Hi,

Apologies if this is a stupid question, or if it's already been answered before...
I've got an OS installed on my SD card and the SD card is inside the Pinephone. So, when starting the phone, I have no choice but to boot from SD?
Is there any way I can then flash the SD card with a different OS from the Pinephone itself?

Thanks

Well, I already managed to drop my Pinephone about 2 feet onto a plastic chair mat and the lower left part of the screen cracked. (The soft case either didn't protect it or prevented worse damage, hard to say which.) It actually is not that bad as the crack is mostly in the blacked out part of the bottom, but it will probably spread and seeing as how replacement LCD panels are available for only $30 I figure it should be replaced. I searched for a guide but didn't find one. How tough a job is this? (I'm pretty comfortable taking various types of equipment apart and putting them back together.)

Edit: After kicking myself for dropping the thing I've taken a closer look. Fortunately although one leg of the crack spread across the screen diagonally it does not affect the image or touch. Really if you were not looking for the crack you'd barely notice it. Still, I was about to buy some accessories anyway so I added a replacement screen to my cart and ordered it. I've checked that I have a precision screwdriver small enough for the tiny screws and am set there.

Would love to hear from anyone who has replaced their screen as to the procedure. Searching all I've found are some references saying it's not difficult. I see there are 11 screws around the perimeter of the case, I assume those all have to come out. There are also 3 screws down the center, do those get removed also? What do I need to look out for when taking this all apart?

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 ^^