Getting Frustrated

[cybercrypt13]

I received my phone over a month ago and on day 2 I removed my Verizon card in order to install my Sprint card.  The cheap plastic part that wraps around the card grabbed the tiny pins that stick up and broke one of them off.  I contacted the guys at pinephone and they informed me I needed to remove the card and send to California which I did that day.

After over a month I finally received a new motherboard for the phone and was excited to finally get it going again.  However, the board is totally dead and after trying to contact them through email they told me to come here and post to see if anyone has any ideas.  I get no lights or any other sign the board is even working at all.  The power cable is working on Android phone so would assume it should be fine on this phone and it was working fine a month ago when I was using it.

I was originally excited about being able to work on my own phone again but am starting to think I've just wasted my time and money.  Anyone have any ideas of what I can try here?

Thanks,

Glenn

[8bit]

Battery might be totally drained. May need to leave it plugged in for a few hours to slow charge.
Can you boot from a SD card with JumpDrive? JumpDrive should boot even without a battery.
https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePh..._JumpDrive

[rocket2nfinity]

Without seeing photos or having the device in front of me, it sounds like something wasn't connected back properly. Either that or there's an overtightened/loosened screw somewhere. I'd disasemble, then re-assemble and try again - assuming you are sure your battery is charged and plugged in when turning on.

Also, the new boards come with no OS installed.

[lsitongia]

Just an aside, that a SIM pin broke on my phone, too, caught on the edge of the SIM adapter frame. Quality control on those adapters doesn't seem great, in general and some have sharp edges. That leads me to conclude that this was an unfortunate design decisions from Pine64: using a micro-SIM slot when so many SIM cards used these days are nano-SIMs (do I have those size names right?). I have a Google Fi nano-SIM and I regularly move it around between iPhone, Android phone, PP, iPad, Android tab. They are all nanos.

[cybercrypt13]

Just an aside, that a SIM pin broke on my phone, too, caught on the edge of the SIM adapter frame. Quality control on those adapters doesn't seem great, in general and some have sharp edges. That leads me to conclude that this was an unfortunate design decisions from Pine64:  using a micro-SIM slot when so many SIM cards used these days are nano-SIMs (do I have those size names right?). I have a Google Fi nano-SIM and I regularly move it around between iPhone, Android phone, PP, iPad, Android tab. They are all nanos.

I unplugged battery and used power adapter only and still does nothing.  Don't think I missed anything when assembling but here is video of entire process just in case.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PhPcNFsyvo

Hopefully you see something I did wrong and I can get this going again.  I'm really disappointed I'm having so much trouble and not very impressed with customer service at the moment.  They did send me a new motherboard but it has taken a very long time and they now seem to have abandoned me completely.

Thanks for any help you guys can give me.

[cybercrypt13]

Anyone purchasing this phone at this point is a fool.  That includes me.   I am 100% behind this project in the sense that we very badly need a Linux phone, but this company is not the one to push it to us.   They do not have technical support and obviously don't have a very good design team for building it.  They sent me a faulty motherboard and then told me to come here for technical support.   I'm not sure how a user group is supposed to support an obvious hardware problem and at this point I wish they'd just send me my old broken board.  At least then I'd be able to use the thing even without a cell card.  At present I just have a literal paper weight.

I'm very disappointed in the current situation and they no longer respond to any of my emails.  It appears that China has for years been sending us cheap junk and this phone is no exception.

Very Very Disappointed.

[Bonesdog]

They should stop shipping out the plastic SIM card extender; as the same thing seems to have happened to me, I have a possibly broken SIM card reader because of the plastic extender not fitting/working as intended. (Pretty much defeats a huge portion of the usecase/testing case of this device when you first get it!)

I am hoping to get some sort of fix for this, but have managed to get the prongs in the right spot for the device to recognize the SIM card

[cybercrypt13]

They should stop shipping out the plastic SIM card extender; as the same thing seems to have happened to me, I have a possibly broken SIM card reader because of the plastic extender not fitting/working as intended. (Pretty much defeats a huge portion of the usecase/testing case of this device when you first get it!)

I am hoping to get some sort of fix for this, but have managed to get the prongs in the right spot for the device to recognize the SIM card

I would suggest you try to fix yourself.  I now have a totally bricked phone and can't do anything about it.  Total waste of money and time and the  Pinestore seems to care less as they have done nothing to help with the situation.  They don't even reply to emails any longer.

Very disappointed.