PineTab

Warning: IMPORTANT INFORMATION for Early Adopters - please CLICK HERE - some known issues are listed there

The PineTab is a 10" tablet created by Pine64.

Specifications

• Dimensions: 11mm x 175mm x 260mm (Thickness, Width, Height)
• Weight: 575g (Tablet alone)
• Build: Plastic
• Storage:
  • 64GB of internal eMMC storage
  • MicroSD slot, bootable
  • M.2 SSD slot, supports SATA and USB devices only, not NVME (optional)
• Cameras: 2Mpx Front, 5Mpx Rear
• SOC: Allwinner A64 Quad Core
• CPU: 4x ARM A53 1.152GHz
• GPU: Mali 400 MP2
• RAM: 2GB LPDDR3
• I/O: HD Video Out (Mini HDMI), Micro USB 2.0 OTG, USB 2.0 A host, 3.5mm Headphone/Mic combo,
• Network:
  • WiFi (802.11b/g/n, 2.4GHz only)
  • Bluetooth 2.1
  • M.2 LTE / Cell MODEM card, (optional, and takes place of optional M.2 SSD)
• Display:
  • Size: 10.1 inches (257mm) diagonal
  • Type: HD IPS capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
  • Resolution: 1280x800, 16:10 ratio
    
• Attachments/Accessories: Magnetically attached keyboard (optional)
• Battery: 6000MAh (6Ah)
• Misc. features:
  • Volume rocker and home button
  • Speakers and Microphone
  • 2.5mm OD 0.7mm ID DC Jack Power (5V 2A) Port

Keyboard

Overview: The PineTab detachable keyboard features a full function row, FN key functionality, meta key (where the Windows key would be) and all of the keys you need for daily use.

FN keys:: Pause/play (F2), Stop (F3), Previous(F4), Next(F5), Music (F6), Mail (F7), Home (F8), Mute (F9), Vol- (F10), Vol+ (F11), Disable touchpad (F12), NumLock (Insert), Scroll Lock (Delete), PgUp (Up Arrow), PgDn (Down Arrow), Home (Left Arrow), End (Right Arrow), Digital Numpad (7,8,9,0,U,I,O,P,J,K,L,;,M,.,/)

Versions

• "pinetab-dev": development version sent to ~100 developers. This one is like the Early Adopter version, but has a different display panel.
• Early Adopter: the first hardware revision of the PineTab, which shipped to customers.

The insides of the PineTab

PineTab board information, schematics and certifications

• PineTab mainboard schematic:
  • PineTab mainboard Released Schematic ver 1.2
  • PineTab mainboard component placement ver 1.2 - Top View
  • PineTab mainboard component placement ver 1.2 - Bottom View
• PineTab keyboard schematic:
  • PineTab keyboard and Pinebook (Pro) keyboard using same controller and from same engineering source
  • PineTab Keyboard Schematic
  • PineTab keyboard firmware code
  • PineTab Keyboard Controller Datasheet

• PineTab certifications:
  • PineTab FCC Certificate
  • PineTab CE RED Certificate
  • PineTab ROHS Test Report

Datasheets for components and peripherals

• Allwinner A64 SoC information:
  • Allwinner A64 SoC brief introduction
  • Allwinner A64 SoC Data Sheet V1.1 (Official Released Version)
  • Allwinner A64 SoC User Manual V1.0 (Official Release Version)

• X-Powers AXP803 PMU (Power Management Unit) information:
  • AXP803 PMIC datasheet

• LPDDR3 (178 Balls) SDRAM:
  • Artmem LPDDR3 datasheet

• eMMC information:
  • PINE64 eMMC module schematic
  • PINE64 USB adapter for eMMC module V2 schematic
  • PINE64 USB adapter for eMMC module PCB in JPEG
  • 64GB SanDisk eMMC Datasheet

• CMOS camera module information:
  • OV5640 5MP CMOS Image Sensor SoC for Rear Module datasheet
  • GC2145 2MP CMOS Image Sensor SoC for Front Module datasheet

• LCD touch screen panel information:
  • GOODiX GT9271 Capacitive Touch Controller datasheet
  • PineTab GT9271 Capacitive Touch Controller configuration file

• Lithium battery information:

• WiFi/BT module information:
  • RTL8723BS/RTL8723CS specification

Operating Systems

The PineTab will automatically boot from microSD if a bootable card is inserted. Although it is technically possible to use any ARM distro (because the PineTab uses the mainline kernel), only few of them will actually be usable on Early Adopters PineTab, due to specifics of working with LCD panel. Among those listed all except for postmarketOS have working builds.

UBPorts

The UBPorts Ubuntu Touch is what was preinstalled on the PineTab Early Adopters batch.

It can update itself in System Settings, and also a jenkins daily build can be downloaded at this updated address for the latest daily image:

https://ci.ubports.com/job/rootfs/job/rootfs-pinetab-systemimage/

The last stable builds are also listed and appear to be updated every few weeks.

It should be noted that as of 20th January the latest stable/release candidate and development builds still lacked Bluetooth, Rotation and had the same issues with online accounts etc

Online accounts access have a fix for Google accounts here https://github.com/rubencarneiro/account-plugins/releases

There are however significant updates to the original pinetab image (without the issues above)

The old image appears to be deprecated here here

In the event that WiFi fails to connect, the USB port can be used with an appropriate dongle to connect for internet using ethernet cable.

postmarketOS

File:PostmarketOS-logo.png postmarketOS extends Alpine Linux to run on smartphones and other mobile devices.

It offers various user interfaces (Phosh, Plasma Mobile, Sxmo, Plasma Desktop, Gnome 3, Kodi, XFCE4, ...). As of writing, official images are provided with Phosh and Plasma Mobile. The official images come in two flavors, either as demo image to try out postmarketOS, or with the installer.

When using the installer images (recommended), it is possible to:

• encrypt your installation
• install from the SD card to eMMC

Power users may also create their own image with the distribution's install and development tool pmbootstrap.

Find links to the latest images and installation instructions in the postmarketOS wiki.

Arch Linux ARM

Arch Linux ARM with Phosh as the UI selection, maintained by the DanctNIX community.

The latest image can be downloaded here

Manjaro ARM

The PineTab "Early Adopter" edition is currently not supported by ManjaroARM.

Older Manjaro images with several different environments, including Phosh and Plasma, are available for the "Dev" pre-release but not working on "Early Adopters" PineTab can be downloaded here

Mobian

Mobian is a project providing Debian images for mobile devices.

PineTab images can be downloaded here. Password is 1234

Sailfish OS

There is an early Alpha build available here thanks to PeperJohnny: https://forum.pine64.org/member.php?action=profile&uid=15246

http://peperjohnny.org/dl/sfos_alpha2.img.gz

There is a forum discussion with a description on how to compile and build your own here:

http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11850

Many things are still broken but Bluetooth, Audio, Rotation and Keyboard are working on the 2nd Alpha

Installation instructions

For instructions on how to install the operating systems to the eMMC or microSD card see PinePhone Installation Instructions. The information is almost the same for the PineTab, as it is a very similar device. Do not try to use the PinePhone images though, use the PineTab images linked above.

Testing

To test an OS, just flash its image onto an microSD card, plug it into PineTab, and reboot. Note that USB stick won't work. Also note that you need to "flash", not just copy the file onto the card. Also remember that you need to unpack image file if it's packed!

You can do it using Ubuntu Touch installed on the PineTab! For now, only Mobian is supported by the guide below.

• First, make sure you have enough free disk space and empty Downloads directory on the PineTab (while not strictly necessary, empty Downloads dir will simplify your typing. You can just move all files from there to another directory).
• Turn off Sleep when idle in the settings. Settings > Battery > Sleep when idle: Never
• Go to the Mobian link above and download compressed image (the one ending with .img.gz) - usual recommendation is to download latest, i.e. lowest one.
• Open terminal and type this in it:

 cd Downloads
 ls

• It should show you the name of the file you've just downloaded
• This file is compressed, so first you need to uncompress it. Type this into terminal:

 gunzip *.gz && echo done

• This command will take some time (you won't see any progress until it's done). It either will succeed (and print "done") and fail (and print why).
• Now, let's have a look at disks. Type this into terminal:

 lsblk

• It should show you a tree of disks and their partitions. If you don't have microSD card inserted yet, all of them begin with mmcblk2. Also, some of them have something in the "MOUNTPOINT" column
• Insert microSD card into PineTab. Note that all information on it will be deleted, so don't insert one with valuable information on it!
• type `lsblk` into terminal again.
• Note that now tree of disks has one or more new entries - starting with mmcblk0 - that's partitions of your microSD card.
• Confirm that size of mmcblk0 is close to size of the microSD card, and all lines starting with mmcblk0 have empty "MOUNTPOINT" column.
• now type this:

 sudo dd if=`ls` of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M status=progress

• It will take some time, depending on speed of your microSD card and size of image file
• Now, reboot your PineTab - type this into terminal:

 sudo reboot

• PineTab should boot from the microSD you've just flashed

Tips and tricks

Reset

If your PineTab is in unknown state or doesn't want to start. Press power button for 7-8s. It makes a sound and you know it's totally off. 3 seconds after, power button again for 2-3s and it will start to boot. - thanks @Aperricio on IRC for this hint

Display rotated 90° on Arch ARM

With the following command you can turn the display to landscape:

• echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/class/graphics/fbcon/rotate

This command does not persist a reboot.

External Links

• The PineTab on the Pine64 store
• The PineTab section of the Pine64 forums