One thing I've noticed on my Pinebook Pro ever since launch is that the 2.4 GHz-band wireless networking appears to be very, very unreliable. It initially works on first connect, but then goes completely dead for long periods with only brief moments of functioning in between, leading to intermittent connections with lots of dropped packets. It feels almost like it's overheating, but I can't quite figure out how to test that. It happens pretty much regardless of signal strength, and on every network and access point I've tried. 5 GHz-band wireless works fine, and has no apparent reliability issues. Curiously, Bluetooth does not appear to have these issues either, despite using the same 2.4 GHz frequency band and presumably similar functionality on the same transceiver chip.

Are others having these 2.4 GHz-specific issues as well? Is anything known about what might be causing them?

Intuitively, I wonder if the antenna in use on the Pinebook Pro is just not well-matched for 2.4 GHz use, and as a result, transmitting on that band is causing the RF energy to mostly get dissipated as heat in the transceiver and cause problems, rather than being radiated. I don't really have much evidence for this, though, and Bluetooth seems to work a little too well for that to actually be the case. Hmm...

Obviously we couldn't order a cover with the phone, and $30 for DHL is expensive for a case but the other delivery option also has a few drawbacks. Is there anyone else in the U.K in the same boat? I could always order one or two more cases and then we could split the difference on postage?

is it possible to extract the debian image to an SD card using the pinebook majaro?

I have had my PBP for a few months. I have had Manjaro on it for over a month now (eMMC) and last week updated the mirrors (after not realizing I was looking at older urls). It went through >300 updates, some related to 20.04 I assume.

I booted it after the updates were applied with no issues, but this morning I tried booting and it sits on the orange light and never proceeds to boot. Anyone have any ideas or am I looking at a fresh install?

Hey,

Just wondering if those who have received a Pinetime could give an idea of what, if any, customs and import there were.

Personally would be interested in United Kingdom & Europe, though any part of the world really, as this thread may be helpful to others.

Back on April 24th, I ordered a PineBook Pro and the SSD adapter for it so that I could use a 1TB M.2 SSD as the main drive instead of an SD card.  On April 29th I received an email stating the adapter was being prepared for shipping.  Using the 17Track tracking number provided I kept watch for progress of the adapter.  In three weeks, there was no movement, so I contacted Pine 64 customer support and was told they would look into it.  Now another 2 weeks later, and I have not heard anything.  I hope to see my PineBook Pro sometime before Christmas.  I have no faith in 17Track whatsoever.  Anybody else having trouble with a similar lack of information?

Edit: My "lost" SSD adapter arrived in the United States on the same day I posted this according to 17Track.  I still have no faith in them, but it should be easier to track my shipment now.

Hi there,

after waiting for such a loooong time, I finally got my PBP on Friday.

Over the weekend I played around a little bit with Manjaro and then wanted to try a different OS. After repartitioning the eMMC, I accidentally pressed the false delete key (i.e. the power button) and the system shut down. Since then I can't get the PBP powering up anymore. Neither a USB stick (the one I used for the interrupted installation) nor an SD card with the Manjaro KDE image does the job.

I don't really understand what's wrong since at least the SD card should do the trick. A hardware failure just in that unfortunate moment would be a big coincidence. But what else could it be and most importantly: how can I get it fixed?


Anyone got a lifesaving clue?

Thanks!
Criena

Brand-new pinebook pro. Factory KDE Manjaro.

I turned on the wifi hardware switch and I see `wlan0` in my interfaces. If I click the NetworkManager icon in the taskbar, I see all the wifi networks in my area.
If I click on one and type in the password, it'll spin for 30 seconds and then ask for the password again. I tried with `nmcli` too. Same result: just keeps asking for the password, even when I know it's correct.

What do I do?

Hi All,

I have been having a problem for some time where SMS messages were not being received, but outgoing ones, phone calls and data are working fine. I am posting this in case other run into the same problem, which seems to be fairly rare so far.

It turns out that that the cause of my problem was related to a bunch of SMS messages that lingered in the modem's queue (10 of them). This queue appears to be persistent across reboots and also re-imaging the OS. I don't yet understand all of the technical details.

What worked for me was to use the ModemManager command-line. Note that on Mobian the ModemManager does all of the communications with the 3G modem including phone calls, cellular data, GPS and SMS. This may not be the case with other PinePhone OSes.

You can access the ModemManager using the mmcli command.

$ sudo mmcli -m 0 --messaging-list-sms
Found 10 SMS messages:

/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/0 (received)
...

In my case there were 9 SMS messages in the received state and 1 in the receiving state. I deleted all of the messages like this:

$ sudo mmcli -m 0 --messaging-delete-sms=1  # Repeat with 1 through 10 to delete all of the messages

Note that the "-m 0" refers to modem 0 (the only one usually in a pinephone). For more help on the messaging related actions available in mmcli you can check the help with "mmcli --help-messaging." This article is also helpful in learning: https://electronproton.com/mmcli-command-examples/

I hope that this is helpful for anyone else having the same problems as I did.

Chris

Hi,

I've gone ahead and tested a couple of SDRs on the Pinebook Pro running Manjaro. 


So far the AirSpy and HackRF are my clear favorites.
Here's my notes on what worked, what didn't and how to get it running: 

HackRF / rad1o: 
Very painless experience. 
Just install (and run) gqrx via