First impressions

[eaglecup]

How are you all enjoying your new Pinetabs?

The good:
- Nice onboarding proces, decent double box packaging.
- Nice port selection. Full USB A is great. It even seems to offer 2 amps output.
- The Pine logo on the front looks rather classy.
- The back cover has a nice pattern making the entire device easy to grip.
- Decent key travel on the keyboard, and the dock's touch pad is easy to glide on.

The bad:
- Dragging my finger over the screen doesn't feel great, and it creates noises. Is the display made out of plastic?
- My keyboard is slightly damaged, with some exposed soldering wire. I suspect the back of the keyboard wasn't glued to the faux leather properly. - or at all. To be clear: it was like this out of the box.

The expected:
- It's chunky. Where the pinephone is just as thin as other phones, the Pinetab is much thicker than other tablets.
- Having all the ports on one side could be interesting for a dock that holds the pinetab in a vertical position.
- The keyboard dock has a plastic feel. The faux leather isn't fooling anyone :-)
- It comes with a barrel plug in the box, but it charges from micro usb just fine.

The unexpected:
- I thought the back cover would be removable, but it doesn't seem to be.
- There's a big silver sticker on the back with text on it, such as its FCC ID.
- It's surprisingly heavy.
- The SD card slot cover is big. This could be an advantage for people who want to mod it. It could also house more dip switches (microhone - hint hint)
- The back speaker cutout is literally that, a cutout. It's a deep crevise, with a speaker at the bottom of the well. Or did my speaker just come loose?

I had to reboot the tab before the system software update became available.

Overall: it's a pure Linux tablet! I own a Samsung tablet that I needed for work, but I never use it personally because it makes me feel tracked and profiled. Now I can finally enjoy a tablet for some relaxing surfing.

[tophneal]

- I thought the back cover would be removable, but it doesn't seem to be.
- There's a big silver sticker on the back with text on it, such as its FCC ID.

Mine's a few days out still, but wanted to comment on these.

Have you tried sliding a spudger along the sides? There's surely some way to open it, or we'll be taking unnecessary risks with installing those future expansion options.

The sticker isn't too surprising. That's how the PBPs have been labeled since they got it cleared through the regulatories.

[eaglecup]

- I thought the back cover would be removable, but it doesn't seem to be.
- There's a big silver sticker on the back with text on it, such as its FCC ID.

Mine's a few days out still, but wanted to comment on these.

Have you tried sliding a spudger along the sides? There's surely some way to open it, or we'll be taking unnecessary risks with installing those future expansion options.

The sticker isn't too surprising. That's how the PBPs have been labeled since they got it cleared through the regulatories.

I haven't tried a spudger yet, but I probably will. I worry what that will do to the power and volume buttons though, as well as the many other parts that protrude through the side.

I didn't want to go into the software too much, since that's clearly a work in progress. But I noticed the device reports having just 14Gb of storage. The specs say it should have 64? I hope this is just a software problem.

[tophneal]

I didn't want to go into the software too much, since that's clearly a work in progress. But I noticed the device reports having just 14Gb of storage. The specs say it should have 64? I hope this is just a software problem.

Software or not, that's worth mentioning. At the very least to confirm as a known issue for those that get theirs next. lsblk confirms the emmc is 64gb via #pinetab channel

Does it still shows 14GB even after the update? (I think I saw somewhere that there's an update to UBports, it just may require rebooting to see it.)

[Ktaadn]

To begin with, I knew that I was buying a device for early adopters. I'm aware that the PineTab is a work in progress device.

The bad:

- Camera not working.
- Trackpad not working correctly. It works only in a small part of the screen.
- UBPorts is *censored*#$%&%*
- How do you install a real Browser like Firefox or a real editor?
- The backlit Keyboard is fine. Why doesn't it auto power off after closing the cover or at least after some minutes of inactivity?

I will wait for a fully fledged and usable Linux distro.

[guenther]

Overall it looks very good. Tried to find out if a screen protector is installed (Yes it is)  and by putting it back I pressed on the corner of the screen what causes the corner to bend (and stays bend). Seems the whole screen is made of plastic?
Did an update of UT and installed Dekko2, what causes crashes.  Can't find an other email client for UT!?
Flashed Mobian to SD and booted. Looks promising but not ready. No sound, twisted screen...back to UT
After some hours the wifi stopped working, did an system reset in the settings app. wifi works again.

But I noticed the device reports having just 14Gb of storage. The specs say it should have 64? I hope this is just a software problem.

Same here. I guess the partition needs to be expanded. Will try tomorrow....

Edit: I putted the PineTab into "command mode" by holding down the volume button while starting the device. It showed "awaiting command". Connected it to my linux laptop over usb and expanded the home partition with gparted. UT shows 61.2 GB total storage now.

[GreyLinux]

The bad:

- Dragging my finger over the screen doesn't feel great, and it creates noises. Is the display made out of plastic?

I thought the same initially , but I discovered the screen cover , which  others have mentioned removing this made it feel alot more like a glass finish .

- Camera not working.
- Trackpad not working correctly. It works only in a small part of the screen.
- UBPorts is *censored*#$%&%*

I found theses same issues , I found that the tablet experience was better than the desktop experience with the keyboard attached. The touch pad appeared to not function properly the pointer would often get stuck inside an invisible box and was unable to leave it unless I attach an external mouse .also if the tablet was removed and reattached the pointer would disappear until reboot.

I agree I'm not a massive fan of UBports myself and eventually will be installing arch or Mobian , however some prefer Ubuntu and its derivatives because of its restrictions. I did also notice that the file system wasn't expanded  , clearly a software issue as   LSBLK  command  displays the 64gb stated size

overall I really like the overall outcome , the tablet and keyboard feel pretty good for an early adopters version .
the only major issue I found to be slightly subpar is the speakers which are slightly tinny in sound and very quiet despite full volume and the software issue with the touchpad .

One thing I was pleasantly surprised with was the backlit keyboard and the ease of on-boarding as others have mentioned

[gimy16]

Received mine today! At the start there was all good, but after 30 minutes or so, the wifi did not respond, I tried to switched on and off and restart the PineTab, but the problem wasn't solved; finally I did a full recovery and that seemed to correct the wifi issue. If it occurs me again, I will make a post, with what I have tried.

For the rest, is more or less like it has been commented previously; once the keyboard is attached, the track-pad seems only able to move in a little piece of the screen.

The PineTab is solid and I love it for the moment. I've not been able to test it so much, but I like what I see for now.

Thanks to the Pine64 team for the effort!

[hexdump]

got mine too and the overall impression so far is quite good for an early adopter version.

is there anything to be done (switched on, special key comibinations or similar) to enable the backlight on the keyboard? if not then mine seems to be broken as there is no backlight at all by default - in that case how is the procedure to get it exchanged?

best wishes - hexdump

[bartgrefte]

Received mine today! At the start there was all good, but after 30 minutes or so, the wifi did not respond, I tried to switched on and off and restart the PineTab, but the problem wasn't solved; finally I did a full recovery and that seemed to correct the wifi issue. If it occurs me again, I will make a post, with what I have tried.

Same here, was checking the (absence of) wifi/network settings in the GUI, suddenly connection gone and couldn't find networks anymore. On the commandline I got

RTNETLINK answers : Operation not possible due to RF-kill


after

sudo ip link set dev wlan0 up
Fixed the problem by doing


sudo nmcli radio wifi off
sudo nmcli radio wifi on


sudo reboot

got mine too and the overall impression so far is quite good for an early adopter version.

is there anything to be done (switched on, special key comibinations or similar) to enable the backlight on the keyboard? if not then mine seems to be broken as there is no backlight at all by default - in that case how is the procedure to get it exchanged?

best wishes - hexdump

The button with the pinecone (or whatever it is) and the right control button.



Besides a couple of things that were already mentioned, I also ran into something.


During the 1st start I was asked to enter a password for the lock screen, didn't enter one. That resulted in the ability to use sudo without password, a warning that the two are linked together would've been nice.



Another thing I ran into: I can't get the screen to rotate, it's stuck in landscape, doesn't matter if I turn the rotate-lock setting on or off.