Upgrade PineTime to InfiniTime 1.0.0

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Congratulations on receiving your new PineTime!

From the factory, it ships with InfiniTime 0.7.1, and an older bootloader. So now you're probably wondering exactly how on earth do you go about upgrading your watch to the latest and greatest version of InfiniTime - you know, that version you've seen all those great pictures, videos and reviews of. To those that of us that are developing stuff for it, its pretty easy and straightforward, but like with all technology, it is a bit tricky.

Warning: Some people ran into some issues during the update process that would temporarily make their watch unusable (display frozen). The only know workaround consists in waiting for the battery to drain completely and try again. We've never heard of PineTime that were permanently bricked, though.

In a nutshell, you need to:

1. Update InfiniTime
2. Update the bootloader
3. Install the recovery firmware

Update Process

So how do you do this? Where do you start? Well, with a sealed PineTime, your only easy option is via Over The Air (OTA) Device Firmware Update (DFU), which is done via Bluetooth. There are a couple of different ways and apps you can use to do this. If you have an Android device, you can use Gadgetbridge or NRFConnect. Otherwise, if your laptop or desktop computer has bluetooth and runs Linux, you can use Siglo. You can also use Siglo on your Pinebook Pro or Pinephone if you happen to have those devices.

The reason for installing the updates in the the specified order is because newer versions of InfiniTime have a more robust bluetooth update process, and since we're updating everything over Bluetooth, the less retries and failures from that you have the better. It will still sometimes disconnect mid update, meaning you'll need to try again, and possibly restart the watch a few times as well. And since the recovery firmware is new to the 1.0.0 version of the bootloader, it's best to update that last.

Update InfiniTime

To update the main InfiniTime app, you want to flash pinetime-mcuboot-app-dfu-1.0.0.zip.

Siglo

In Siglo, you can do this by picking the 1.0.0 tag, and flashing the aforementioned file.

Update the bootloader

To update the bootloader, you want to flash reloader-mcuboot.zip.

Using Siglo

In Siglo, you can do this by picking the 0.14.1 tag, and flashing the aforementioned file.

Install the recovery firmware

To install the recovery firmware, you want to flash pinetime-mcuboot-recovery-loader-dfu-0.14.1.zip.

Using Siglo

In Siglo, you can do this by picking the 0.14.1 tag, and flashing the aforementioned file.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes during the update process, the connection will drop, and the update will fail. Your PineTime isn't broken, most likely the bluetooth link dropped out for a moment, so just try again. If it keeps failing, try restarting the watch by holding the power button down for approximately 8 seconds. Or try with another device, just in case there are compatibility issues.

Version 1.0.0 of InfiniTime is merely the first version that was considered sufficiently feature complete and stable enough for daily use. This isn't to say there aren't still bugs present ('cause there are!). So there are a few bugs still present in the update process and the bootloader. One unfortunate bug appears to be that sometimes when the watch tries to restart after an update, the bootloader locks up, and the watch won't turn on. In this case, you will need to wait until the watch battery goes flat, in order to force the watch to reset. This will most likely involve waiting for a week, and then when you put the watch on the charge cradle, it will power up and you should be right to try again.

If you get stuck, or have any questions, join us on your preferred chat platform or on the product forum. There's usually someone available who can help, or will get back to you in a few hours.