PINE64 PinePhone Pro (pine64-pinephonepro)

The PinePhone Pro is the second version of the PinePhone, adding in an rk3399 SoC just like the other Pro-series products from PINE64. If you have a Developer Edition, make sure to read PINE64 PinePhone Pro Development.

Contributors

 * MartijnBraam
 * ollieparanoid

Installing Tow-Boot on the SPI
Since 2022-03, the supported way to run postmarketOS on the PinePhone Pro is with Tow-Boot flashed to the SPI. See this post for reasoning. Once installed, the plan is to upgrade Tow-Boot from within postmarketOS (and other distributions) through fwupd, though that is not yet implemented.

Explorer Edition / Development Edition
While we expect that future revisions of the PinePhone Pro will come with Tow-Boot pre-installed, you will need to install it yourself for the Explorer Edition and Development Edition.

Download the latest Tow-Boot release for the PinePhone Pro from the releases page, then follow the "Installing to SPI" instructions in the official manual.

If you have the Developer Edition, one way to get it to boot from SD card in order to install Tow-Boot is nuking the factory AOSP installation.

From a pre-built image (easy method)
The most straight-forward way of installing postmarketOS to the PinePhonePro is downloading an image and copying it to an SD card. If you downloaded an installer image, you can now install postmarketOS to either the eMMC or the SD card. It's also possible to optionally encrypt the installation with the installer. If you downloaded a regular image, you can directly run an unencrypted postmarketOS from the SD card.

Download the image you want to install from images.postmarketos.org and copy it to an SD card:

After that, unplug the microSD card from your PC, put it in your PinePhone Pro. Turn it on, and wait until Tow-Boot lets the phone vibrate for the first time. Press the volume down button, until shortly after it vibrated for the second time. The LED color will change to aqua, and stay in this color for a few more seconds with a black screen. Then the postmarketOS loading screen should boot up. If the LED is blinking, then boot from SD failed.

eMMC
Run  on your PC to see available storage devices. Connect your PinePhone Pro to your PC with an USB cable. Turn it on, and wait until Tow-Boot lets the phone vibrate for the first time. Press the volume up button, until shortly after it vibrated for the second time. The LED color will change to blue, indicating that it is now in USB Mass Storage mode.

Run  again and note which device appeared, this is the eMMC of your PinePhone Pro. Now perform the same installation steps as for SD card below, but specify the path to your PinePhone's eMMC as. When done, hold the power button for 5 seconds. The PinePhone Pro should reboot into the postmarketOS installation (without pressing a volume button during boot, eMMC is default).

SD card
After that, unplug the microSD card from your PC, put it in your PinePhone Pro. Turn it on, and wait until Tow-Boot lets the phone vibrate for the first time. Press the volume down button, until shortly after it vibrated for the second time. The LED color will change to aqua, and stay in this color for a few more seconds with a black screen. Then the postmarketOS loading screen should boot up. If the LED is blinking, then boot from SD failed.

Serial console
The PinePhone Pro has the standard PINE64 serial port in the headphone connector, it's activated by the 6th contact on the DIP switch. If the switch is on then the headphone connector is in audio mode, if it's off then it's in UART mode.

The uart is 1500000n8

The pinout for the serial connector on the headphone jack is:


 * Tip: RX
 * Ring: TX
 * Sleeve: GND

The serial connection is 3.3V

You can also buy the debug cable from PINE64 Store. The store cable uses a 4 ring plug, as seen in the PDF, but a 3 ring plug works just as well.

Hardware switches
There's a 6 contact DIP switch on the back of the phone underneath the back cover. The 6 switches are for enabling/disabling hardware components. The switch has tiny numbers 1-6 beneath the contacts, moving the contact up sets that contact on.

Expansion port
There is a 2x3 grid of pogo pins on the back of the PinePhone for connecting a back cover with extra hardware like an extended battery case or a keyboard case. The pinout for this connector:

The VBUS pin is powered by USB and is 5V. The second power pin is VBAT, which connects to the battery voltage. The I2C and interrupt lines have pull-ups on the phone side. The I2C lines are pulled up to 3V3 by the phone.

Battery fully drained bootloop
When the pinephone pro's battery is fully drained, it will go into a boot loop. If you have not installed tow-boot, follow the instructions on the Pine64 wiki to recover from this battery drained state:

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro#The_battery_is_fully_drained

If tow-boot is installed, follow the following procedure to recover from a battery fully drained bootloop:


 * 1) Remove any microSD card from the phone
 * 2) Remove the battery
 * 3) Reinsert the battery
 * 4) Plug the phone into power charger while holding volume up

The phone will have a blue led lit and is charging. Leave the phone charging overnight.