I have an Inland Cellular SIM card. Inland is NOT an MVNO and Inland owns the only towers and provides the only cellular service in my part of rural Idaho, US. I really wanted PinePhone to work and I'm very disappointed. (I will give up mobile phones entirely rather than use a spy phone, even though the telecom networks still spy on those of us using PinePhones.)

I hope someone here has a few ideas or suggestions that will help me.

My PinePhone receives an Inland 4G signal and Internet data works, but voice and SMS text are completely non-functional (inbound and outbound). The Inland tech was very helpful and even loaned a Samsung phone to me that, of course, works reliably on their network. I use the loaner phone to check SIM settings, signal strength, and functionality. (I appreciate the "hometown" feel and personal support of this carrier, compared to my previous dealings with Verizon, AT&T and a couple of their MVNOs. The tech was very interested in my PinePhone too!

I also tried my old, no longer subscribed Verizon SIM card some miles away where Verizon towers are visible. It too produced a good 4G signal bar indication, but I have no idea whether or not Verizon would work because the subscription has expired. Guess I could have tried calling 911!

The Inland tech told me that Inland does not support VoLTE but they are working on it. The following Inland frequency and band specs are posted at https://www.signalbooster.com/pages/what-are-the-cellular-frequencies-of-cell-phone-carriers-in-usa-canada.

Inland Cellular

3G Frequencies / Wavelengths
3G : 835 - 845 MHz, Block B Band 2 (CDMA2000). 880 - 890 MHz, Block B Band 2 (CDMA2000).

4G, LTE, 5G frequencies / Wavelengths
4G : 800 MHz ESMR, Band 26 (LTE700). 1900 MHz PCS, Band 25 (LTE700). 2.5 GHz BRS/ EBS, Band 41 (TD-LTE700/ LTE Advanced).


The following PinePhone specs are summarized in the wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone#Specifications

Communication: G25-G

LTE: B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B7, B8, B12, B13, B18, B19, B20, B25, B26, B28, B38, B39, B40, B41 WCDMA: B1, B2, B4, B5, B6, B8, B19 GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 (MHz)

Though I'm a retired electrical and computer engineer, I find cellular freq / band and modulation specs to be baffling. Are these Inland and PinePhone specs compatible? What is the difference between CDMA and WCDMA?

I tried Manjaro Phosh (I updated to Beta2 level using pacman) and I also tried UBports Ubuntu Touch (Lomiri) and Mobian (Phosh) from the p-boot build and multi bootloader. Actually, I tried all the OS images on the p-boot SD but only Ubuntu and Mobian worked to check or set the APN and establish a connection. They worked far better than Manjora Beta2, in fact.

Manjaro Beta2, updated from OEM and booted from eMMC, was barely usable to set the APN and connect to the Inland network, because the Manjaro Beta2 cellular settings are unstable. I never figured out how I sometimes managed to get a connection (accompanied by Internet data) and Manjaro always required a lot of setting, resetting, and turning the modem off and on. Sadly, the effort was always lost at each reboot.

But these OS configuration utility issue are subjects for other bug reports and p-boot Mobian and Ubuntu seem reliable enough to test any suggestions forum members might prescribe!

My next step will probably be to download the factory test image and boot it from an SD card. Factory-loaded Manjaro build with testing utility. Maybe the test utilities will detect something wrong with my hardware.

Although I was mostly a hardware and signal integrity engineer before I retired, I did a lot of low level programming (boot ROMS, device drivers, diagnostics) during my career and a good deal of it was for *NIX operating systems. I'd very much like to solve this partial, but critical, Inland non-functionality (Internet data IS working). Hopefully I'll then find the spare time to contribute to this project as a developer. (I'm actually busier than ever in retirement on this old rural Idaho homestead!)

Thanks so much for reading and thanks for any help that you may be able to provide to me!

-Cal

It almost seems that starting just after I received my PineBook Pro in the second quarter of 2020, it has be plagued with log-in and password problems.  At present, I am trying to reinstall the current version of the Manjaro operating system on the laptop.  It will boot and get to the login screen, then the first problem arrives: the USERNAME is correct, but the PASSWORD always seems to fail.  Earlier, can't remember exactly when, there were some instructions on how to find and/or reset the initial passwords that are set during the first boot process.  I remember seeing, and using, those instructions once.  But right now, I can't remember the key combinations required to interrupt the boot process and get badk into the install process.  Any help would be welcome.
Thank you.
James Good

Hi I have one of the original UBPorts edition phones. Today I received a new main board (the 3gb version) . However whatever I do I can't get anything other than jumpdrive to boot on it. I've tried the latest builds of Manjaro and UBPorts. I've read that there needs to be a patch applied before some OSes will boot with the 3gb ram version but given Manjaro is the OS that comes with the 3gb edition pinephone and the UBports edition should have the patch in the latest update im not sure where I'm going wrong?

The eMMC shows up on my desktop when jump drive is running and after I've flashed the image to the eMMC I can see the partitions on the eMMC but its just not booting. No lights nothing. Any help would be appreciated.

Well done! I like it. It's not the daily driver - yet; but it has tremendous upside.

How to navigate around putty an applications in general when they dont present the keyboard with tab, esc, alt, etc?

Meanwhile, the usb dock worked with a keyboard that had a wireless mouse (that's one port and cisco usb console cable was in the other port) The dock's hdmi to a TV also worked.  More to come.

How to get Linux PC <==> Manjaro Pine when attached.  For example to load music into Lolly Pop?
Would life be better with a Manjaro VM?

It came with a red blah blah blah cable... can I use my iPhone wall plug to charge my pine?

Hey, I've just noticed a crack in the middle-right of my Pinephone's case from repeatedly removing and replacing it. Might be good to redesign it in such a way that there isn't too much stress on the right side of the case when you do that.
It's no biggie tho, now I get to try my hand at printing my own.

I don't think these two are related but this is how I discovered the locale issue. I tried regenerating locale with "locale-gen" but no dice, could be improperly configured locales when builiding glibc (I remember having a similar issue on my Gentoo install a few years ago). I have no idea what I could do to try and fix the Geary segfault.

When booting with a SIM card, the sim unlock screen pops up on top of the main unlock screen, but with no keyboard firing up.

One needs to cancel the sim unlock, "main-unlock" the device by entering password, and then, tap on the top bar to open the sim-unlock screen again. Which is quite annoying.

Does anyone experience the same, and/or has figured a way to get the keyboard functionning directly on boot with a SIM card inserted ?

I just ordered today.

Just wondering until I get my pine phone few weeks to a few months?

thanks you ^^

Hello everyone,

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, I have gotten on my PinePhone Manjaro's "Software" application a notification that an OS update is available.

I did not download it yet, after reading some comments here and there that the update is fragile and even bricks the phone.

Should I do the update?

Additionally, a suggestion (I hope somebody from the Manjaro-arm team is reading here):

It would be super useful, if when releasing an OS update, a relatively detailed description will be added.

I mean, "performance and security improvements" is good to be used at the first line of the description, but it does not contain enough info for an OS update IMHO.
 
Well - sure, it is impossible and unnecessary to mention every single file or lib that is being updates / replaced / removed etc.. but I'd say it is quite important to also include important details such as:

1. if the kernel is being updated (and to which version exactly)
2. if any core library is being updated (incl. versions etc.. as well) 
3. if any important feature of the phone is being updated (e.g. "Screen lock functionality improved", or "xxx was replaced by yyy" etc..)

My 2 cents 

And once again, a big thank you to the manjaro-arm team, for working relentlessly on improving Manjaro for the PinePhone, I feel that it has huge potential and I that we are not too far away from having a phone that has an almost acceptable stability to be used as a daily driver.

* I would like to mention, that even though I do it anonymously (and wish to keep it that way) - those of you who can, please donate to the Manjaro-arm team, you can donate as low as $1 / €1. those guys are working on this project using their own free time, the least we can do is support the costs of the basic test equipment, hosting, etc..
I have used this link: https://opencollective.com/manjaro-arm/donate  (I am in Europe)

Hoping there is someone that can shed some light on these connectors for the cameras. I popped off the hinge (on a braveheart edition) to remove the ribbon connector, but I'm having problems getting it to clamp back down on the new main board revision.

In the video with Martign Braam installing a new board, he conveniently has the cameras preinstalled yet this is the part that I'm having the only problems with, and of course that is the part the factory did for him (probably because it's a pain).

They appear to be just hinged and not the ones you have to flip then slide it in to lock but I'm putting a lot of force and it has started to flake off some of the plastic so I'm afraid of going further.

Video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GbMoZ_zuZs