PinePhone USB-C port and audio jack failure

[Kevin Kofler]

I am at my second PinePhone, the first one having had a hardware failure that made the modem, among other things, inoperable (and the outer parts: screen, case, buttons having been damaged enough to make a mainboard replacement not worthwhile).

So I bought this PinePhone in March 2023 from the EU Store. Sadly, this means that the compulsory EU warranty (2 years) has expired 3-4 months ago. So far, I was happy with it (and the outside is in good condition), but…

I have noticed 2 failures this week – I cannot prove that they happened simultaneously, but the coincidence seems odd:

1. The USB-C port works for charging only. The data lines appear to be completely dead. I first noticed this (a few hours ago) trying to boot into JumpDrive, to connect the PinePhone to my computer (because I wanted to back up and then replace the installed OS through USB, trying to switch from Manjaro ARM stable, last updated over a year ago, to postmarketOS 25.06). There was no way I could get the computer to detect the PinePhone. I tried 2 different cables, 3 different USB-A ports on the computer, rebooting the PinePhone several times and the computer twice, nothing helped. Then I took out the JumpDrive microSD card, booted back into the installed OS, and tried using the "convergence package" dock stick to plug in my (USB-A) notebook mouse. Nothing, no way I could get the PinePhone to see the mouse at all, either. Charging works even through the dock (using its USB-C power input), but nothing else works. One would think that this is clearly a failure of the USB-C daughter board, but…
   
2. The audio jack on the other end of the phone also stopped working. I first noticed that this Thursday. When I try to connect the PinePhone to a hardware audio mixer, or to my small home stereo, it fails to detect that there is anything plugged in and does not produce any audio output. Tried 2 different cables, 2 different ports on the audio mixer, and even another output device (my stereo), nothing worked. This time, at least, there is some output in the journal, but it sounds like a typical "bad contact" on-and-off scenario: Within 1 second, I get around 20 times:
   
   Code:

   Jul 07 00:11:26 plasma-mobile kernel: jack: irq plug-in
Jul 07 00:11:26 plasma-mobile kernel: jack: irq plug-out
   So, while the PinePhone did detect that something was plugged in, it comes and goes (and comes back and goes again), around 20 times per second.
   

There is also other bizarre behavior I have noticed lately (since around 2-3 weeks), involving the WiFi/Bluetooth chip:

• The WiFi has become much worse at keeping connections alive. Running ping commands (doing a ping every second) either from the PinePhone to somewhere else or from the computer to the PinePhone makes it better, but the WiFi used to work much better even without that workaround.
  
• Bluetooth stopped pairing successfully with one particular audio device (the same hardware audio mixer that I first tried using the audio jack with), but the PinePhone pairs successfully with other Bluetooth devices (at least a small Bluetooth receiver and my computer), and other smartphones pair successfully with the audio device that the PinePhone has trouble with. In the particular pairing that stopped working, I always get the same "br-connection-unknown" error. It used to work fine for months, then suddenly started failing around 2 weeks ago.
  

This somehow reminds me of the old PinePhone's failure, though this time the internal USB modem stays on USB just fine, it is just the external port (and some apparently unrelated hardware, for some reason) that is not working.

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The only thing I can tell for sure is that it is not a battery issue, because I have tried with the spare battery I had around and that did not solve the issue. Would have surprised me anyway, but replacing the one easily replaceable part (and with a spare ready to be tried) was worth a try. (And no, the spare I tried is not the battery from the old 2021 PinePhone, but a barely used Samsung EB-BJ700CBE I had lying around in the fridge in a waterproof freezer bag.)

[Kevin Kofler]

Does anyone here understand the schematics well enough to answer the following question? My question:
Can a single loose contact or a single failed component explain both port failures, and if yes, where would that single point of failure be?

[georgegohl888]

Looks like a deeper mainboard issue, not just the USB-C board. When both USB data and the audio jack fail, and WiFi/Bluetooth get flaky, it's likely something upstream, maybe power delivery or I/O lines on the mainboard.