02-07-2020, 09:38 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-07-2020, 09:41 AM by DrewTechs.)
I received my PinePhone (Braveheart Edition) and I was running postmarketOS on it yesterday (the OS on the SD Card). Now the device won't even turn on at all.
I had the device plugged into the charger all night and it still won't turn on. Is my phone no good already? If so, I want a refund because I expect my electronics to last more than a day.
Just for the record, I tried several things, such as putting the battery in and out, charging it (all night even) with different chargers (including the Nintendo Switch charger), I hit the Reset button on the back of the phone, etc.
What is going on here?
(02-07-2020, 09:38 AM)DrewTechs Wrote: I received my PinePhone (Braveheart Edition) and I was running postmarketOS on it yesterday (the OS on the SD Card). Now the device won't even turn on at all.
I had the device plugged into the charger all night and it still won't turn on. Is my phone no good already? If so, I want a refund because I expect my electronics to last more than a day.
Just for the record, I tried several things, such as putting the battery in and out, charging it (all night even) with different chargers (including the Nintendo Switch charger), I hit the Reset button on the back of the phone, etc.
What is going on here?
Corrupted SD card? does the factory test work? What are you charging it with?
02-07-2020, 11:45 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-07-2020, 02:56 PM by DrewTechs.)
(02-07-2020, 11:07 AM)Luke Wrote: (02-07-2020, 09:38 AM)DrewTechs Wrote: I received my PinePhone (Braveheart Edition) and I was running postmarketOS on it yesterday (the OS on the SD Card). Now the device won't even turn on at all.
I had the device plugged into the charger all night and it still won't turn on. Is my phone no good already? If so, I want a refund because I expect my electronics to last more than a day.
Just for the record, I tried several things, such as putting the battery in and out, charging it (all night even) with different chargers (including the Nintendo Switch charger), I hit the Reset button on the back of the phone, etc.
What is going on here?
Corrupted SD card? does the factory test work? What are you charging it with?
The factory test I did when I first got the device passed every category.
I used the USB charger the device came with and plugged it to my computer's USB port, my car charger (when I was away), a USB charger that is built onto a surge suppressor I got and I even tried the Nintendo Switch charger.
As for the corrupted SD card, this may be the only possibility now because when I reinserted my SD card, it was empty. That's odd though because the microSD card worked fine before when it was in another device so I will have to reexamine it.
02-09-2020, 04:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-09-2020, 04:48 PM by hopper.)
I'm experiencing a similar issue. I received the phone a few days ago and the factory test image tested perfectly fine. I flashed Ubuntu Touch to an 8gb Micro SD card and rebooted the phone, the operating system (UTouch) ran fine but my SIM card was giving me issues. I shutdown the phone to check the SIM card was properly installed, removing the SD card to do so more easily.
I noticed while trying to reassemble the phone and boot it up that the SD card was very difficult to fit into the slot. The phone no longer boots and shows no signs of charging (tried with USB, Pixel 3 Brick, Chrome Cast Brick, Nintendo Switch Brick). Checking the battery directly, looks like there is still 2.8vDC charge on it. So there's some life there still.
Checked the SD card in my computer to confirm the image hadn't been corrupted, no signs of problems - Debian mounts, reads and modifies without issue. I re-flashed the SD card to be sure and tried to boot the phone again but no luck. Disassembling the phone to confirm nothing was wrong with the SD card reader indicated that it looks damaged - probably to the point it won't read SD cards.
I can't get the phone to boot, show signs of charging and I'm guessing that messing with the reset button isn't going to help. Feels kinda like this one is bricked... My computers (Debian Buster) don't recognize the device (likely because I can't power it on) enough to start messing with the eMMC directly to see if I can get a bootable image on the phone to bypass the SD card reader issues.
Open to suggestions on next steps, potential issues or just a new unit so I can continue on testing software and not hardware issues.
(02-09-2020, 04:47 PM)hopper Wrote: Checking the battery directly, looks like there is still 2.8vDC charge on it. So there's some life there still.
NO NO, there is no life there at all !
The battery must never go below 3.0V !
As the OS'es is rather experimental for the phone, they might not yet have
checks built in, that should shut the OS down when reaching 3.0V - so keep it
in a charger for now.
02-09-2020, 07:18 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-09-2020, 07:20 PM by hopper.)
(02-09-2020, 05:58 PM)Alho Wrote: (02-09-2020, 04:47 PM)hopper Wrote: Checking the battery directly, looks like there is still 2.8vDC charge on it. So there's some life there still.
NO NO, there is no life there at all !
The battery must never go below 3.0V !
As the OS'es is rather experimental for the phone, they might not yet have
checks built in, that should shut the OS down when reaching 3.0V - so keep it
in a charger for now.
OK, so it's been sitting on a charger (Nintendo switch: 5.0v 1.5a; 15.0v 2.6a) for the better part of 3 hours with no charging light and no improvements on the condition. So either there's life there and no booty or no life and no chargey... The battery was at 50% when I started experiencing problems... Additionally, nothing happens while plugged in.
I can try to pick up a charger for exactly what's specified, but I highly doubt that's going to change anything.
(02-09-2020, 07:18 PM)hopper Wrote: (02-09-2020, 05:58 PM)Alho Wrote: (02-09-2020, 04:47 PM)hopper Wrote: Checking the battery directly, looks like there is still 2.8vDC charge on it. So there's some life there still.
NO NO, there is no life there at all !
The battery must never go below 3.0V !
As the OS'es is rather experimental for the phone, they might not yet have
checks built in, that should shut the OS down when reaching 3.0V - so keep it
in a charger for now.
OK, so it's been sitting on a charger (Nintendo switch: 5.0v 1.5a; 15.0v 2.6a) for the better part of 3 hours with no charging light and no improvements on the condition. So either there's life there and no booty or no life and no chargey... The battery was at 50% when I started experiencing problems... Additionally, nothing happens while plugged in.
I can try to pick up a charger for exactly what's specified, but I highly doubt that's going to change anything.
I'm also experiencing this problem - I received the phone and confirmed the factory test booted, slapped Ubuntu Touch on an SD card, and it ran without issue. After about an hour, I did a soft reboot from within Ubuntu to try to sort out a camera issue, and then it never turned back on again, even when connected directly to the charger.
I was able to run the factory test directly off this charger before I'd realized there was factory tape over the battery terminals, so I don't suspect battery issues.
I completely re-flashed the SD card with the Ubuntu Touch image that had worked correctly before, no change. I tried pressing and 10-second holding that recessed RESET button while connected to power, this also hasn't changed anything.
I figured the next troubleshooting step would be to hook up the serial console, so I flipped DIP switch #6 to the off position, and built a headphone jack TTL serial cable using a CH340 interface, wired according to the Wiki documentation. This also gives me no input or echo as I attempt to power-cycle the device, but it's very difficult for me to test if my serial cable is actually working correctly.
The only sign of life though this entire process was, the first time I connected the serial headphone jack plug, the phone's flashlight turned on for about ten seconds. I can find no documentation on what this means, and I haven't been able to recreate the behavior.
Any ideas on next troubleshooting steps?
My problem was a Corrupted SD card it turns out. That's one issue solved.
Another one is now that I successfully installed and booted off of eMMC, why does it fail to boot if I insert the SD card? I just wanna use the microSD card as a storage drive, not for the OS and storage.
(02-11-2020, 02:24 PM)andrewmv Wrote: (02-09-2020, 07:18 PM)hopper Wrote: (02-09-2020, 05:58 PM)Alho Wrote: (02-09-2020, 04:47 PM)hopper Wrote: Checking the battery directly, looks like there is still 2.8vDC charge on it. So there's some life there still.
NO NO, there is no life there at all !
The battery must never go below 3.0V !
As the OS'es is rather experimental for the phone, they might not yet have
checks built in, that should shut the OS down when reaching 3.0V - so keep it
in a charger for now.
OK, so it's been sitting on a charger (Nintendo switch: 5.0v 1.5a; 15.0v 2.6a) for the better part of 3 hours with no charging light and no improvements on the condition. So either there's life there and no booty or no life and no chargey... The battery was at 50% when I started experiencing problems... Additionally, nothing happens while plugged in.
I can try to pick up a charger for exactly what's specified, but I highly doubt that's going to change anything.
I'm also experiencing this problem - I received the phone and confirmed the factory test booted, slapped Ubuntu Touch on an SD card, and it ran without issue. After about an hour, I did a soft reboot from within Ubuntu to try to sort out a camera issue, and then it never turned back on again, even when connected directly to the charger.
I was able to run the factory test directly off this charger before I'd realized there was factory tape over the battery terminals, so I don't suspect battery issues.
I completely re-flashed the SD card with the Ubuntu Touch image that had worked correctly before, no change. I tried pressing and 10-second holding that recessed RESET button while connected to power, this also hasn't changed anything.
I figured the next troubleshooting step would be to hook up the serial console, so I flipped DIP switch #6 to the off position, and built a headphone jack TTL serial cable using a CH340 interface, wired according to the Wiki documentation. This also gives me no input or echo as I attempt to power-cycle the device, but it's very difficult for me to test if my serial cable is actually working correctly.
The only sign of life though this entire process was, the first time I connected the serial headphone jack plug, the phone's flashlight turned on for about ten seconds. I can find no documentation on what this means, and I haven't been able to recreate the behavior.
Any ideas on next troubleshooting steps?
Minor update - I apparently had the RX/TX pins swapped on my homemade TTL adapter, and now I *am* able to get an error message on the serial console:
Code: U-Boot SPL 2019.04-01015-g8dacfcdc32 (Dec 19 2019 - 11:56:34 +0000)
DRAM: 0 MiB
### ERROR ### Please RESET the board ###
Holding reset for 10 seconds doesn't do anything more than repeat the message - and the timestamp never moves.
07-21-2020, 12:21 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-21-2020, 12:24 PM by Cree.)
Just happened to me. Brand new UBports pinephone just arrived. Turned it on, set it up. All was good. Then i put in a new (empty) sd card. Instantly bricked the phone. Wont start at all. I was excited at first but this is exceptionally disappointing. Will try re-flashing a new OS but it doesnt look like those before me have had much success yet.
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