Brave Heart First Impressions ?

[Luke]

I've since installed UBports and I'm thoroughly impressed. Once texting and calls work this will be really close to a daily driver phone. The amount of work put into both the software and the hardware on this thing is incredible, so I'd like to give a huge thank you to all the developers!

I've also dropped the phone causing it to turn off twice. First time I accidentally dropped it on the ground and it shut off, which is understandable. Luckily it wasn't damaged. The other time however I accidentally dropped it about an inch onto my laptop, and it shut off again. I thought maybe the developers would want to hear about this in case it's a problem with the battery placement or something.

Texting works as does LTE.

[j23]

Hi All,

I get my PinePhone to my hands two days ago (although it was waiting for TAX decision for about 2-3 days longer). Anyway, i get it at least.
My impression: it looks very smooth and nice (both outside and inside of the cover). Maybe a little bigger display then i suspect, but it is nice suprice. The outer box (paper and plastic) are also good as for this price (i worried about external case and shipment issues but finally nothing bad happened).
The bad thing is: no hardware, no pinout manual/instruction except those which i was able to find via internet. However i am still not sure about 6-pins just inside/back of PInePhone. I read somewhere those pins are for keyboard or docking station, but that's it. The same thing with RESET button, and how i should use it (in which situation). Yes, i know it is all about testing, but it could be nice to know some path (not a blind try).
Unfortunatelly i am still trying install the operating system, and also unfortunatelly for me i think i accidently lock emmc (inside) memory of PinePhone by overwriting bad version of operating system. (( I did very stupid thing, which was just flashing emmc inside memory of PinePhone (overwriting the test suite included system), and after all i searched and found nice tool for install like Pine64 Installer.. (( Hopefully i did not destroy emmc at all, but i hope not, because all i did it was moving files (disk system) from sd card to emmc inside memory of PinePhone.
So, that's it my story and big first mistakes of trying install Debian Operating System into PinePhone.
Is that some specific section of Pine64 forum where i could asking about this kind a issue with bad flashing of emmc memory? Or maybe someone of Yours has got similar issue, and -as me at this moment- is trying recover emmc partition just to see something on PinePhone display? PLEASE help Somebody!

Pine64 installer looks very nice, but there is still nothing information about PinePhone save/stable operating system (or maybe i don't understand at all everything definition like version for Pine64 A64 1GB/2GB or for LCD... )... I guess the People, who has been trying Pine64 laptop already/before are in better condition with PinePhone then me.

Could Somebody help me, PLEASE?

[undo]

I got mine yesterday. The tests came out good. I've tried UBports, PMOS and Sailfish already, but just to get a feel of how they are. I also kept the phone running yesterday with Ubuntu and kept it in my pocket and the battery lasted something like 7 hours from 100% to 0% but the phone was quite warm at all times. So that time should probably get considerably longer once the power management it working better.

As for the hardware, I have no complaints really. I like the sturdy feel of it. Personally I am able to get the back cover off without tools. I didn't try the kill switches yet.

I will have to see about the software before commenting on it. It looks like they are surprisingly far already.

[dukla2000]

Could Somebody help me, PLEASE?

Don't worry, it is virtually impossible to brick your PinePhone!

If you build a decent SDcard and insert that you should boot fine from SDcard despite whatever state your eMMC is in. Start here in the wiki.

[j23]

Could Somebody help me, PLEASE?

Don't worry, it is virtually impossible to brick your PinePhone!

If you build a decent SDcard and insert that you should boot fine from SDcard despite whatever state your eMMC is in. Start here in the wiki.

Thank You. I'll try it.

[undo]

I've been testing out these OSes now for a day or so. It seems to me that Ubuntu works the best. Sailfish just doesn't work for me. PMOS and Manjaro have the best looking terminal, which I appreciate, but of them Manjaro has all the apps for the terminal. I installed moc, yay, vim, lynx and so on. The problem with manjaro is that it doesn't seem to go to sleep, so you can't really take it anywhere. Also if you (accidentally) press the button on the side it will turn off. I would use it for now as a sort of retro PDA if it had the sleep (and power management!). It seems to me that the connectivity on all of the above OSes is a bit touch and go. I got it working pretty ok with manjaro with "nmcli con up id "WifiID" --ask" and toggling "nmcli networking off" and "nmcli networking on". But the UI for wifi is not trustworthy yet. On UBtouch you can turn the airplane mode on and off and then the wifi will never come back.

If someone knows how to get the UBtouch terminal up to par with what PMOS and Manjaro have, then UBtouch would probably be the winner for now.

EDIT: What I mean with the terminal is that to have a useful terminal you need to have something like 70 characters wide, and the arrow keys have to be easy to get to. If I remember correctly PMOS had the best way of showing the arrows, the CTRL + C and so on and the special characters like | and ~

EDIT2: It seems that you cant install stuff on UB terminal? "failed to fetch ports.ubuntu.com/etc/etc/" It recommends running apt update, which doesn't fix the issue.

[Veraendert]

UT touch isn't really Ubuntu. You're not supposed to install anything via terminal. Use Libertine instead.

[soyrunner]

Phone arrived today. Looks great. First USB-C device and loving that plug works either way. Factorytest ->EG25 fails, Automatic tests Factorytest->Modem, Modem says -113dBm signal strength. No memory card or sim.


soyrunner

[TG127]

Phone arrived today.  Looks great.  First USB-C device and loving that plug works either way.  Factorytest ->EG25 fails, Automatic tests  Factorytest->Modem,  Modem says -113dBm signal strength.  No memory card or sim.


soyrunner

It will fail as long as you do not insert a SIM card. From what I've heard anyway. Will test later today.

[simp]

I have to agree with the others, ubuntu seems to be the best choice for now. PostmarketOS seemed a bit slow and neutered and Sailfish wouldn't start for me(the RGB led flashed, but no boot-up for me)

Battery goes from 100% to 0% in less than 12 hours, even when not doing anything, but that's related to power management as others have. Should improve in the future I guess.

Haven't really done too much with it yet.