Hello there,
I've just recieved my very first Pinephone 64 but it's barely working so I can't use it for anything. I haven't found how to fix these problems anywhere else so I'm asking you for help. I'm having these problems:
HDMI only works for a second, right after this the phone display starts jittering and I can't do anything with it from then on. I also sometime ssee a black box covering half of the srceen when I try to navigate the menu. The menu never open and the display jitters everytime I touch it.
Display sometimes flickers a lot, meaning the brightness goes form whatever I set it on to 0 every time I stop touching the display. It's very annoying possibly even health hazardous as contunous use of the phoen in this state is very disorienting at the very least. The only fix for this is restart.
Battery status is random to say the least. One second I have 50% th eother I have 8%, then I have 14%, then 80%, then 50% again. I have no idea how much battery I actually have and whether or not the phone needs charging.
Updates don't work anymore. I installed the first 2 updates (2-3 GB), but the new one (23 MB) can't be downloaded because something is missing (error message).
Can someone please help me with these issues? By the way I'm using the vanilla Pinephone 64 beta convergence edition with the OS it's shipped with.
I'm going to try installing a different OS on the phone. That seems like my only way.
So I've installed Ubuntu Touch on the Pine and everything is working kinda smoothly now. It seems that if I wanted to, I could use the phone as a phone now, which is a great improvement. So far no flickering, jittering or anything. The phone seems stable enough to exist, again a welcome improvement over the factory state. Now I just have to figure out how to enable HDMI on Ubuntu, if its even possible. I'm planning to use the pinephone as a pocket PC displaying stuff on TVs and such (to replace my heavy laptop), so if you have any tips as to which OS is the best for that or what updates I should get, let me know.
(11-14-2023, 02:27 AM)MTXP Wrote: I'm going to try installing a different OS on the phone. That seems like my only way.
I use Arch Linux on EVERYTHING, so... I think Arch works well.
OS: DanctNIX Arch Linux with Phosh
See this post for a complete install and setup.
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18192
See this post for my experience on functionally (it is the PRO, but all apply to the original PinePhone)
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...#pid118783
Also, I strongly recommend updating the modems firmware to Biktorgj and loading the correct ADSP version for your wireless provider.
11-16-2023, 04:37 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-16-2023, 04:42 AM by MTXP.)
(11-15-2023, 01:45 PM)mikehenson Wrote: (11-14-2023, 02:27 AM)MTXP Wrote: I'm going to try installing a different OS on the phone. That seems like my only way.
I use Arch Linux on EVERYTHING, so... I think Arch works well.
I got the Arch running from my SD card and it runs just as well as the Ubuntu Touch I had. But again, no real way to activate HDMI. Although, I did get a proper HDMI during initial installation when terminal was preparing something before the boot itself. Precisely when the phone booted, the HDMI stopped working. I wonder, do I have to install OS onto the phone itself to make HDMI work or is it unrelated and I'm doing something wrong? The reason I'm only running the OSes on my SD card is that I want to try them before committing, so if there's a way to check HDMI functionality without fully installing the OS, please let me know.
11-16-2023, 09:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-16-2023, 09:20 AM by alaraajavamma.)
(11-16-2023, 04:37 AM)MTXP Wrote: I got the Arch running from my SD card and it runs just as well as the Ubuntu Touch I had. But again, no real way to activate HDMI. Although, I did get a proper HDMI during initial installation when terminal was preparing something before the boot itself. Precisely when the phone booted, the HDMI stopped working. I wonder, do I have to install OS onto the phone itself to make HDMI work or is it unrelated and I'm doing something wrong? The reason I'm only running the OSes on my SD card is that I want to try them before committing, so if there's a way to check HDMI functionality without fully installing the OS, please let me know.
External display (hdmi) works out of the box with arch, postmarketos, mobian and manjaro. And maybe with some other distros but those 4 are the most supported ones.
With Ubuntu Touch it is work in progress.
but... OG PP (not pro) is not perfecrt device for "convergence" usage because there are several things what makes external display usage difficult.
Hardware is weak and slow -> so doing anything big will make the system really slow and almost freezes everything.
If you use modem same time with hdmi there is high change that your external display will flicker like a maniac so it is unusable.
What you can do is use really lightweight apps - like terminal or so. Or you can shutdown modem when you connect hdmi.
Best experience / most stable exeprience with OG PP today will be with pmos or arch and I would say use Phosh as desktop enviroment.
And you need to use Biktrogjs firmware if you want to have reliable phone experience
And forgot to mention:
There are differencies between hdmi cables, docks and displays. Not everything works with og pp - most does but not everything.
And some displays does not start the connection if you don't have power plugged in to PP.
11-16-2023, 02:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-16-2023, 02:46 PM by MTXP.)
(11-16-2023, 09:18 AM)alaraajavamma Wrote: External display (hdmi) works out of the box with arch, postmarketos, mobian and manjaro. And maybe with some other distros but those 4 are the most supported ones.
With Ubuntu Touch it is work in progress.
but... OG PP (not pro) is not perfecrt device for "convergence" usage because there are several things what makes external display usage difficult.
Hardware is weak and slow -> so doing anything big will make the system really slow and almost freezes everything.
If you use modem same time with hdmi there is high change that your external display will flicker like a maniac so it is unusable.
What you can do is use really lightweight apps - like terminal or so. Or you can shutdown modem when you connect hdmi.
Best experience / most stable exeprience with OG PP today will be with pmos or arch and I would say use Phosh as desktop enviroment.
And you need to use Biktrogjs firmware if you want to have reliable phone experience
And forgot to mention:
There are differencies between hdmi cables, docks and displays. Not everything works with og pp - most does but not everything.
And some displays does not start the connection if you don't have power plugged in to PP. Thanks a lot for this response. All I want from pinephone right now is to have HDMI and display a presentation or a word document or something like that, or in most extreme cases play a video there. Also, you say HDMI works on all of those OSes except for Ubuntu Touch, but the HDMI doesn't work for me anywhere. With the PinePhone stock OS (I think its manjaro/plasma) the phone is unusable due to massive jittering and nothing is streamed to the external display. On arch the HDMI only worked before booting, showing me the terminal stuff it was doing. Any idea how to get it working properly on any OS? By the way, I'm using the stock HDMI hub that comes with the phone. That's one of the reasons why I'm confused the HDMI is not working.
(11-16-2023, 02:43 PM)MTXP Wrote: Thanks a lot for this response. All I want from pinephone right now is to have HDMI and display a presentation or a word document or something like that, or in most extreme cases play a video there. Also, you say HDMI works on all of those OSes except for Ubuntu Touch, but the HDMI doesn't work for me anywhere. With the PinePhone stock OS (I think its manjaro/plasma) the phone is unusable due to massive jittering and nothing is streamed to the external display. On arch the HDMI only worked before booting, showing me the terminal stuff it was doing. Any idea how to get it working properly on any OS? By the way, I'm using the stock HDMI hub that comes with the phone. That's one of the reasons why I'm confused the HDMI is not working.
The dock what is shipped with PP works but there are some things what you need to check:
1. Make sure that you plugged the cord deep enough (the usb c part is little bit too short and it will come off easily)
2. Try to plug in the cord in both directions - it does not work in both ways with all displays
3. Make sure that you have power plugged in and make sure that it will actually send enough power to PP (some chargers work very badly)
4. I am not sure what the situation is today but some time a go some OS's had empty black wallpaper by default - so your external display migth look like black
5. There will be some issues if you boot/reboot the PP when the PP is plugged in to dock/monitor/etc. -> nothing overwhelming but for test use it is wiser to plug dock after boot process is complete.
6. Then there are some really strange things: all hdmi cables does not work and all monitors does not work. And some hdmi/display combos does not work. I want to believe that this is because they (hdmi and/or display) are total crap but I don't know xD
(11-17-2023, 02:59 AM)alaraajavamma Wrote: (11-16-2023, 02:43 PM)MTXP Wrote: Thanks a lot for this response. All I want from pinephone right now is to have HDMI and display a presentation or a word document or something like that, or in most extreme cases play a video there. Also, you say HDMI works on all of those OSes except for Ubuntu Touch, but the HDMI doesn't work for me anywhere. With the PinePhone stock OS (I think its manjaro/plasma) the phone is unusable due to massive jittering and nothing is streamed to the external display. On arch the HDMI only worked before booting, showing me the terminal stuff it was doing. Any idea how to get it working properly on any OS? By the way, I'm using the stock HDMI hub that comes with the phone. That's one of the reasons why I'm confused the HDMI is not working.
The dock what is shipped with PP works but there are some things what you need to check:
1. Make sure that you plugged the cord deep enough (the usb c part is little bit too short and it will come off easily)
2. Try to plug in the cord in both directions - it does not work in both ways with all displays
3. Make sure that you have power plugged in and make sure that it will actually send enough power to PP (some chargers work very badly)
4. I am not sure what the situation is today but some time a go some OS's had empty black wallpaper by default - so your external display migth look like black
5. There will be some issues if you boot/reboot the PP when the PP is plugged in to dock/monitor/etc. -> nothing overwhelming but for test use it is wiser to plug dock after boot process is complete.
6. Then there are some really strange things: all hdmi cables does not work and all monitors does not work. And some hdmi/display combos does not work. I want to believe that this is because they (hdmi and/or display) are total crap but I don't know xD
Thanks again man, this is exactly what I needed. Sadly though, connecting the charger doesnt change much if anything. Arch linux HDMI is not working at all, and the default PP OS is only streaming the home page (just like the first time I tried it). Clicking on any app doesn't show the app there and of course the mobile screen is jittery and very hard to navigate. I'm not sure but I think plugging it in the charger helped stabilize the phone in terms of battery and it got rid of the constant brightness changes.
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