My PinePhone arrived today, it's a UBPorts edition.

While I had to wait quite a while to resolve an issue with customs, I'm glad to say it's finally arrived. I've been playing with it this morning. Setup was a breeze and the OS seems stable so far! I can say it was worth the wait, I'm eagerly anticipating to see where this project goes.

Three cheers to the team for all their effort to make this happen. It's no small achievement, given the turmoil that none of us could foresee.

If I can find the time and opportunities, I hope to offer some testing or even features to one of these OSes. I have some development knowledge, and now something in front of me that would directly benefit from the effort.

For its first task, I'm going to find myself a USB-C host adapter and see if I can connect a keyboard and use it as a ssh terminal! Pocket VIM was all I really wanted.

Yesterday I noticed that my micro SD card slot does not hold the micro SD card inside. When I insert the card, it does not stay inside and it is ejected outside. Seems like some holding mechanism is broken. What to do now? I do not need SD card now, but what if I wanted to boot another OS?

Hi,

I dont know if someone will found that usefull, but you can at least emulate the hardware to run for example manjaro ARM on serial console.
Don't expect to have graphics or sound. At least not for now because this is not implemented in qemu, and I suppose it would require too much work to code it.

This can be helpfull if you want to play with kernel code without messing up with your pinephone.

So if you want to do that, here is my qemu repo: https://github.com/abdel-unxp/qemu (work in progress. not yet in official qemu).
Instructions :
https://unxp.fr/post/2020/pinephone_on_qemu_emulation/

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I got a USB-C to HDMI adapter cable and a USB-C to mini-DP adapter cable, and with both of them the right 1/3rd of the screen is bad, digital noise or whatever.

Is this normal? Or is my PBP video output bad? Or could the adapters be not well adapted?

Switching to Full HD video works fine, so it's not a major problem.

Anyone know why I world be getting three vertical bars when I reboot? Does not happen if I shut down and boot. Only on reboot. Any ideas?  https://photos.app.goo.gl/GvTcWRq6KL9VAQys6

I am trying to copy the Manjaro KDE 20.06 image to an SD as step one in creating a 128G eMMC. Have been doing so for over a week.

I was able to create an XFCE SD and eMMC with no problem. Both worked fine. I've tried all the methods I have seen on the forums, but always end up with a non-booting KDE SD and a perpetual green led. Well, all methods but the installer script at https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/a...-installer. That requires binfmt-qemu-static, which is not in the Arch repository.

So I'm at a standstill for the time being. My PBP is still working fine with the original KDE 64G eMMC or the XFCE 128G eMMC that I made. The XFCE UI is just not what I need.

I'm getting ready to see if a PBP will work as a frisbee. But, until I get to that point, has anyone any ideas that might prevent a flying PBP (not really, I quite like it)?

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Big edit.

All is well. Boot problem resolved. It was a matter of paying attention.

Today I created a new KDE image for my SD using the Raspberry Pi Imager on my Mac, which works great with no dd, etc., although dd works fine, too. I then tried to boot it and got the perpetual green led again. OK, only thing left was to turn off eMMC. Did that, and poof! Booted as it should. That's an important step, because the machine remembers last boot.

I powered down, switched eMMC back on, and rebooted. Worked fine because the machine remembered it booted last from SD.

Next, I downloaded another image and check file, did all the check and prep, and wrote it with dd to the eMMC. Powered down, removed SD (getting smarter), and restarted. Perfect. Running KDE from my new 128G eMMC.

This was not wasted effort. I learned a lot from the process.

I first experienced the Swype on the Nokia N9 (Harmattan). It was probably the only saving grace (in my own backward mind) that gets me to occasionally use a touch screen, as I really clung hard to physical keyboard for as long as I could, and still prefer to make notes on my Nokia E90 (Symbian).  Is that input method possible on the Mobian Pine Phone? For that matter, is fine handwriting with a stylus possible? 
Would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.

Just wanted to say thanks to the support team because they gave great support fast, so thanks.

When I first ran the Pine64+, using Debian, I had a couple of distribution supplied shell scripts that I would execute when updating the software.

/usr/local/sbin/pine64_update_uboot.sh;
/usr/local/sbin/pine64_update_kernel.sh;

Those scripts don't seem to be supplied with Armbian.

Is there a different way in Armbian that boot and the kernel get updated?

Thanks

CVBruce

I got my phone yesterday and it seems to be working per the various caveats I've been reading about online.  So I decided I might as well turn off the cell modem since it seems it will be a while before it's ready to use.  This seemed sensible since it devours the battery and the software toggles on the radios still seem a bit flakey.  However, when I turn the cell modem (sw1) off, wifi no longer appears functional in that I no longer see any access points.  I toggled sw2 off and back on thinking I might have accidentally flipped it too, but that didn't seem to help.  When I turn sw1 back on, I again see wifi access points and can connect.  I've been powering down the device before changing switch settings.  I'm (possibly incorrectly) assuming this is a software issue as it seems like something that would have been noticed if it were hardware... or it could be a problem with my device?