Difference between revisions of "PinePhone"

The PinePhone is a smartphone created by Pine64, capable of running mainline Linux and supported by many partner projects. The BraveHeart Edition was the first publicly-available version of the phone, though it came without a fully functional OS (factory test image) and was geared specifically towards tinkerers and hackers. Its successor is the Community Edition, which is expected to be shipped in May 2020 and will be available for at least five years.

== First time installation (BraveHeart Edition) ==

From the factory the battery has a sticker on it that isolates the battery from the phone. The battery '''will not''' charge until this is removed.

After unboxing remove the back panel. Then remove the battery and peel off the clear plastic sticker below it that isolates the charging contact. Then replace the battery. See [[PinePhone#Battery|Battery]] for more information.

If you power on the phone the factory test image will boot. RTL8723CS (WiFi modem) will fail unless there is a WiFi network in range for it to see and the battery is charged. EG25 will fail until battery is charged.

By default there is no true OS image installed on BraveHeart phones. An SD card with a bootable image needs to be inserted into the phone. See section 12 below for a list of OS options. Note that the SD and SIM sockets are stacked on each other. The SD slot is the "shallower" socket and the SIM card goes in the "deeper" socket.

Some videos that illustrate the process:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACcxegtDVBI Excellent first time guide video from Rob Braxman Tech]

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0FMW72_OYcI Flash an OS to microSD card video from Rob Braxman Tech]

The USB-C can be used to power the device, and offers USB2 host and OTG possibilities, and also can make use of the USB-C capability to integrate HDMI signals. Some USB-C hubs are available that offer power throughput, USB connection, HDMI port and Ethernet connection. The driver that would make this connection available is not supported at this time.

The UART is 115200n8

'''Note''': the EG25 modem and RTL8723CS Wifi/bluetooth do not work without battery power, even if you are supplying enough power to the PinePhone with USB-C.

There is a document about using the modem from January 18th 2020 by user ''megi'' [https://megous.com/dl/tmp/modem.txt here]. The script at the end to disable the modem before power off is pretty essential to avoid corrupting your modem's flash memory.

To check if the PinePhone is supported on your carrier:

Some phone operating systems may not have support for accessing your voicemail by holding down the 1 key. If you are in Canada and using rogers or a rogers associated carrier (such as Chatr), you can access your voice mail by calling an external number, see: https://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/913346-Rogers-GSM-Voicemail-Retrieval-Numbers

In America, AT&T also has support for accessing your voicemail via an external phone number: https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1009101/

For tested APN settings see [Pinephone APN Settings].

* The self test may fail if the battery charge is too low.

 

The [[PinePhone Software Release]] page has a complete list of currently supported phone-optimized Operating System images that work with the PinePhone as well as other related software information. As soon as other general Linux distributions ship with kernel V5.7, they will also be able to run unmodified on the device.

=== Detailed Usage Instructions ===

If you flash a 4GB image distribution (such as phosh+debian) to your eMMC, your eMMC will only have a 3.7G partition on it. To use the entire 14.7G on the eMMC, run the following commands:

Replace X with your drive's name. Replace Y with the partition you resized in cfdisk.