Pinephone Pro Arrived - A Couple Of Notes About Chargers And Updates

[tckosvic]

Maybe the problem is more that people are expecting production ready software delivered on the product whereas pine64 always stated that the device is intended for developers and early adopters with experience in Linux.

It is the same problem with folks "bricking" their device by using Pinephone (non-pro) images and flodding social media with it.

This is such a fundamental problem that it should have been solved before releasing anything.  This is like a phase 1 development issue. And also, it is a problem that likely only the constructor/developer can fix in the hardware; not a user.

[djselbeck]

I don't have my PPP yet so I can't debug it myself (yet).

But the wiki says "If the battery is fully drained U-Boot might fail to boot any installed operating system on the eMMC and microSD card due to a bug." So it is software and now indeed is the time to fix it.

It is not like the device becomes paper weight it is easily recoverable and also easy to prevent from happening.

[phelion]

Charging/Battery Drain Update
Just anecdotally from this thread, @Stitch was able to charge with a 2.5A charger but @Stickman did not get good results from using a 2.5A charger and the battery drained even with the screen off, so it would appear it might be a bit hit or miss with a charger less than the recommended 5V 3A, depending on the charger used.
--UPDATE: I've added an update to my original post, but the Pinephone Pro is less picky about chargers once the Software is updated - even the pre-installed Manjaro Plasma, once updated, is now happy with my 2A charger!


With any new device, there's always the worry that there's a fault with the hardware but currently most users in the threads seem to be saying that they experience the same behaviour:

If the Pinephone Pro is plugged into a charger then it will restart if you try to shutdown using whichever method:
-Hold power button for 8 seconds
-Choose Shutdown option from Operating System
-Use 'sudo shutdown now' from the Terminal

So if you're charger is not charging the phone (but is giving enough power to register that it thinks the phone is charging) and then the battery gets low and you think "I'll just switch off the phone and leave it to charge" you could well end up with a drained battery as the phone keeps trying to restart.

This could be a hardware/software/firmware issue but the main thing to stop the battery draining flat is to find a charger that works first and then it's not quite such a problem


Booting From An SD Card
Incidentally, I've noticed that if you insert an SD Card with a bootable Pinephone Pro image then it will always default to that, which is not the expected behaviour:

"The Explorer Edition comes with a modified U-Boot pointing to the microSD card pre-installed to the eMMC. The microSD card can be (temporarily) booted instead of the pre-installed operating system, when the power key is shortly held at boot."

The extra step does not seem to be necessary at the moment - it always chooses the SD Card in my case. Not expected but quite a pleasant surprise and gives a nice easy way to be able to try out other distros on the Pinephone Pro.

(So far I've only tried out the pre-installed Manjaro Plasma and Mobian on the SD Card, but it's nice to be able to easily compare them and see their different features and quirks)


Manjaro Updates
@Luziferus very kindly provided a link to the Manjaro forum: https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Pacma...Resolution which I liked because it tells you what the commands are actually doing so hopefully that's the more straightforward way to get updates working and then you can update/upgrade as normal anytime using 'sudo pacman -Syu'

@Emilio had said in his thread that he got things working after searching the interweb for a solution and, after a shutdown and restart, using 'sudo pacman-db-upgrade && Sync'

I had success using 'sudo pinephonepro-post-install' after noticing that it was a pre-installed script and then could update using 'sudo pacman -Syu' without issues after that (although it might also have created a user called KDE which may or may not have been there initially, so might not be the most optimal solution)

So it looks like there are a few different ways to get updates working on the pre-installed image and, with the boot order seeming to favour the SD Card at the moment, you can try out a few different distros without having to wipe the eMMc.

It does say in the Pinephone Pro wiki page "If the default installation was corrupted or overwritten by a differently configured bootloader, the eMMC may have to be bypassed to boot from microSD card and to alter the eMMC contents." but I'm not sure how easy or likely it is to corrupt or overwrite the bootloader whilst experimenting with other distros on the SD Card.

If that does happen though, they have details of how to fix it:

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro

It also mentions there that there is an RE Button underneath the cover on the Explorer Edition (to temporarily bypass the eMMc on boot) but on the Developer Edition you would have to "short the eMMC bypass contacts while booting", so there is possibly a very slight difference in the Hardware of the Developer and Explorer editions?

[Andre]

So the Pinephone Pro arrived and am really rather pleased with it. Manjaro with Plasma Mobile is nice to use, looks good and the phone responds well. Haven't had a lot of time to play around with it just yet but thought it might be worth mentioning a couple of things if you are expecting your order to arrive soon:

tldr: -With a 2A USB charger the battery charging indicator will show but the battery will not charge and the phone will slowly drain.
       -Updating the base installation of Manjaro with Plasma Mobile may not be entirely straightforward if you assume that a quick 'sudo pacman -Syu' will do the trick.

Chargers
I have quite a few old USB phone/tablet chargers that I use regularly and just assumed that they would work fine, maybe they'd just charge slowly, but unfortunately they are not up to the task - they'll happily charge a Nexus 5 phone and Nexus 7 tablet but I kindof forgot that technology has moved on since 2013  

I'm pretty sure that the Nexus 7 charger is 5V and 2A but even with the screen off the battery slowly dwindled and had me worried that there was something wrong with the hardware.

Of course it states in the 'Pinephone Pro User Manual - Quick Start Guide' that "The Pinephone Pro should be charged using a 15W (5V 3A) USB-PD power adapter. Charging at a higher voltage may result in damage to the device." but I didn't pay too much attention to that, just happy knowing that I wasn't going to be damaging my device with my low powered charger, but they don't mean 'for best results use a 5V 3A charger' they mean 'use a 5V 3A charger'

Fortunately I have a half-decent laptop with a USB-C port, so I bought a USB-C to USB-C cable at the supermarket down the road and have been able to charge it with that until I order a decent modern charger to use with it.

Updating Manjaro
There were about 312 updates when I first switched on the phone and connected to Wifi. The 'Discover' application told me about the updates and so instead of using the Command Line equivalent of 'sudo apt update' for Manjaro I gave Discover's Update function a try but it threw up some errors.

Unfortunately, running 'sudo pacman -Syu' from the terminal threw up some errors as well (something to do with PGP Signatures and 'unknown trust'). I tried a bit of 'sudo pacman -Syyu' and also 'sudo pacman -Syyuu' for good measure but to no avail.

There is probably a better way to fix the issue directly but I was poking about in the terminal and found a program called 'pinephonepro-post-install' which sounded interesting and after running sudo pinephonepro-post-install it seems to have generated some trusted keys and then let me update using 'sudo pacman -Syu' without issue.

If anyone has any suggestions for a better way to get updates working on the pre-loaded Manjaro/Plasma system, then it could be useful to let others folks know so that they can easily update to the most recent version of Manjaro and Plasma Mobile and test it out on their new Pinephone Pro.

Shutdown
Not sure why this happens but it seems that with my Pinephone Pro, if it's plugged in to a charger then it will start up automatically. Even if it's the underpowered charger that doesn't charge the battery.

Pressing and holding the Power button for 8 seconds will shut the phone down
A long press of the power button will bring up the Shutdown, Restart options in Plasma Mobile too - shutdown works from there: looks like it has stalled for a little while but then shuts down nicely.
'sudo shutdown now' in the Terminal also works similarly.

BUT if the charging cable is plugged in (even if it's not giving enough power to charge the battery) it starts up again immediately after shutdown.

This may be specific to my Pinephone Pro, but it seems like at the moment it isn't possible to charge the phone without the phone switching on. It might be different when I get a suitable charger, but I'd be interested to know if anyone else is experiencing this same behaviour with their Pinephone Pro.

Thanks for sharing!

Helped with getting my own PPP back up and running. Also, was not charging but using USB-C to USB-C (computer) worked! As did using terminal commands suggested to properly update phone (also had some installs through Discovery that failed. Almost at 100% now.

[Luziferus]

Thanks for sharing!

Helped with getting my own PPP back up and running. Also, was not charging but using USB-C to USB-C (computer) worked! As did using terminal commands suggested to properly update phone (also had some installs through Discovery that failed. Almost at 100% now.

I also have my issues with the discover app. As soon as I am online connected to my Wi-Fi, discover crashes upon start. 

A workaround would be to disable (soft) wi-fi, start discover, it will tell that it cannot connect to database. Then enable (soft) Wi-Fi. 

Will try to resolve this issue permanently though (simple reinstallation didn't work so far).

[Andre]

Thanks for sharing!

Helped with getting my own PPP back up and running. Also, was not charging but using USB-C to USB-C (computer) worked! As did using terminal commands suggested to properly update phone (also had some installs through Discovery that failed. Almost at 100% now.

I also have my issues with the discover app. As soon as I am online connected to my Wi-Fi, discover crashes upon start. 

A workaround would be to disable (soft) wi-fi, start discover, it will tell that it cannot connect to database. Then enable (soft) Wi-Fi. 

Will try to resolve this issue permanently though (simple reinstallation didn't work so far).

I've also had issues with Discovery. Started to install via the Terminal instead. Also, when I do restart the PPP from off, I continue to get a "failed to update 1 package, failed to update database: unexpected system error" message. Yet, when I open Discovery, it states that everything is up to date.

[drh]

Received PPP yesterday.

Thanks to this thread, I knew to execute in terminal 'sudo pinephonepro-post-install' followed by 'sudo pacman -Syu'.

After updating, I was able to use Discovery to check update status and install Firefox.

Things I like:

Strong vibration for notifications and typing on the onscreen keyboard.
Snappy (firefox opens in 4 seconds instead of 15 seconds).

Things I don't like:

Battery consumption seems higher than regular pinephone. It lost 10% charge (100% to 90% in about 10 minutes).

Will do more testing to confirm.

Things to do now or after software matures.

Test if wifi connectivity is better than original pinephone
Try out the camera.
Install a sim card and make a call
Install mobian

[dukla2000]

...
Try out the camera.
...

No chance at the moment, there are no drivers for either camera yet.