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Acer Aspire 1 A114-61 (acer-aspire1)

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Revision as of 19:17, 2 March 2023 by TravMurav (talk | contribs) (external display works fine with some hacks added)
Notice This device is Work-In-Progress and is not yet available in postmarketOS. Contact travmurav via matrix if you have questions.
Acer Aspire 1
Aspire 1 running GNOME
Aspire 1 running GNOME
Manufacturer Acer
Name Aspire 1
Codename aspire1
Released 2021
Hardware
Chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen1 (SC7180)
CPU 2x Kryo 468 Gold + 6x Kryo 468 Silver
GPU Adreno 618
Display 1920x1080 IPS
Storage 64GB
Memory 4GB
Architecture aarch64
Software
Original software Windows
Original version 10
postmarketOS
Category testing
Pre-built images no
Mainline yes
postmarketOS kernel mainline
Unixbench Whet/Dhry score 5668.0
Features
Internal storage
No data
SD card
No data
Battery
Works
Screen
Works
Keyboard
Works
Touchpad
Works
Multimedia
3D Acceleration
Works
Audio
Partial
Camera
Works
Camera Flash
No data
Connectivity
WiFi
Works
Bluetooth
Works
Miscellaneous
FDE
Works
USB-A
Works
USB OTG
Works
HDMI/DP
Works
Sensors
Hall Effect
No data
Haptics
No data
Power Sensor
No data

Acer Aspire 1 is a low-end Windows on ARM laptop, based on Snapdragon 7c Gen1, a platform that has great mainline Linux support due to some Chromebooks sharing the same platform.

Variant differences

While the most common version of the device seems to be the "WiFi" variant, an "LTE" version with 8GB ram seem to also exist.

Contributors

  • travmurav

Users owning this device

  • TravMurav (Notes: wifi, A114-61-S45P, daily use)


Installation

Disabling UEFI Secure-Boot

This device uses the standard UEFI secure-boot. The initial configuration seem to contain the keys for some Linux distributors (i.e. Canonical or Debian) but for now it's probably easiest to just disable it.

Note that the following actions may cause Windows to fail decryption if the Bitlocker was enabled.

  1. Power on the device and press F2 to enter UEFI setup.
  2. Go to the Security tab and set the maintenance password. Write it down.
  3. Go to the Boot tab and disable the Secure Boot. This option is only available if the password is set.
  4. Go back to the Security tab and remove the password by changing it to the empty string.

Installing pmOS on an external storage

You should be able to perform sdcard installation with some usb-stick as the target. Note that the laptop has no SD slot.

Highly consider making a backup of the internal storage, it seems like the recovery media is not available for this laptop.

Installing pmOS on the internal eMMC

Warning WARNING: The bootloader chain of the device is located in the same eMMC as the OS, damaging internal partition layout may make the laptop into an unrecoverable brick.

TBD

Known Issues

  • BT controller seem to crash sometimes, fixed by re-probing the related kernel modules.

See also