What to do if your PinePhone Pro does not boot

[winded22]

I've read through the wiki's and tried using the Manjaro-ARM-plasma-mobile-pinephonepro-factory-20220311.img to boot image from SD card and have had no success or consistent boot up. Now I seem to be no boot unless it's a black screen that I see no indication the phone is booted. Any chance Pine64 can swap this phone out for another that's test booted prior to shipping? New PinePhone Pro received last week. I have removed the SD and followed the RE button boot process several times and still black screen. Interesting my phone does not match the image in the Wiki https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro where it states the MIcroSD fits in the top slot. It really doesn't it slides right out. It does fit in the lower slot but in either location I have no boot activity whatsoever. Battery is fully charged.

[fxc]

I've read through the wiki's and tried using the Manjaro-ARM-plasma-mobile-pinephonepro-factory-20220311.img to boot image from SD card and have had no success or consistent boot up. Now I seem to be no boot unless it's a black screen that I see no indication the phone is booted. Any chance Pine64 can swap this phone out for another that's test booted prior to shipping? New PinePhone Pro received last week. I have removed the SD and followed the RE button boot process several times and still black screen. Interesting my phone does not match the image in the Wiki https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro where it states the MIcroSD fits in the top slot. It really doesn't it slides right out. It does fit in the lower slot but in either location I have no boot activity whatsoever. Battery is fully charged.

You're not inserting the microSD card correctly, the microSD card's notch must not be visible anymore. Top slot and inserted all the way in. If there is a plastic excess on the right side it must get inserted past it. Please join the community chat if you have trouble with that.

[jbradlee]

This is regarding a PinePhone Pro (with Convergence package) purchased April 2021. I thought it was a Community Edition Manjaro, but the order summary describes it as Beta Edition.

In any case, I ran into a boot issue yesterday while trying to wipe the phone prior to selling it. Like many before me, when googling 'How to flash PinePhone OS,' I used the non-pro Wiki and the memory card I prepared with Manjaro-ARM-plasma-mobile-pinephonepro-20220216.img did not boot.

More googling led me to the Pro page, wherein the 'bypass eMMC' instructions in the Boot Order section failed to work for me. No amount of reset button pressing and battery pulling led to an SD card boot.

So I did the 'Wiping the bootloader from the eMMC to make the PinePhone Pro boot from microSD card can be done using...' from the bottom of the Boot Order section and now the phone does absolutely nothing.

Battery out for several minutes, I tried:
* No batt, insert USB-C power
* Batt, hold Power for 5+ seconds
* Batt, hold Reset, then Power
* Batt, USB-C power and no buttons pressed

The status light never illuminates. Can anyone tell me why blowing away the on-device bootloader would prevent any powering on?

If I made a mistake, what was it? Thank you!

Jesse Bradlee

[wibble]

This is regarding a PinePhone Pro (with Convergence package) purchased April 2021. I thought it was a Community Edition Manjaro, but the order summary describes it as Beta Edition.

In any case, I ran into a boot issue yesterday while trying to wipe the phone prior to selling it. Like many before me, when googling 'How to flash PinePhone OS,' I used the non-pro Wiki and the memory card I prepared with Manjaro-ARM-plasma-mobile-pinephonepro-20220216.img did not boot.

More googling led me to the Pro page, wherein the 'bypass eMMC' instructions in the Boot Order section failed to work for me. No amount of reset button pressing and battery pulling led to an SD card boot.

So I did the 'Wiping the bootloader from the eMMC to make the PinePhone Pro boot from microSD card can be done using...' from the bottom of the Boot Order section and now the phone does absolutely nothing.

Battery out for several minutes, I tried:
* No batt, insert USB-C power
* Batt, hold Power for 5+ seconds
* Batt, hold Reset, then Power
* Batt, USB-C power and no buttons pressed

The status light never illuminates. Can anyone tell me why blowing away the on-device bootloader would prevent any powering on?

If I made a mistake, what was it? Thank you!

Jesse Bradlee

Your phone is a PinePhone, NOT a Pro. The Beta Edition with Manjaro was released in March 2021 which fits your purchase date, while the Pro wasn't released until January 2022. The image files for the Pro won't work on the original PinePhone, and vice versa. You need to follow the instructions for the original PinePhone and make sure you don't use a Pro image.

[jbradlee]

This is regarding a PinePhone Pro (with Convergence package) purchased April 2021. I thought it was a Community Edition Manjaro, but the order summary describes it as Beta Edition.

[big snip]

Jesse Bradlee

Your phone is a PinePhone, NOT a Pro. The Beta Edition with Manjaro was released in March 2021 which fits your purchase date, while the Pro wasn't released until January 2022. The image files for the Pro won't work on the original PinePhone, and vice versa. You need to follow the instructions for the original PinePhone and make sure you don't use a Pro image.

Thank you so much Wibble! That was it! I was able to get the phone installed properly.

[danimations]

I'm seeking some clarification on this subject.

Does switching to Tow Boot make any material difference to the "battery fully drained, won't charge or boot" issue?

Is this problem the fault of the bootloader, the OS, a combination of the two... or something else entirely?

I've sidecast my PPP for the time being, until this problem is resolved. Looking forward to learning more about the nature of the problem and the outlook for a lasting if not permanent solution.

[JD1er]

Hello, community. Following my installation of Mobian on the emmc with an micro SD card that I imagined (the OS offered me to put it on the EMMC and I was happy to let it do it's thing).
They mentioned that once the installation was complete. the pinephone pro was going to turn off and the SD card had to be removed befor the next boot.
Witch I did.
But since I have nothing.
No more indicator light, no more screen, no more sound and even with the RE procedure with LSUSB it does not appear on my FerenOS with Konsole.
I have a separate charger for the battery and it is charging/charged.
Could someone help me (after 1h30 of research I turn to you)

Thanks in advance

[fxc]

Hello, community. Following my installation of Mobian on the emmc with an micro SD card that I imagined (the OS offered me to put it on the EMMC and I was happy to let it do it's thing).
They mentioned that once the installation was complete. the pinephone pro was going to turn off and the SD card had to be removed befor the next boot.
Witch I did.
But since I have nothing.
No more indicator light, no more screen, no more sound and even with the RE procedure with LSUSB  it does not appear on my FerenOS with Konsole.
I have a separate charger for the battery and it is charging/charged.
Could someone help me (after 1h30 of research I turn to you)

Thanks in advance

Would recommend you to join the community channel, this thread is not a support thread. For Mobian you need Tow-Boot. Maskrom mode (using the RE button on the Explorer Edition, not the Developer Edition!) is expected to work, quadruple check that you're following the steps in the wiki correctly, https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro#Boot_order, especially shutting off the phone before booting it in Maskrom mode again (by removing ALL power sources and NOT plugging it in before holding RE).

[daemonbsd]

Simon, thank you so much. Thanks to you, I managed to revive the PPP after a month of torment and reading forums - when I already thought that I would have to throw it away or sell it for parts, since it did not recognize any charged batteries and all because of an attempt to plug into it an allegedly analogue of the battery described here from a Samsung 2014 release. And apparently something broke in the mathematics of the motherboard, and it produced any artifacts - a red signal, yellow or continuous vibration, it could be flashed, it still perceived the pressing of the upper or lower key and the blue indicator was on, but loading did not occur, so we can conclude that The PE key still doesn’t just load from the SD card - it resets something in the motherboard and fixes the math - thanks to a very short press, it was possible to boot the system - although I wanted to flash it

  TOW boot and in theory it should have booted from the SD card. It is noteworthy that I even successfully formatted section 128 eemc with a blue light and Makos said that everything was erased - but the system, which remained a mystery to me, turned out to be untouched. maybe this will help someone 

[fxc]

Simon, thank you so much. Thanks to you, I managed to revive the PPP after a month of torment and reading forums - when I already thought that I would have to throw it away or sell it for parts, since it did not recognize any charged batteries and all because of an attempt to plug into it an allegedly analogue of the battery described here from a Samsung 2014 release. And apparently something broke in the mathematics of the motherboard, and it produced any artifacts - a red signal, yellow or continuous vibration, it could be flashed, it still perceived the pressing of the upper or lower key and the blue indicator was on, but loading did not occur, so we can conclude that The PE key still doesn’t just load from the SD card - it resets something in the motherboard and fixes the math - thanks to a very short press, it was possible to boot the system - although I wanted to flash it

  TOW boot and in theory it should have booted from the SD card. It is noteworthy that I even successfully formatted section 128 eemc with a blue light and Makos said that everything was erased - but the system, which remained a mystery to me, turned out to be untouched. maybe this will help someone 

This description makes no sense. The RE button is not required to be used anymore, all PinePhone Pros ship with Tow-Boot pre-installed to the SPI flash memory chip in the phone. The vibrations and LED colors come from Tow-Boot.

When you hold VOLUME UP at boot it will boot the USB Mass Storage mode, which shows the blue LED color. From there you can flash the phone via USB. Please read the bottom of https://tow-boot.org/devices/pine64-pinephonePro.html