Hi Everyone,
I did a one of these casual updates last month and thought that it would be a good idea to do one this month too. I won't be writing them every single month, but when there is something noteworthy happening - like now - I feel they serve a purpose.
Speaking of updates, the December update will be the last one of the year (obviously) and I'll run a poll a week prior to it being posted asking about how we did this year and what you'd like us to improve on in 2020. Keep a lookout for that, because we really like to hear back from you on this.
Pinebook Pro
We have the firmware for the Pinebook Pro trackpad & keyboard. I am running a little update thread here for those interested. Long story short, the process of flashing the new firmware is currently quite involved and we're thinking of ways to make it relatively painless. Both @xalius and @ayufan have been instrumental in working these things out - thanks guys! Ayufan is currently rewriting the flashing software based on the source, so the flashing process will either be fully or partly automated when end-users get it in their hands. Future PBPs will ship with this firmware already flashed.
[edit 26/11/2019] Trackpad fix is out and available here.
PinePhone
The Brave Heart edition is up for per-order right now. [sarcasm] The launch went smoothly without incidents
Those of you who waited up / woke up to be there at zero-hour are sworn to secrecy and required to hold the line that it all went flawlessly [/sarcasm]. Congrats on getting your pre-orders in.
Approximately half of all PinePhones have now sold so I expect that all will be gone by the end of this week.
Developer's phones keep shipping and are going out steadily albeit slower than we'd (and probably developers) hoped. A large portion of the dev phones will go out this week.
Behind the scenes a lot of debugging, testing and tweaking is going on to make sure that we can deliver the best early-adopter's phone possible. I'll leave the details for next months update. I should have my PinePhone (still pre-production rather than Brave Heart Edition) at the end of the month, and intend to record a video about it. If there are some things you'd like to see in this video - leave it in the comment below.
PineTab
In this month's update I asked if you'd like us to run an early adopters batch for the PineTab. The response to my query was very positive and the number of requests for making this happen was surprisingly large. As a result, its happening. The production of and early adopters batch of PineTabs has now began. I don't really have any other details to offer at this time; we probably going to wait until all the Brave Heart PinePhones ship before making arrangements for the PineTab. We still need a suitable OS to accompany this batch ... so it may yet take some time.
PineTime
PineTime development has taken off and I've been super impressed by the progress. In recent weeks we've seen some spectacular write-ups too, like this one by Lup Yuen Lee. What makes so many of these write-ups interesting is that people don't always use the PineTime 'the way we envisaged', which frankly speaking is great and exciting.
As I have already indicated in the past on the forum, blog, chats and elsewhere - we were considering making the PineTime dev kits widely available, but were unsure of how many people would actually want one. As it turns out, a lot of people do. And this is good news, since this is a truly experimental side-kick community project. So in the coming days we'll be making PineTime kits available for purchase from the Pine Store.
I did a one of these casual updates last month and thought that it would be a good idea to do one this month too. I won't be writing them every single month, but when there is something noteworthy happening - like now - I feel they serve a purpose.
Speaking of updates, the December update will be the last one of the year (obviously) and I'll run a poll a week prior to it being posted asking about how we did this year and what you'd like us to improve on in 2020. Keep a lookout for that, because we really like to hear back from you on this.
Pinebook Pro
We have the firmware for the Pinebook Pro trackpad & keyboard. I am running a little update thread here for those interested. Long story short, the process of flashing the new firmware is currently quite involved and we're thinking of ways to make it relatively painless. Both @xalius and @ayufan have been instrumental in working these things out - thanks guys! Ayufan is currently rewriting the flashing software based on the source, so the flashing process will either be fully or partly automated when end-users get it in their hands. Future PBPs will ship with this firmware already flashed.
[edit 26/11/2019] Trackpad fix is out and available here.
PinePhone
The Brave Heart edition is up for per-order right now. [sarcasm] The launch went smoothly without incidents
Those of you who waited up / woke up to be there at zero-hour are sworn to secrecy and required to hold the line that it all went flawlessly [/sarcasm]. Congrats on getting your pre-orders in. Approximately half of all PinePhones have now sold so I expect that all will be gone by the end of this week.
Developer's phones keep shipping and are going out steadily albeit slower than we'd (and probably developers) hoped. A large portion of the dev phones will go out this week.
Behind the scenes a lot of debugging, testing and tweaking is going on to make sure that we can deliver the best early-adopter's phone possible. I'll leave the details for next months update. I should have my PinePhone (still pre-production rather than Brave Heart Edition) at the end of the month, and intend to record a video about it. If there are some things you'd like to see in this video - leave it in the comment below.
PineTab
In this month's update I asked if you'd like us to run an early adopters batch for the PineTab. The response to my query was very positive and the number of requests for making this happen was surprisingly large. As a result, its happening. The production of and early adopters batch of PineTabs has now began. I don't really have any other details to offer at this time; we probably going to wait until all the Brave Heart PinePhones ship before making arrangements for the PineTab. We still need a suitable OS to accompany this batch ... so it may yet take some time.
PineTime
PineTime development has taken off and I've been super impressed by the progress. In recent weeks we've seen some spectacular write-ups too, like this one by Lup Yuen Lee. What makes so many of these write-ups interesting is that people don't always use the PineTime 'the way we envisaged', which frankly speaking is great and exciting.
As I have already indicated in the past on the forum, blog, chats and elsewhere - we were considering making the PineTime dev kits widely available, but were unsure of how many people would actually want one. As it turns out, a lot of people do. And this is good news, since this is a truly experimental side-kick community project. So in the coming days we'll be making PineTime kits available for purchase from the Pine Store.
