PINE64
Phone wont turn on with any SD Card inserted - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Phone wont turn on with any SD Card inserted (/showthread.php?tid=16543)



Phone wont turn on with any SD Card inserted - Ausfaller - 04-24-2022

Forgive me if this has already been addressed but I have been searching everywhere for a week or so and haven't found a solution that was provided that works in my case.

Got my PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition and have been excited to try it outside of some funkiness as to be expected with a phone in this state of its like. The frustrating thing is everyone apparently can easily swap SD cards with new distros and explore! I can not.

I installed balenaEtcher and downloaded Ubports/Arch Phosh/Jump drive to various SD Cards. Tried this process from a Windows machine and also a Linux machine. When inserted into the PinePhone Pro the device doesn't boot/light up/vibrate or give any indication it is being turned on.

It appears to be turning on because to get the PinePhone Pro to turn on after the SD card is removed I have to remove/reseat the battery then press the power button.

When the card is inserted after the phone is booted I can run "sudo lsblk" and I can see that any of the test drives are available.


Any help would be much appreciated.


RE: Phone wont turn on with any SD Card inserted - fxc - 04-24-2022

(04-24-2022, 11:40 AM)Ausfaller Wrote: Forgive me if this has already been addressed but I have been searching everywhere for a week or so and haven't found a solution that was provided that works in my case.

Got my PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition and have been excited to try it outside of some funkiness as to be expected with a phone in this state of its like. The frustrating thing is everyone apparently can easily swap SD cards with new distros and explore! I can not.

I installed balenaEtcher and downloaded Ubports/Arch Phosh/Jump drive to various SD Cards. Tried this process from a Windows machine and also a Linux machine. When inserted into the PinePhone Pro the device doesn't boot/light up/vibrate or give any indication it is being turned on.

It appears to be turning on because to get the PinePhone Pro to turn on after the SD card is removed I have to remove/reseat the battery then press the power button.

When the card is inserted after the phone is booted I can run "sudo lsblk" and I can see that any of the test drives are available.


Any help would be much appreciated.

The issue here is that you try to boot incompatible images. The images you mentioned are for the regular PinePhone, not the PinePhone Pro (different SoCs, different boards, so this won't work). Make sure to download your images only fromĀ https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro_Software_Releases. Please also have a look at the installation instructions underĀ https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro#Software, as holding Power is not sufficient for bypassing the eMMC, depending on the U-Boot configuration.


RE: Phone wont turn on with any SD Card inserted - Greendrake - 07-21-2022

I am also experiencing this issue with my Explorer Edition although the image I have dd'ed to the card seems to be the right one: https://github.com/manjaro-pinephone/plasma-mobile/releases/download/beta12/Manjaro-ARM-plasma-mobile-pinephonepro-beta12.img.xz (un-xz'ed of course).

In a nut shell, while the phone happily boots without a card, or with an empty one (which has its first megabyte completely zeroed with dd), it does not boot when the card has the above image dd'ed on it. Tried two different cards.

What, however, puzzles me most here is that it won't boot even if I _do not_ hold the RE button. This way the eMMC should have boot priority, right? Why would the phone then even care what's on the card at all?

UPDATE: Installed Tow-Boot to the SPI and the problem has gone away.


RE: Phone wont turn on with any SD Card inserted - Ausfaller - 07-21-2022

(07-21-2022, 05:50 AM)Greendrake Wrote: I am also experiencing this issue with my Explorer Edition although the image I have dd'ed to the card seems to be the right one: https://github.com/manjaro-pinephone/plasma-mobile/releases/download/beta12/Manjaro-ARM-plasma-mobile-pinephonepro-beta12.img.xz (un-xz'ed of course).

In a nut shell, while the phone happily boots without a card, or with an empty one (which has its first megabyte completely zeroed with dd), it does not boot when the card has the above image dd'ed on it. Tried two different cards.

What, however, puzzles me most here is that it won't boot even if I _do not_ hold the RE button. This way the eMMC should have boot priority, right? Why would the phone then even care what's on the card at all?

UPDATE: Installed Tow-Boot to the SPI and the problem has gone away.

I was going to say do you know if you have Tow-Boot or Uboot? Yea my issue was complete noob I thought I was on the right software page but it was for the PinePhone images should have come back and said it was solved but rather embarrassed lol. Glad you got yours fixed! I have had the best luck with Mobian as a daily driver so far. Good luck on your journey!