Hello,

I like the open projects. I like the idea to have a community around some hardware like those sold by Pine64. But when there is some troubles with the hardware, it's a big problem when there is no support.

I take the case of my PinePhone, “Community Edition: Manjaro with Convergence Package" received in November.

Some screens show a defect that progress in few months : the capacitive layer and LCD screen are no more fully bonded. The dedicated thread is : https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=13636 / 'Screen dying already?'.

The LCD screen works perfectly and has no defect. At this point, I have a vertical line of the capacitive layer that doesn't respond.

I opened a first ticket in July. A new ticket in August because there is no reply from the first. No reply at this moment.


07-10-21 : Ticket #10442 opened - (July)
I explain the problem, give the link on the thread where the picture from April to July show the degradation.
07-10-21 : Reply from the support.
A picture is asked, even if the picture is present in the thread given in the ticket : ticket not read !
07-10-21 : I send the picture.
07-12-21 : Reply from the support :

Quote:From your picture provide, you may need to replace the LCD panel. Unfortunately, as per your order#151001 warranty is expired. 
– All single board and accessories sold on the Pine Microsystems Inc. (PINE64) store are entitled to a 30 days Limited Warranty against defects in materials and workmanship.
Please refer to https://store.pine64.org/?page_id=443

However, you may contact sales at sales@pine64.org to check whether you may place order for the replacement LCD panel.

Thank you.

Regards,

support team #4...

Quote:Dear [...],

Product issue we will let support team to communicate with you.
Thank you!

Regards,


Pine64 team

• my LCD works perfectly;
  
• the capacitve layer has a vertical line unusable;
  
• the delamination of the screen affect some other PinePhones.
  
• I can't unlock my encrypted PinePhone;
  
• there is no reply from 'support', 'sales' and 'info'.
  

Hi,

I have both a PineTime and a PinePhone.  I have them paired and am using Amazfish for the integration between the two.  A couple of questions that I could really use some help with please.  I'm not finding much online or my Google-fu is failing me so any help would be appreciated:

• Amazfish doesn't really seem to do anything on the PinePhone (I'm running the KDE OS that shipped with the phone).  It doesn't seem to download step counts, etc.  Also, the three dot menu on the phone doesn't bring up anything useful.  Have I missed a dependency for this app or is there another application that folks would recommend - I really want to run it natively on the PinePhone not my IOS or Android phones.  Thanks!
  
• I'd like to update to version 1.3 of Infinitime on the watch.  Could someone please point me to a tutorial with a step by step set of instructions on how I can do that from my PinePhone via Amazfish? If the answer is "you can't get there from here" <grin>, that's cool.  I'm willing to unpair it and re-pair it with my Pinebook Pro (I need to update the firmware for the trackpad anyhow) to get this done.
  

First of all thank you for announcing the PineNote! Really great to see that!

I was wondering what PDF Reader you plan to use for the PineNote. Since you mentioned that you will talk to the KDE people regarding software, how about using Okular? I think it would be great choice.

All the best,
Sirius

Since the question has been in the announcement I'll open the thread about it.

The idea mentioned putting the PineNote into or connecting it to a dedicated keyboard/case solution would immediately end up on my as the device to take on the go. I do not like videos nor do I have much time to spend with games so I'd be really happy with that solution.

Only one thing would be missing for me: an internal wireless modem to connect to mobile networks.

The Pinephone already is a good companion on the road and I love using it with keyboard an mouse connected. But that's only because I can just have network either way: wifi or mobile.

Please consider if there's space inside the case to make it into a PineNote-which-can-be-used-like-a-Pinephone . For me it'd be fine to have the same modem like in the Pinephone with all the exciting development around its firmware. Though I wouldn't say 'no' to a 5g solution for a higher price - maybe as a door opener for the future Pinephone hardware also ;-).

Hello, 

After using the KDE manjaro distribution for a bit I decided to switch to something more lightweight.  i went for the xfce manjaro.

I followed the instructions on this.
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10403 

green booting lights are now amber and after a short moment the uboot menu appears.  This was not happening before on the original factory manjaro install.  Who else has this happened to?

Now instead of booting straight into the operating system it goes to a uboot menu that looks like this 

First off, I want to clarify that I'm talking about battery lifespan as in how long the battery keeps holding a charge before it wears out and becomes unusable, not how long the device can run between recharges. For the purposes of this post, I'll refer to the former thing as "battery lifespan" and the latter thing as "runtime".

There's a problem with lithium-ion batteries nowadays, and it's that we've all been lied to about how long they last. They don't actually inherently wear out after only one or two years of service - they just do that when they've been pushed beyond their reasonable limits for charge capacity to squeeze every last possible second of runtime out of the thinnest possible battery. Remember when they used to say that laptop batteries lasted around ten years? Well, they've only grown better since then, not worse; we only get such dramatically worse cell lifespans nowadays because most consumer electronics vendors like advertising big numbers for runtime on a charge and making the thinnest devices they can manage (and they also like selling you a new phone every year). If we only charged our batteries to 80% of their rated capacity and limited discharge to 20% of their minimum charge level, they'd last several times longer, but naturally, the state of hardware and software is not designed to make it easy to do this. While turning off your phone before it reaches 20% may be simple enough, nobody likes babysitting a charging phone to catch it when it passes 80% and take it off the charger - you really need a way to make it cut itself off before then.

The Pinephone does pretty well here, I understand. Its fancy PMIC does let you program in your own charge parameters, and the Linux sysfs interface makes this easy to do from userspace. But it's not the Pinephone that I'm worried about now; it's the Pinebook Pro (and maybe the regular Pinebook; I haven't inspected it as closely).

The Pinebook Pro has a very large, expensive battery in it, and plenty of runtime to spare, which is why I find it very disappointing that it has a hard-wired charge controller that sets the charger cut-off voltage with a pair of resistors - to, if I recall the schematics correctly, around 4.35 volts, which is eye-wateringly high (in my book, 4.1 volts would be much more appropriate, maybe 4.2 at most). Vendors may claim that modern cells are "designed for" higher float voltages, but they're also "designed for" much shorter lifespans than they used to be. The bottom line is that they just do last longer if you treat them better, which is why I think Pine64's designers should really consider picking more conservative charging parameters for these things.

Setting charge thresholds in immutable hardware, as was done with the Pinebook Pro, isn't unacceptable (although a smart PMIC with user-settable values is definitely better), but I think we deserve to have those parameters set to values which prioritize a bit more longevity over out-of-the-box capacity. I mean, it's not Pine64's goal to sell everyone a new Pinebook Pro battery every other year, right? With the way the supply situation tends to be, I would think this idea should practically strike fear into the hearts of a lot of us. I've tried to be careful with my unit's battery, but it's already showing its age only a couple of years later, and holds noticeably less charge than it used to. It doesn't have to be like this. If I had a way to limit charging to 80% of the design capacity, I'd still get 8 hours of runtime on a charge, but would get potentially twice or three times the battery lifespan compared to now. Doesn't that sound like a worthy tradeoff?

If you think I sound like some kind of conspiracy theorist, remember that plenty of enterprise-grade laptops offer battery charge parameter adjustment in their firmware for specifically this reason. The Toughbook I'm writing this post on has a "high-temperature environment" option that limits charging to 80% of baseline capacity - ostensibly to keep the battery from wearing out faster in hot climates, but I have it turned on all the time to keep it from wearing out too fast in general. The Dell XPS series has a way to set thresholds to whatever you want them to be in the setup utility, and Thinkpads let you configure them directly from the OS with SMAPI and such.

My two overall points here are these:
1. I want to see future Pine64 devices prioritize the inclusion of some sort of programmable PMIC/battery controller whose charge profile can be configured. In addition, I think that these chips should be given relatively conservative default charge parameters, so that the users who need to change them are the users who want more runtime at the expense of longevity, and not the users who want their devices to last.
2. I think that it would be worthwhile to make a small revision to current Pine64 devices, namely the Pinebook Pro, to reduce maximum charge voltage in future production models. I won't claim to be experienced here, but surely the retooling costs associated with changing two resistor values are not insurmountably large?

I know that Pine64 devices are only cursory modifications to reference designs - and as such, I do not believe that there was any actual intent to limit the lifespans of our devices here, only a lack of effort to prolong them - but I do think that this would be a very worthwhile and important tweak to make. Batteries are the primary limiting factor on electronic device lifespans in the modern world, and they are severely hampered in devices on the consumer market by factors that quickly amount to nothing more than greed. We don't need to be limited by this here; Pine64 is not a billion-dollar profit-focused corporation and does not need to follow all the same industry trends in the interest of being competitive. Let's do our own thing.

Will the PineNote have an audio volume control button?

That would be good for page turns when holding both the PineNote and the pen would not be convenient (general reading).

Hi I've just received a PinePower 120w PSU which so far seems to be a great little power supply. One question though the toggle switch on the rear doesn't seem to do anything on my unit. Regardless of the switch position the display can be turn on and off and I can charge my phone on the wireless charger. Is the switch supposed to turn the whole unit off or am I missing something??

I don't mind the default one with Phosh but I feel like it isn't super mobile friendly with the really small buttons and whatnot. Anyone know of a better calendar app?

https://youtu.be/5vYlEUN-8cg