Hello All,

First, feel free to slap me if there is an "open issues" sticky, or protocol to posting I was in too much rush to read.

Hopefully not the only new Pinephone 64 recipient in the US around the March/April 2022 time, and a new user, we all should have the same hardware/software. THus al have same/similar issue.

Seeking the non-tech folks like me clear-cut known solutions. The web is full of endless miles of "have you tried this" and "go edit this file" not helping much for non-tech folks and not sure of the date of those solutions. Hope someone can help the new non-tech folks like me. (lets move past the "if your non-tech why did you by a Pinephone, see my username LOL!)

Here is my current list of issues:


Issues -

Password Setup (SOLVED) - There is a hidden pin confirmation box off screen you cannot see, need to tab to it with an external keyboard and enter to move on (keyboard adapter need if you do not have one).

SIM Card (SOLVED) - After no luck with the NET10/Trackphone SIM, found that at least in the US Northeast the Simple Mobile SIM kit from Walmart ($10 USD) worked pretty much turn key (well almost).

Mobile Data - Mobile Data not working sometimes. Simple Mobile's text to " Send APN to 611611 to set up you mobile data" of course does not work (or did it??). KDE Plasma's menu has no seen option to turn it on in settings. It does show under settings and access points, Internet and APN as "wap.tracfone" (this is correct from what I read for Simple Mobile), but this for when wi-fi (previously set up wi-fi on phone start up). Somehow the phone or the text APN to 611611 did this itself while connected to wifi??? But no visible mobile data APN settings. Just no turning wi-fi off I have mobile data, I always show all bars, its a mystery why. Sometimes I get no mobile modem messages. Not sure what is going on here, seems for the first day a bit "unstable??"

Screen Brightness going to Dim when off charge Cable - When unplugging the cable the screen immediately goes to max dim unless you press the screen. All settings tried will not fix it. (get the .5 in the root folder thing again not a proper solution for the average person and this solution is all over the map!).  Being this is an issue that would impact many, when will this be fixed in an update????

Battery not Charging to 100% - After a night long charge of the new phone battery only hits about 83%.  Also noticed batter charge state bounced around at times. What is the non-techy solution here and when will it be fixed in a software update?

Updates Not Updating? - In Discover going to Update it shows updates available (604 of them). And if I click it there is a LONG! list.  Yet is shows 0 B.  I've been in this endless loop of telling it to do the updates, it telling me to reboot my phone, yet still the same update waiting.

Email - Well for some reason Protonmail cannot get a Linux App. And I do not want to pay and do POP3 etc etc.  So I found Tutanota in Discover, cool!  Install it and its out of date, cannot update, and the screen keyboard is not working.  Would like a nice app for email that can notify me when I have email.  Went to Tutanota website, they have  a Linux app you download, have no idea how to install this nor control it.  Would like to use Discover to "control apps" to know what is installed, to be able to easily (noob here) unistall, and control things.  Having to manage an endless mile of files from terminal not what Im after and IMO we are at the point we should not have to. Question - how can we get Tutanota or who can get Tutanota to update the app in Discover?? Not sure how that works or who manages Discover.

Thanks, forgive my ignorance folks. But 1. we all want this stuff to be successful. 2. To do that, everyday folks need easy solid answers. 3. I am sure I represent more than just me here.  I hate to think there are folks that bought a Pinephone, tried, looked for answers, could not find them because there were not quick and easy to locate, and were lost in too much data and just gave up.  I tossed MS and APL out the window (pun) because I was sick of them!  That M1 was a HUGE disapointment and not with a Dell Micro PC and Ubuntu I am super happy!! Wanting to offload this IOs POS phone ASAP!

thanks!
Scrwbigtek

For a short time after installing Biktorgj's firmware I was able to sometimes make and receive calls though audio was poor and they often terminated.
However after some upgrades (one of which included modemmanager) that ended.  The modemmanager log now produces

  <info>  [modem1] simple connect state (8/8): all done
  <info>  [modem1] 3GPP registration state changed (home -> searching)
  <warn>  [modem1] couldn't load operator code: Current operator MCC/MNC is still unknown 
  <warn>  [modem1] couldn't load operator name: Current operator id is still unknown
  <info>  [modem1] state changed (connected -> disconnecting)
  <info>  [modem1] state changed (disconnecting -> searching)

and then loops forever with

  <info>  [modem1] 3GPP registration state changed (searching -> idle)
  <info>  [modem1] state changed (searching -> enabled)
  <info>  [modem1] simple connect started...
  <info>  [modem1] simple connect state (4/8): wait to get fully enabled
  <info>  [modem1] simple connect state (5/8): register
  <info>  [modem1] 3GPP registration state changed (idle -> searching)
  <info>  [modem1] state changed (enabled -> searching)

With frequent interjections of

  <warn>  [modem1] couldn't load operator code: Current operator MCC/MNC is still unknown
  <warn>  [modem1] couldn't load operator name: Current operator id is still unknown

Evidently this problem is unique to my Pinephone.  I guess it's going to have to become a PDA.
Perhaps someday an upgrade will happen to fix it.

Welcome to the PINE64 community and to the PinePhone Pro section! The following list is a selection of helpful links and starting points:


Documentation

The documentation of the PinePhone Pro can be found under https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro, including tutorials what to do in case of common issues (phone not booting, battery being drained) and how to flash the microSD card or eMMC.


Software releases

Software releases for the PinePhone Pro can be found in the wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_P...e_Releases

Note: Releases for the regular PinePhone are not compatible with the PinePhone Pro!


Contributions

For ideas about how to contribute to community projects please see https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/How_to_Contribute.


Bug Reporting

For a list of where to report bugs please have a look at: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Where_to_Re...ePhone_Pro


Support

Any issues or open question? Join us at the bridged community channel and ask us, the friendly community is happy to help!

- Discord: channel #pinephone under https://discord.gg/pine64
- IRC: #pinephone on irc.pine64.org. Note: please consider Matrix, Discord or Telegram due to the volatile nature of IRC
- Matrix: https://app.element.io/#/room/#pinephone:matrix.org
- Telegram: https://t.me/pinephone

Hi Members,

I landed finally (and let me add "late") to a brand new Pine A64+ (I know, discontinued).
I'm in trouble installing a GUI Linux OS.
I come from Windows experience, so I need to "flash" an SD card with a pretty operating OS image, doesn't matter which one, I need a GUI one to install Python (it should be natively available), MySql (or MariaDB).
It seems no OS images work at all. Only Arch Linux seems to be operative but in such a way it breaks.
Could someone help me, please?
Help

Welcome to the PINE64 community and to the PinePhone Pro Accessories section! The following list is a selection of helpful links and starting points:


Documentation

The documentation and common questions and issues with the PinePhone (Pro) Accessories can be found under:

• PinePhone (Pro) Add-ons
  
• PinePhone (Pro) Keyboard
  

Welcome to the PINE64 community and to the PinePhone Pro section! The following list is a selection of helpful links and starting points:


Documentation

The documentation of the PinePhone Pro can be found under https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro, including tutorials what to do in case of common issues (phone not booting, battery being drained) and how to flash the microSD card or eMMC.


Software releases

Software releases for the PinePhone Pro can be found in the wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_P...e_Releases

Note: Releases for the regular PinePhone are not compatible with the PinePhone Pro!


Contributions

For ideas about how to contribute to community projects please see https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/How_to_Contribute.


Bug Reporting

For a list of where to report bugs please have a look at: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Where_to_Re...ePhone_Pro


Support

Any issues or open question? Join us at the bridged community channel and ask us, the friendly community is happy to help!

- Discord: channel #pinephone under https://discord.gg/pine64
- IRC: #pinephone on irc.pine64.org. Note: please consider Matrix, Discord or Telegram due to the volatile nature of IRC
- Matrix: https://app.element.io/#/room/#pinephone:matrix.org
- Telegram: https://t.me/pinephone

Greetings
Firstly I should explain I have decades of experience building, modding and repairing x86, but almost none with non-x86 so though I've read quite a bit, I have yet to see deep fundamentals that help me troubleshoot my problem.

Problem - Upon PSU Power On the RockPro's green LED and (a bit oddly) both ethernet LEDs light up with no ethernet cable connected.  The RockPro power switch does zero, no matter what is connected or disconnected down to power cable.  The White LED never lights and the CPU Fan never spins.

Possible issues - I'm using a gutted CoolGear dual 3.5" eSATA drive bay enclsurtewhich apparently has a PSU capable of 40-50 watts, so well above the 3A @ 12V required.  Not only did I check docs for proper polarity (+ on center, - on barrel, right?) but no LEDs should light up if polarity is a problem.

I bought the board, hs/fan,  and PCIe > SATA (not yet mounted) from respectech on ebay.  The company seems fine but have others had any difficulties with DOA replacement?

Am I correct in assuming that the board should at least attempt to power up with nothing connected but power? What can I research and check?

I'm a rank newb at SOC/SBC so any help is greatly appreciated.  I'm completely committed to exploring Pine 64 RockPro64

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