Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!
I’ve been interested in having the basics of a smartphone again for a while now. I was planning on diving into Android Debug Bridge for this month’s large project, but my PinePhone showed up again after a couple years. For the unaware, the PinePhone is basically a Linux computer in the profile of a smartphone.
My PinePhone is the second edition released: it understandably has early adopter issues like slow load times and needing to about live on a charger when not in use. It came preloaded with Ubuntu Touch; while I could see myself using it (should it actually work), I’m not particularly impressed. I need text, call, and picture capabilities. It’s not able to do any of those right now.
I installed my current SIM card. Now, this SIM was sold locked to an LG Stylo 5 smartphone for the duration of the initial contract (now expired). My PinePhone sees the name of my provider, but anything involving data over the cellular network escapes me for the time being. I will need to contact my mobile service provider.
Aside from mobile data, something is off with my camera app. Pair that with my mediocre response to Ubuntu Touch, and now I want to try a different OS. I’m a fan of KDE, so I went to the Pine64 PinePhone OS index [1] and downloaded/flashed one marked KDE to a microSD card (one of my good ones; rest in peace abandoned project PiCore – I’ll do better next time). I totally missed that the image was a factory test, but at least I was able to verify that both my cameras work but cellular data is still a bust.
Take 2: postmarketOS is a mobile distribution with an option for Plasma Mobile. I was tossed between multiple websites before locating the actual download link. Dolphin file viewer calculates Shasums, flashing SD cards has almost become second nature at this point, and then it’s a matter of booting for the first time.
Plasma Mobile imitates Android about as well as KDE imitates Windows. It felt almost like coming home. Response time was improved, the camera worked, and the layout felt more familiar than not. The system time zone settings were a little harder to find. Overall, it offers a bit less stability than Ubuntu Touch, but the upsides more than make up for it.
I spent a day or so with tech support. Phones these days come with multiple locks and they can often be confused for each other. There is the lock that binds the phone to its original carrier. There is the lock screen to authenticate the user. There is also the lock binding the SIM to the phone body. My phone was locked, but the SIM must have noticed it was in a strange host and blown some sort of digital fuse. I can’t say I wasn’t warned.
Takeaway
I’m mad. My phone should be technologically compatible with their network. I have the skills to self-support my local hardware, but tech support won’t work with me on the equipment beyond my control. I’m hoping it’s the fuse hypothesis and that someone in-store can service the SIM without dumping me for the sake of the phone.
Final Question
What tech support disaster have you experienced or observed?
Works Cited
“PinePhone Software Releases,”wiki.pine64.org, July 24, 2022. [Online]. Available:https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone_Software_Releases [Accessed Aug. 15, 2022].