Keyboard case not charging (or not working) and a possible FIX for both

[tllim]

Today I received my Pinephone keyboard case and after waiting for it to reach room temperature and then completely charge, I was ready to try it.
The first power up was a nice surprise: it worked perfectly fine with Mobian (on uSD). It also works with PostmarketOS (on eMMC). Great!
But it didn't charge the phone in either OS. Buumer!

To cut a long debugging story short, here's THE PROBLEM:
- the pogo pins on the Pinephone don't all make contact, hence the title.
Quality control on the Pinephone needs to be improved.
The DCIN pin in particular was responsible for not charging the phone.
See attached picture: 01_problem_pinephone_pogo_pins.jpg

THE FIX is to make all the pogo pins make contact.
In my case, just the DCIN pin since the I2C worked fine.
My solution was to use a copper tape which has adhesive (not conducting!) on one side.
However, a piece of aluminum foil/thin copper or other metal will work just as well.

THE EXPLANATION - a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's three more, in order as numbered:
02_explanation.jpg
03_fix_before_application.jpg
04_fix_applied.jpg

And just like that it worked! Charging the phone as intended.

Note #1:
Whatever you use, make sure you:
- fix the metal piece(s) in place firmly with some THIN tape
and
- make absolutely sure you don't short any pogo pins
and
- make sure the fix parts don't touch any metal parts of the phone internals
Just cover any non-contact parts with THIN insulating tape.

Note #2:
An additional explanation for my fix:
The metal is longer in the bent over itself part do reduce the resistance of the metal piece itself.

Note #3:
The proper fix is twofold:
- Pine64 needs to improve the quality control for the Pinephones and make sure all the pogo pins are the same length once assembled
- the keyboard case contacts need to be shallower (less deep) to ensure differences in pogo pins length don't matter as much as now

I hope this helps more than one person with similar problems.

Now, to print some spacers as recommended in another thread and fix the first row of keys...

Thanks on your analysis and just pass back your finding to product team.