I can't figure out how to boot from a microSD card. Looking online, most of the relevant information I can find says that the PinePhone Pro's default settings are to boot from the microSD card, and only boot from the eMMC is not microSD card is present.



I've copied a postmarketOS image on the microSD card, putting it on the phone (yes, I checked it's the right slot!), and then turned it on. It just boots to the factory KDE OS.



I've been told to hold the up button when the phone vibrates during boot, but the phone does not vibrate at any point when starting up. The top LED flashes white very briefly, moments later a mouse pointer appears briefly, then the speakers make a light "thud", and finally I see the lock screen of the OS on the MMC.



I tried holding the up key (and also with down key), but the results never vary. I grabbed the `-installer` image from here: https://images.postmarketos.org/bpo/v21....0406-1001/



Here's what the partitions looks like on the mSD:

I have had some success getting Delta Chat running on Pinephone as a messaging app. I used the kDeltachat native (Kirigami-based) client that is under development at https://git.sr.ht/~link2xt/kdeltachat While not fully finished, it has most features working, to make a usable application.

For those not familiar with Delta Chat, it uses email (and Autocrypt end-to-end encryption) with a user interface not dissimilar to Whatsapp, Signal etc. There is no 'central server'. See https://delta.chat for details.

I found account setup using the Android app running on another phone, then making a backup of the account and importing into kDeltachat on the PP is the best way to get started. The resulting library and header files were copied manually to the phone. Performance is quite reasonable even on chats with many hundreds of messages.

The Delta Chat core library (written in Rust) is best cross-compiled on a laptop to get a sane compilation time. On the PP itself, compilation takes multiple hours and needs a large swapfile configured on emmc or SDcard. The kDeltachat application can be compiled directly on the phone. I can post more details if anyone's interested.

I perceive a marked dropoff in activity regarding new threads and replies in this forum over last week or so.  I think that people are losing interest in trying to solve seemingly unsolvable problems that just go on and on and are losing interest.  Or, it could be that people have solved all the multitudinous issues and are happily using their phones.  I am interested to know which it is?

Personally, my PPP does not now make calls.  It did for a while.  If it can't make calls, I don't consider it a cell phone.  My problem is either with the sim/sd card holder or the modem hardware or software as far as I can diagnose.  I can take the sim card out of my PPP and put it in PP and that phone makes calls fine.  I tend to think the problem is with the sim/sd holder and not the modem.  I've changed OS/desktop software so much I don't think it is modem software causing the issue.  Modem hardware I have no information regarding diagnosis.  Also, I can't get a replacement part for the sim/sd card holder to examine that as a solution to not making calls.

Chime in with your experience.  Have you put PPP aside, with discouragement, until problems get sorted out and straight forward solutions are available or are you using it?

tom kosvic

I thought it might be nice for Pinetime users to share some pics of us rocking our Pinetimes "in the wild". I'm tired of seeing pics of them on people's desks!

Here's mine via Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CcIfZ4YBnH6/ 

If I run Pidgin from the command line, after a reboot, I get:

I wonder if somebody would come with a hack enabling to fit one of these color e-Ink displays into a PineNote?

The frame rate is obviously still crap to use them for general purpose displays (still no Youtube videos), but I am sure that there are people who would be interesting having some colors:

- In my case I am thinking about reading scientific articles which often includes graphs and plots which use color.
- Another use case for me: taking notes/making correction in a different colour.

(the above don't even require a high fidelity in color reproduction).

- And I am sure some people would be interested in reading comic book on their device.

Hi, for the sake of documentation and knowledge sharing: I found newer firmware that seems to be for the Broadcom WIFI adapter in the Pinebook Pro. Here are some details. I cannot say anything regarding authenticity or how well it works, just that it is working on my machine for the last few hours. I stumbled upon it in a search, happened to show up in a Raspberry Pi forum-post. (Apparently the Raspberry Pi 400 uses the same hardware revision.)

Firmware-info during firmware loading:
- BCM4345/9 (i.e. hardware revision 9)
- Nov 16 2020 16:27:10 version 7.45.96 (r745790) FWID 01-99758c86

Post: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic...7&t=291688

• brcmfmac43456-sdio.bin https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tLev-L-...I17Mu/view
  
• brcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blob https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J8Ddbsr...wQdBH/view
  

Hello,

I was just reading the news regarding tow-boot; https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php...tall-linux

Once there's a new tow-boot release, do we need to reflash tow-boot and reflash mobian again every time?

Once I install tow-boot, can I reflash the mobian image with installer from april 3th? Or should we wait for new images?

It has been around 3 or 4 days after the last updates of phosh and other packages that my pine phone is unstable on the suspend action. Am I alone on that or anybody else with the same issues?

Is the dock for Pinephone compatible with the Pinephone pro?
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-usb-c-docking-bar/

It's really important that its possible to connect it to a monitor and keyboard. I guess there shouldn't be a problem but haven't seen it documented and the pro doesn't come with any accessories so just wanted to make sure.