phone, then entering back in via the login screen  usually fixed things....   for the most part i did not have to play with screen display settings just let plasma work it out..

like all things on the pinephone pro  its beta... 

I will update this post with images soon   also  this setup works even when the Pine Keyboard is attached to the PPP...   but power drain is still a thing so until charging works better   it appears  even if plugged int  still drains down ever slowly 10-20% per hour whilst using it.....

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Gday ... First post on forum ... I note that the Pinebook Pro 14 inch laptop is currently out of stock but will be available late June 2022. Is it possible to pre order?

Last time I was using my PP intensively was August of 2021. At that time, I wanted to get the PP to mostly be suspended, but every 10 min or so, wake up and check for notifications (emails, Matrix messages, Signals, etc.). I did manage to get it to do that (and so finally got a comfortable day's battery life out of it [EDIT 2022/05/25 while still getting notifications in a timely manner]), but you'll see that it is a labor intensive hack to implement. Here's my thread on that: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=14564

I've been waiting for a better-implementation of this functionality to come around. Has it? Does tow-boot do this now? I see good things, but the forum posts and docs don't specifically address this question.

So, what's the verdict? Does Mobian on the PP now periodically wake up to check for notifications? (It already did this for texts, via CRUST. I'm looking for general functionality; not just texts but emails and all other messages)

Thank you!

Hello everyone. I have a problem with making backup through dd.
Example:
Through PINE installer on windows i installed some image of Linux on SD card.
Then on linux machine through dd command (dd if=/dev/mmcblk0p conv=sync bs=64K | gzip ~/image.img.gz) i made image of this SD card.
Then i copied (gunzip -c ~/image.img.gz |dd of=/dev/mmcblk0o conv=sync bs=64K) image from my file to SD card.
And this doesn't work, system is not loading. 
Gparted cant read what kind of FS using partitions after making copy on SD card.
Has anyone encountered this?