Is there any risk in plugging the PinePhone into a powered Thunderbolt dock?
#1
I have a Dell TB16 dock at work and thought of a use case for it with my Pinephone, but since the Thunderbolt connection is normally used for powering a laptop and replacing a 130W, 19.5V power supply, I'm hesitant to plug it into my phone. This means the phone would have to negotiate the dock down to a supported voltage (if the dock hardware allows it) or reject charging at all.

Is there any realistic chance that this would damage the phone, or should it be fine?
#2
In theory it shouldn't damage anything. It should be using the USB Power Delivery standard, so shouldn't supply >5V without negotiating it with the device. Having said that it probably won't actually charge - see https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/anx7688.html which has more info on issues with Power Delivery at the moment. I'm not sure how much of what's detailed there has made it into which distros so far.
#3
(10-27-2020, 11:00 AM)wibble Wrote: In theory it shouldn't damage anything. It should be using the USB Power Delivery standard, so shouldn't supply >5V without negotiating it with the device. Having said that it probably won't actually charge - see https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/anx7688.html which has more info on issues with Power Delivery at the moment. I'm not sure how much of what's detailed there has made it into which distros so far.
Interesting. I gave it a shot today and it actually did charge the phone, but none of the peripherals connected to the dock worked. I was under the mistaken impression that Thunderbolt was an optional protocol for communicating over USB-C, but it looks like on the TB16 in particular it's the only protocol supported.

I had the chance to try it on a WD19TB dock, which is backward compatible with non-Thunderbolt devices, and on that one the peripherals worked and I got a cursor on the phone screen. There were two monitors connected, one to HDMI and one to DisplayPort, and only the HDMI monitor was detected. Even though it was detected in software, the monitor itself never came out of sleep mode or displayed anything.


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Pinephone not booting, always vibrating alexander12 7 3,773 11-22-2023, 06:46 PM
Last Post: Scary Guy
  Multiple issues with the Pinephone MTXP 11 481 11-17-2023, 07:09 AM
Last Post: MTXP
  Are you using the Pinephone as your daily driver? jro 153 93,967 10-27-2023, 12:53 AM
Last Post: gregb49
  Pinephone on Verizon chachi 3 396 10-09-2023, 11:26 AM
Last Post: alaraajavamma
  pinephone with lte-m chip and volte zetabeta 0 270 10-02-2023, 05:42 AM
Last Post: zetabeta
  The Pinephone pro does not turn on and installation of the OS Alexander27 1 310 09-25-2023, 02:34 PM
Last Post: Kevin Kofler
  new pinephone regular model with nano-sim slot zetabeta 0 307 09-24-2023, 12:25 AM
Last Post: zetabeta
Photo PinePhone. How to run Python/Tkinter app? Manieck71 3 610 08-24-2023, 09:13 AM
Last Post: Manieck71
  Pinephone won't boot. spha 12 1,428 08-20-2023, 02:44 AM
Last Post: spha
  pinephone texting ability goes in an out jyoung 0 468 08-05-2023, 10:15 PM
Last Post: jyoung

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)