User talk:Daniel972
My Pinephone B.E. First impressions + Charge attempt.
My new Pinephone unlike the replacement screen I received by mail, is clean and without scratches and peaces of sand under the protection film. I notice that the screen protector that is fitted in an arbitrary angle towards the LCD is much narrower than the screen itself. I try the soft cover I received and it doesn't reach up to the glass edge, leaving the LCD completely unprotected in a fall. The soft case hase a loose fit and gives a feel like the phone might slip out any second. The hard case has a much better fit, but doesnt protect the LCD either.
Trying to be a good beta tester I read the guick start guide, where the claim is that you need a 15W+ charger which is much beefier than I have seen for Li Ione batteries of this calibre. The best I have is the Fully charged 10000 mAh Power Bank that I regularly use for my Galaxy J7. I attach the red USB-C cord that came with the Pine phone.
Because of bad previous experiences, and because of failing to understand the philosophy behind Manjaro and K desktop , I avoid pressing the ON button.
Also I turn off all the DIP switches and release the tab from the battery. Then I connect the charger. Now my expected outcome of plugging a charger to a new electronic device is to see a (yellow?) charging LED light up in a steady blinking manor. The LED color red in steady shine to me generally indicate serious malfunction of some sort.
The outcome: First a few seconds of nothing. Then a steady shining red LED. for a few seconds. After that the phone vibrates as if to say. Hi this is a Samsung Booting. The LED changes color to yellowish and then goes out while I chockingly watch the ugly white K Desktop animation appear on a black LCD background. After a few seconds of this a Samsungish home screen background appears with the words "welcome" printed over an arrow to click on.
This is where I turn the phone of by forcefully holding the power button in for a bout 5 seconds.
I repeat the procedure once more with the same boot-up result. To confirm that this is general boot behavior, I also press the power button without the charger plugged in. Pine64 claims to only assure warranty on hardware and not on software. According to nightly Telegram messaging battery charging is not performed with a micro controller, but part of the Operating system distros, and we all know the challenges that they are all facing at the moment. Also apparent accordingly: If no OS image is present then Battery will not charge. If battery is empty. and no OS is there. the phone will appear as faulty. I fail to understand how a Pine64 can leave the battery charging of a development phone with an arbitrary OS boot up to whoever decides is the coolest way to charge it. Isnt the hardware all supposed to be part of the same package?
Edit as of May 17 -21: Devs say Battery charging is done through a circuit called anx 78xx or similar that quietly charges your phone even without OS, so its only a LED notiication that is missing. This is still a firmware bug, but since it is one bug of many, it will probably fall to bottom of a todo list.