[SOLVED] Brand new pinephone bricked almost immediately out of box...

[wibble]

Would be good if the pinephone prompted you on startup as to whether you intend to boot from eMMC or SD card

That is unfortunately impossible as A64 boot order is SD first, then eMMC.

Well...you'd need the u-boot on the SD to have the option to boot whatever's on the eMMC. Since uBoot can't write to this display you'd have to make the choice using the volume and power buttons, possibly using the LED as an indicator. I've not got round to making up a serial cable to investigate further.

Or have a kernel and initrd on the SD that can load and kexec from partitions on the eMMC or SD.