New PinePhone won't boot 9/10 times - Screen is on but stays black :(
#1
Sad 
Hello,

I have recieved my second PinePhone (Beta Edition, 3GB/32GB) a few days ago. I wanted to have a "backup device" because my pmOS Edition PinePhone (3GB/32GB) with Mobian is my Daily Driver.

First strange thing was that the eMMC on the new Phone is about 500MB smaller than on my old one (not talking about Partitions here, but about the whole eMMC!  Huh ), therefore I could not just 'clone' my Daily Driver Phone partitions on the new one (via dd) as planned.

OK - So I installed Mobian with the latest (stable) installer on it (because of full disk encryption) and started to configure my stuff and install updates (via apt, did NOT manually switch to Mobian bookworm yet)... and reboot. Then I noticed: Most of the time, the Beta Edition PinePhone won't boot. The green LED lights up for a short time, the screen is on but stays black/shows nothing (waited 30 minutes one time). You then have to press the power button to shut the phone off and try again. At the beginning it booted after 3-4 tries and was normally usable, then it got worse (9/10 times). Yesterday I reinstalled Mobian with the installer (this time with ext4+FDE like my first phone, instead of F2FS+FDE), but it never booted afterwards. Gave up after about 12 tries and went to bed.

Posted it here because I don't know WHAT is the reason - I THINK it is some kind of hardware problem (because the phone has booted multiple times, a damaged operating system should behave the same way every time you boot I guess)... but I don't know of course.
I have not found a post about this specific problem in the forum.

Has anybody made similar experiences? What could be the reason?

Thanks for any reply/hint!  Sad

Best Regards,
Dante

--------------------------------
Edit: What I forgot to mention: Because of this problem (and several problems I had with my main phone in the past) I have upgraded the modem firmware from 01.001.01.001 (stock) to 01.003.01.003 (which works great on my main phone). Didn't help anything about the boot problem.
Using encrypted Mobian (bookworm) on pmOS CE Convergence PinePhone (3GB/32GB) as Daily Driver, and Beta Edition Convergence PinePhone (3GB/32GB) with encrypted Mobian (bookworm) as Backup device.
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New PinePhone won't boot 9/10 times - Screen is on but stays black :( - by dante404 - 10-12-2021, 12:30 AM

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