One of the things that people seem to like about the Librem 5 is the kill switches.

However, it seems like the Librem 5 will not be delivered until 2022 at the earliest.

If the next version of the PinePhone came out with kill switches for the modem and WiFi I suspect that it would generate a lot of sales for the PinePhone.

Of course, a faster processor and more RAM would be interesting as well, but the Kill Switches might be the Killer feature!

A computer repair shop tells me my PBP's mainboard needs replacing. Since they cost $99 + P&P on the official store, and they're currently out of stock anyway, I'm planning to get a new machine instead.

The problem I brought the machine in with was that, after a minute or so of a whining/buzzing noise one evening, all inputs - keyboard, mouse and USB - stopped working simultaneously. The machine could power on and off, and load the login screen, but I couldn't interact with it.

On opening it up, the repair guy spotted an area of discolouration, possibly some melted plastic, and a blob of solder on a chip, which he interpreted as signs of a component having blown. I'd been charging the machine from a power supply rated with three ratings, of which one was correct (5v, 3a) and the other two were not; and he guessed that the machine had sometimes been switching to off-spec ratings, as its power usage went up and down, and that over time this had caused damage and eventually failure somewhere in the motherboard.

If the guess is right, then I guess this is a caution not to use power supplies with multiple ratings.

Hello,

I'm feeling happy, excited, and a bit privileged to announce the availability of the new vendor-provided touchpad firmware that fixes the issues we've all been experiencing with the Pinebook Pro touchpad.  One of the biggest issues was the initial lag upon finger movement, about which you can read more in this forum thread; it has been confirmed multiple times to be a touchpad issue and not a Linux issue.

Based on the testing already performed by a few community members, myself included, this firmware update makes the touchpad very responsive and there are no traces of the dreaded initial delay.  I've also performed tests using the evtest utility, to eliminate any subjectivity, and the measured latency stays around or below 10 ms...  The numbers don't lie.   You can read more about the evtest results with the old firmware in the above-linked forum thread.

I've prepared an updated version of the keyboard and touchpad firmware update utility, which is available on GitHub.  Beside the updated touchpad firmware, my fork of the firmware updater brings other improvements, including improved feedback/status messages, improved handling of command-line arguments, added ability to cancel each update step, and improved documentation.

To update the firmware, just follow the instructions that are available on the GitHub page.  If you're a Manjaro ARM user, an updated package containing the new firmware updater utility will be available shortly (package pinebook-pro-keyboard-updater, version 0.0.3-1).  However, please note that updating the firmware carries a small risk of permanently disabling the trackpad and keyboard, effectively bricking them. Proceed at your own risk.

We already know that some Pinebook Pros came with the "lite" version of the keyboard controller IC, SH61F83, which is limited to a total of eight writes, according to the datasheet.  However, Pine64 has already contacted the keyboard manufacturer and they've assured Pine64 that SH61F83 is actually the same IC as the "full-fat" version, SH68F83, and that it supports many write cycles.  However, if your Pinebook Pro came with a SH61F83, I'd recommed that you wait until I verify those claims; my first-batch ISO Pinebook Pro came with the "lite" IC and I'll test it out by performing about 50 to 100 write cycles.

In addition to the updated firmware updater utility, I'm working on getting the firmware update available through fwupd, which is the industry standard for distributing firmware updates in Linux.  In the end, updating the keyboard and touchpad firmware through fwupd will be as easy as running a few commands, as described here, all that with no shutting down and powering up of your Pinebook Pro!  The fwupd process will leverage the ability to restart the keyboard controller IC by suspending the Pinebook Pro into the s2idle state and resuming it automatically a few seconds later.  Unfortunately, s2idle suspend currently doesn't work on the Pinebook Pro, at least not if an NVMe SSD is installed, so the suspend issue needs to be resolved first.

If you decide not to wait for fwupd to become available and instead you take the "old" way to update the touchpad firmware, please cast your vote in the posted poll, so we end up with some kind of a summary feedback.  Also, please feel free to ask questions or provide your detailed feedback.  Of course, I'll provide further updates as replies to this thread.

I modified the case of my pinebook pro to make the speakers fire upwards. 

Here's a video I made about the process: 



https://youtu.be/9kk2QpwDnR4

I put more details in the description of the video.

LMK if you have any questions or thoughts. 

Thanks to Pine64 for making a hack-able product with affordable replacement parts!

This product seems great. Also the UI of the OS looks very good.
Although the specs on the product page are wrong. It's actually 2 x A75 plus 6 x A55.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq6TE2nZz3M

I am using Mobian so I get to see daily progress of the OS side with every update.
I also see a few people on the forums writing apps for the pinephone but they seem to be somewhat orphaned and the path to at least the Mobian repos is a very conservative one(that is good for a stable OS).
I feel like there is room for a unified community contrib or testing repo that has an autobuilder similar to what we had with Nokia Maemo community.
With a few tweaks to the autobuilder most pine distros could have packages built with deps and it would just be a matter of adding it to the deb or rpm sources.
I feel like this would get more exposure for new devs and make it easier for the stable OS devs to browse for vetted apps to fill out their repositories.
Since this proposed hub would be all pinephone the apps could be built for the targeted hardware.
As an example https://gitlab.com/lgtrombetta/pinephone-compass/ a great pinephone specific compass app where instead of upgrading form repo we have to hand build and hand uninstall to upgrade, this should be on a contrib or joint testing repo.
Maemo had a good program where they were throwing out all kinds of prizes for Maemo app development, but Nokia was a huge wealthy company Pine64 is not, I think even special forum flair, maybe front of the line opportunities for new hardware, and recognition as well as having the app on the unified repo would be enough to get more momentum behind pinephone specific app development where users can easily access these apps.
A desktop sized website similar to F-droid with quick install QR codes could also make browsing available software easier for both Pine owners and people curious about the project.

Is anyone using Thunderbird on Mobian?
I'd like to copy across my profile from a PC and wondering whether it might work.
Also wondering where to put the profile under Linux.
Tnx

I was browsing hackaday and came across this:
https://hackaday.io/project/18033-raspbe...zero-prism

I've been wanting a pair of smart glasses since I saw Google glass, and went on to look at some of the DIY prototypes to see how feasible it would be to make a basic one myself. Based on the DIY versions I've seen, it's not difficult to produce something that will have some basic functionality. Additionally, the hackaday project linked above has done the best job making it compact.

Unlike the hackaday project, I'm not proposing any HDMI input or connecting it to a single board computer. Rather, I'm thinking of a product more along the lines of a pinetime - connecting to your smartphone or computer and displaying notifications, turn by turn directions, the time, weather, etc. It would be a simple, small device that clips onto the arm of a pair of glasses, with a small prism extending in-front of one of the user's eyes.  The actual device is pretty simple, and should actually be pretty straightforward to manufacture. It would comprise of a small (< 0.5") screen, a lens, a prism, a microcontroller and a battery. I personally would be against including a camera.

Now the project linked above used a screen similar to this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/392497361566

That would be awesome, but it would need a beefier microcontroller, and would making programming more difficult, and increase the price by quite a lot.

The best "simple" screen I've been able to find is this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/293291361583

Cheap, small but no frills. It would be fine for basic notifications and display though.

That got me thinking, at the end of the day the device is very similar to the pinetime. Using the same microcontroller as the pinetime would greatly simplify development, as the smartphone/computer apps already exist, the firmware from the pinetime could be ported over, and that would bring along with it a bootloader, OTA support, mature bluetooth support, app framework, etc.

This would be a unique device, with no similar devices to compete with. A low end version would not be difficult to produce, and the great strides made with the pinetime would allow this project to hit the ground running.

Ok so I just setup my pinephone and i setup the pin code  (keep in mind I do remember it) so when it finished setting up it told me to login with my pin ofc so I did but it says that it's incorrect even though I put it in right and I remember it. I did this multiple times and nothing worked. How do I fix this ?

I removed KDE-Plasma on my  Pinebook Pro and replaced it with Suckless DWM tiling window manager.

I realized that without Plasma I don't have an interface for connecting to bluetooth, and in alsamixer I was unable to activate the speakers. I need help getting audio working on my pinebook with Manjaro ARM on DWM.