02-13-2024, 12:58 PM
Hi folks.
I'm afraid to say that I've been finding owning a PPP a... cr*ppy experience.
I had expected to receive a device that, whilst the software was incomplete, at least had the basics covered - reliable booting, diagnostic ports, etc.
Well, I got lucky, and when I bought it (I think it was about a year ago) I managed to get it to work eventually after muddling my way through the assorted guides out there. I'd boot mobian, and then basically nothing was finished (fair enough, its a dev phone).
I didnt have time to play with it then (I planned to have a look at camera stuff), and it crashed on suspend so it got thrown in the "expensive paperweight" bucket.
Move on 12 months... I got some time to play, and I'd clearly forgotten / suppressed the trauma (at least my wallet had)...
After about 8 or nine attempts at getting it to power up, I managed, and... it still booted.
I thought to myself "I'll just update this debian device, and maybe it will install all that lovely fixed software and nice new toys" - I am used to Debian being reliable in this regard.
Irrationally, then, I executed
apt update
apt upgrade
And it worked!
Although a little red flag there - it now produced a deb12, not mobian boot splash...
whatever - how bad can it be?
apt dist-upgrade
oh dear... now it doesn't boot anymore...
No worry, I thought - its an open device, with OSS on it, and of course with everything being open, the instructions to fix it will be concise and easy to follow.
Nope.
I mean, this is tragic.
There is *not one* place I can find that *really* details how a PPP boots. I did find a couple of pages, but nothing on them was any use.
I mean, what, literally, is supposed to happen? theres a $£%£$^ huge LCD on the thing, but no, it just sits there blankly, or if I'm lucky, the one LED on it might change colour or it might buzz a bit.
but WHERE is any of this documented? what does the 4 buzzes mean when it occasionally does that? why does the LED go blue in some modes?
seriously - android and fastboot is better documented.
I build small devices for a living, and have worked on getting ARM devices booted for years, but this takes the cake into a whole new dimension. I'd have been utterly embarrased both personally and professionally to have released such a pile of junk.
-10 out of 10. Pathetic.
This is almost as insanely dumb as my RockPro64, which comes FROM THE FACTORY with the serial port running at 1.5Mbaud. Who the h*** wants that, ever? utterly useless, unexpected, and I had to spend AGES hunting through my serial adapters until I found one that would tolerate such a stupid speed.
WHY?
This is OPEN HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE. There is literally no excuse for this.
Any hardware on sale should come with:
1) A list of instructions on how to FULLY RESTORE IT TO FACTORY SETTINGS
2) All specs, for all versions
3) A guide that INCLUDES METHODS TO IDENTIFY *ALL VARIANTS* of the phone - "purchased before XYth of XXX" is not good enough. I have no idea when mine was purchased at this point.
4) A bootloader that either speaks serial 8n115200 and/or (preferably) also can display status on screen / interact enough with the user to perform a self test or indiate why it's sulking.
So. Now what?
I have a useless Pine Phone Pro, that I was once enthusiatic about getting to use, that does nothing but bootloop and try to kill its battery now.
There are no instructions on restoring the phone to any sort of factory settings.
I've tried following this guide on installing tow boot, https://tow-boot.org/devices/pine64-pinephonePro.html
it doesn't actually give a link to the file it refers to, but I'm guessing its the spi-installer.img located in here:
https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/rel...006.tar.xz
I've tried following this on the pine64 site:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_P...emporarily
it SEEMS like I have the version where pressing vol_down makes it do er... something? but all it does is turn the LED blue.
this isnt documented AFAICT. Is it meant to go blue? I read that the *screen* is supposed to go blue, but that isn't happening either.
This is over a year later now - what is the excuse? EVERY SINGLE issue above should have been solved at release, and *certainly* should have been by now.
Does anybody ACTUALLY know how to make my expensive brick into a phone again?
I'm afraid to say that I've been finding owning a PPP a... cr*ppy experience.
I had expected to receive a device that, whilst the software was incomplete, at least had the basics covered - reliable booting, diagnostic ports, etc.
Well, I got lucky, and when I bought it (I think it was about a year ago) I managed to get it to work eventually after muddling my way through the assorted guides out there. I'd boot mobian, and then basically nothing was finished (fair enough, its a dev phone).
I didnt have time to play with it then (I planned to have a look at camera stuff), and it crashed on suspend so it got thrown in the "expensive paperweight" bucket.
Move on 12 months... I got some time to play, and I'd clearly forgotten / suppressed the trauma (at least my wallet had)...
After about 8 or nine attempts at getting it to power up, I managed, and... it still booted.
I thought to myself "I'll just update this debian device, and maybe it will install all that lovely fixed software and nice new toys" - I am used to Debian being reliable in this regard.
Irrationally, then, I executed
apt update
apt upgrade
And it worked!
Although a little red flag there - it now produced a deb12, not mobian boot splash...
whatever - how bad can it be?
apt dist-upgrade
oh dear... now it doesn't boot anymore...
No worry, I thought - its an open device, with OSS on it, and of course with everything being open, the instructions to fix it will be concise and easy to follow.
Nope.
I mean, this is tragic.
There is *not one* place I can find that *really* details how a PPP boots. I did find a couple of pages, but nothing on them was any use.
I mean, what, literally, is supposed to happen? theres a $£%£$^ huge LCD on the thing, but no, it just sits there blankly, or if I'm lucky, the one LED on it might change colour or it might buzz a bit.
but WHERE is any of this documented? what does the 4 buzzes mean when it occasionally does that? why does the LED go blue in some modes?
seriously - android and fastboot is better documented.
I build small devices for a living, and have worked on getting ARM devices booted for years, but this takes the cake into a whole new dimension. I'd have been utterly embarrased both personally and professionally to have released such a pile of junk.
-10 out of 10. Pathetic.
This is almost as insanely dumb as my RockPro64, which comes FROM THE FACTORY with the serial port running at 1.5Mbaud. Who the h*** wants that, ever? utterly useless, unexpected, and I had to spend AGES hunting through my serial adapters until I found one that would tolerate such a stupid speed.
WHY?
This is OPEN HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE. There is literally no excuse for this.
Any hardware on sale should come with:
1) A list of instructions on how to FULLY RESTORE IT TO FACTORY SETTINGS
2) All specs, for all versions
3) A guide that INCLUDES METHODS TO IDENTIFY *ALL VARIANTS* of the phone - "purchased before XYth of XXX" is not good enough. I have no idea when mine was purchased at this point.
4) A bootloader that either speaks serial 8n115200 and/or (preferably) also can display status on screen / interact enough with the user to perform a self test or indiate why it's sulking.
So. Now what?
I have a useless Pine Phone Pro, that I was once enthusiatic about getting to use, that does nothing but bootloop and try to kill its battery now.
There are no instructions on restoring the phone to any sort of factory settings.
I've tried following this guide on installing tow boot, https://tow-boot.org/devices/pine64-pinephonePro.html
it doesn't actually give a link to the file it refers to, but I'm guessing its the spi-installer.img located in here:
https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/rel...006.tar.xz
I've tried following this on the pine64 site:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_P...emporarily
it SEEMS like I have the version where pressing vol_down makes it do er... something? but all it does is turn the LED blue.
this isnt documented AFAICT. Is it meant to go blue? I read that the *screen* is supposed to go blue, but that isn't happening either.
This is over a year later now - what is the excuse? EVERY SINGLE issue above should have been solved at release, and *certainly* should have been by now.
Does anybody ACTUALLY know how to make my expensive brick into a phone again?