First impressions

[Paraplegic Racehorse]

Ok. I was finally able to retrieve my PineTab from the 3rd Party delivery service DHL uses for last-mile in areas they don't directly service.

1. I have no wifi problem with or without keyboard attached
   
2. I do not have a plastic film over my display or, if I do, I cannot find the edge. PINE64: if you ship with a plastic film over the display on production model (I don't care whether you do this.), please be certain there is some kind of pull-tab to get the thing off.
   
3. The door to access the micro-SD card slot is way oversized and super-awkward. The depth of the slot is going to make working with SD cards almost (not quite) as bad as with modern phone SIM-card drawers. There must be a better way to handle this. Maybe a snap in port cover more like what is used on battery ports for AAA and AA battery devices?
   
4. The system image doesn't fill the emmc.
   
5. Like others, I have trackpad issues. Specifically, it cannot access approx 25mm along left edge and 10mm along top edge of the display. The rest of the display is fully accessible.
   
6. Any kind of pop-up window in browser, settings, or anything else appears with it's lower-right corner partially visible in the extreme upper left of the display. I have not figured out to "grab" it to drag into a location where I can use it. Swipe-from-right task switcher stops working, but swipe-from-left launcher does. Hmm. 
   
7. I installed the sound recorder app from the UT app store and... it cannot record. Error report I can most easily see says "Internal data flow error (resetting settings will fix this" but hiding behind is another error with something about permissions and I cannot see it any better.
   
8. Cameras don't work
   
9. I have not yet got round to playing media, streaming or no, on it.
   

that's all I can think of right now. There were other observations to make but I can't remember them. I made the mistake of sleeping before typing this up. More later.

[bartgrefte]

Are there more where, besides the already mentioned wifi problem, the wifi password needs to be re-entered from time to time?

[wispoffates]

---

Hardware:
- Plastic protecting back camera lens is hard to remove.  Please add some tabs for us poor people who chew our nails...
- Quite audible click and crackle when the display switches resolution.  Worried me for a second.
- My screen doesn't seem to have a protector on it like others have mentioned. There was one it was just tricky to get off just had to keep picking at a corner till I got a grip on it.

Software:
- Font aliasing is awful (I'm betting some software work might clean that up)

EDIT:
One more item. The caps lock/scroll lock/num lock lights at the bottom right of the keyboard don't seem to work.

[quipacorn]

I can't provide full input since my unit is a bit of a lemon, but I still wanted to chime in. 

The good: 

1. Keyboard is more tactile than I would have expected. Would definitely be an acceptable typing experience. 
2. Overall the tablet feels solid. Doesn't feel cheap, but also doesn't feel super premium. Definitely better than the price would indicate.
3. Buttons are good, not mushy. 
4. While a bit tricky, the back is pretty easy to remove. Just have to be mindful of the pogo pins in both removal and reattachment. 
5. Magnets are strong, despite being pretty thick the fully closed case feels nice. 
6. Back material is grippy and aesthetically pleasing.

The bad: 

1. Keyboard adhesive isn't great, already separating a bit. 
2. Screen scratches super easy. Screen protector is probably a must. The pre-applied protector was also marred pretty bad out of the box. 
3. The SD card access is very meh. Doesn't like to snap back in place, feel like the piece keeping it affixed is going to break off. 
4. The flap/support of the case is a bit odd, but not the worst implementation. Not really lap-able. 

The ugly (likely only mine and a few other unlucky ones):

1. Screen has dead strips where touch doesn't work at all. Literally unusable. Consistent across operating systems and screen rotation.
2. The keyboard only partially works. This isn't the touchpad issue or any of the other known early adopter issues. Literally only a few keys work, the rest have zero response. Tried on both the factory UB Touch and Arch, same behavior. External USB keyboard works, as does mouse (on Arch, UB Touch has the box issue). 

Overall, can't wait till I have a fully functional unit to tinker with. I can at least do stuff over SSH/external inputs for the time being while waiting on a response from CS.

[bartgrefte]

EDIT:
One more item. The caps lock/scroll lock/num lock lights at the bottom right of the keyboard don't seem to work.

Now that you mention it, same here, I guess those aren't supported yet?

Earlier today I put in a microSD card with Mobian and I'm not hearing sound. Screen rotate works, though manual only, there's an icon to tap on for that. After the first boot I got a couple of questions, at some point the next button was (depending on orientation) either covered by the small bar on top or off the screen on the right.

Since I'm now dealing with two OS's, is there any way I can select which to boot without having to remove the microSD card to boot UBPorts on eMMC? Is there a key-combination or something that I can hold to select the boot device?

[Paraplegic Racehorse]

Early Day 2 update:

1. [hardware/firmware keyboard] Trackpad -- I was wrong. There is also close to 5cm inaccessible area along right edge.
   
2. [hardware/firmware keyboard] Function-key row completely unresponsive with or without Fn key depressed. Fn-arrow keys (pgdown, etc.) work as expected.
   
3. [hardware? software?] Speakers are super quiet and headphone jack unresponsive. I am uncertain what the issue is. On inspecting the port, it appears to be too far recessed for fully seating the jack. However, I think I saw elsewhere that there may be an internal pin setting forcing the jack into UART mode. I haven't opened the back cover yet. Need to find an appropriate tool for that.
   
4. [hardware/firmware] Stylus input is significantly less responsive than finger input, and it does not matter what stylus I use. Active stylii are completely unresponsive (not surprising due to display type.)
   
5. [networking/serial] Hooking USB to USB on laptop: neither machine detects the other.
   
6. [software] I can't find a way to background a task. Installed syncthing and when other apps are closed, syncthing comes to the foreground and I can't drop out to the "desktop." I know this could be done with desktop Unity/Lomiri.
   
7. [software] Just for grins, I tried to `apt update` from terminal. apt seems to be installed and working okay but all the repositories are unsigned which prevents it from downloading the catalogue files.
   
8. [software] Font antialiasing is bloody awful.
   
9. [software] Attempting to establish sync with Nextcloud (in Settings app) results in forever-spinning indicator. Expected either success + setup stuffs, or a timeout/failure indicator.
   

I have not yet experimented with alternate OS and SD card booting. Reports elsewhere indicate no display when booting from SD. It would be lovely to have an SD-card writer app available to flash them right from the tablet. I haven't check to see if `dd` is available via Terminal, though.

[guenther]

---

EDIT:
One more item. The caps lock/scroll lock/num lock lights at the bottom right of the keyboard don't seem to work.

caps and num lock with led indication work in mobian. (scroll does not) Might be an SW issue related to UT

[GreyLinux]

[*][hardware/firmware keyboard] Trackpad -- I was wrong. There is also close to 5cm inaccessible area along right edge.

[*][hardware/firmware keyboard] Function-key row completely unresponsive with or without Fn key depressed. Fn-arrow keys (pgdown, etc.) work as expected.

[*][hardware? software?] Speakers are super quiet and headphone jack unresponsive. I am uncertain what the issue is. On inspecting the port, it appears to be too far recessed for fully seating the jack. However, I think I saw elsewhere that there may be an internal pin setting forcing the jack into UART mode. I haven't opened the back cover yet. Need to find an appropriate tool for that.

[*][hardware/firmware] Stylus input is significantly less responsive than finger input, and it does not matter what stylus I use. Active stylii are completely unresponsive (not surprising due to display type.)

[*]

There appears to be a fix with the touchpad issues mentioned I discovered a discussion about it on the mobian issues page , I believe the fix was made by the ubports team and so will be spread amongst the OS's in time
here is the link


I believe some of the touchscreen issues you experience especially with sensitivity is due to you having a screen protector still on . If the screen feels "grippy"  instead of glass smooth it still has the protector on . As others have mentioned it seems like one is not attached unless you pick away at corner gently! and discover it's just a little hard to detect .

The speakers are a bit quiet and on mobian they don't work at all yet ! , However someone managed to turn the speaker volume  up quite a bit using alsa settings , so a fix shouldn't be too long down the line .


Some of my function keys don't work yet but volume and brightness work fine , others I believe have not been implemented yet .

Finally the switch to change the headphone jack from uart to headphones or vice versa is located in the SD card slot opening on the right hand side , it's a tiny white switch that I believe if it's position is closest to the SD card slot it means it's audio out and obviously furthest away from slot means it's uart enabled
It's mentioned in the postmarked is wiki for pinetab under serial console

link here

Also I've booted from SD card on mobian with no issues at all so I'm not aware of issues with a blank screen .
I even downloaded the image using the pine tab (took a while !)
Unzipped it (took a while also )

And DD it to the SD card from terminal on pinetab. I've found mobian to be better than ubports currently in terms of ease of use and features working .

[n3rDy]

So far I like it, but it is a typical early adopter device and we all have to work together to solve some of these issues.

Somebody else asked and I didn't see an answer and I haven't quite figured it out yet. How do I get another web browser like Firefox or a decent text editor? I can't find any in the Openstore and it doesn't seem to be available via a command line install. While I am on the command line issue, why doesn't sudo apt update/upgrade work?

I saw the fix for the touchpad and it looks like it will be available in a future update, any idea how long that will be?

Thanks!

[tophneal]

Early Day 2 update:

1. [hardware/firmware keyboard] Trackpad -- I was wrong. There is also close to 5cm inaccessible area along right edge.
   
2. [hardware/firmware keyboard] Function-key row completely unresponsive with or without Fn key depressed. Fn-arrow keys (pgdown, etc.) work as expected.
   
3. [hardware? software?] Speakers are super quiet and headphone jack unresponsive. I am uncertain what the issue is. On inspecting the port, it appears to be too far recessed for fully seating the jack. However, I think I saw elsewhere that there may be an internal pin setting forcing the jack into UART mode. I haven't opened the back cover yet. Need to find an appropriate tool for that.
   
4. [hardware/firmware] Stylus input is significantly less responsive than finger input, and it does not matter what stylus I use. Active stylii are completely unresponsive (not surprising due to display type.)
   
5. [networking/serial] Hooking USB to USB on laptop: neither machine detects the other.
   
6. [software] I can't find a way to background a task. Installed syncthing and when other apps are closed, syncthing comes to the foreground and I can't drop out to the "desktop." I know this could be done with desktop Unity/Lomiri.
   
7. [software] Just for grins, I tried to `apt update` from terminal. apt seems to be installed and working okay but all the repositories are unsigned which prevents it from downloading the catalogue files.
   
8. [software] Font antialiasing is bloody awful.
   
9. [software] Attempting to establish sync with Nextcloud (in Settings app) results in forever-spinning indicator. Expected either success + setup stuffs, or a timeout/failure indicator.
   

I have not yet experimented with alternate OS and SD card booting. Reports elsewhere indicate no display when booting from SD. It would be lovely to have an SD-card writer app available to flash them right from the tablet. I haven't check to see if `dd` is available via Terminal, though.

Concerning number 3, the switch isnt in the case, its next to theSD slot.
Also, i think JumpDrivehas aworking version for the tab.