Free Stuff Update, September 2019–December 2019

September 2019

In September, we gave Chuck McManis a GreatFET One to experiment with. He owes us an update!

Paul wrote to us from his shed in County Kildare to ask us for a few Throwing Star LAN Tap Kits to teach his kids how to solder.

Way back in the Before Times, the organizers of the WOPR Summit 0x01 asked us to contribute a couple of GreatFET Ones for a hardware hacking booth. They planned to let attendees use the GreatFET Ones to run through some hands-on demos, then give them to the most passionate experimenters. That was a GreatPlan,...

August update: getting into a rhythm and not slowing down

elementary OS 6 Odin on Pinebook Pro - image via Alan Pope

I am currently traveling and have a limited amount of time to write, so I’d like to apologize in advance for not covering all topics and not answering outstanding answering questions that some of you are waiting to hear about. I also had less time to review chat backlogs, tweets, the forum and other information sources, and in result it is possible that I missed some information which ought to be covered.

I’d also like to thank JF for covering the PineTime progress leading up to the early adopters edition...

Invitation to Play Along

Image from: Дмитрий Куртуков - Keyboard for PinePhone

We are currently in talks with a number of hardware vendors regarding a Nokia N900-style, slide-out-design keyboard for the PinePhone. They’ll have to produce mock-ups or prototypes for us to consider in the next few weeks. The requirements specify that the new device needs to:

We are simultaneously also exploring a gamepad for the PinePhone. The criteria we’re seeking in a gamepad are...

All about the PineTab (Update)

This is a supplementary post to this month’s Community Update - if you haven’t read this month’s news, then I suggest you go back and have a read since we’ve had a handful of interesting announcements. Regarding the PineTab, I am happy to let you know that production is well under way and we are mostly on schedule with the manufacturing and shipping processes. To be precise, we are just a week behind the original schedule; the cause of the delay is our decision to change the LCD panel driver (or perhaps more accurately, we were convinced to exchange the...

Pinebook Pro pre-orders open with shipping in August 2020.

Hello everyone,

I’m sure many of you will be happy to hear that the next round of Pinebook Pro pre-orders have now opened. This production-run is expected to ship in late August, 2020. Both ISO and ANSI keyboards are available. If the Pinebook Pro is something you’ve been waiting for,  then click the button below.

In case you missed it, we’ve had some big announcements earlier this month.

Have a lovely day and a great start to the week!

Go to store

July Update: biggest update in months!

I cannot remember the last time I had this much to report. With so many announcements and highlights, I ran out of time and didn’t cover a handful of topics that happened this month. If I find the time, I’ll make a complimentary post later this month to cover the outstanding topics. Before we get into it, I’d also like to thank JF for his contribution to the text.

The big announcement of the month is that we’re introducing the PinePhone Convergence Package and that postmarketOS Community Edition (CE) pre-orders open today. The Convergence Package features a PinePhone with 3GB of...

Michael "mickeyl" Lauer: Feeling like Don Quixote

For some years now, I have been feeling like Don Quixote fighting against windmills. This is a multidimensional feeling that has its roots in both personal and professional circumstances. With regards to personal issues, I won't go into details as I want to keep this blog free from politics, society, and economics. With regards to professional circumstances, something that bugs me a lot is that I seem to engage in fighting wars that can't be won. Free software lost a lot of wars, most notably though in the mobile sector. As I have complained more than once before, over the...

June Update: postmarketOS CE PinePhone, Shipping & PINE64 Cluster

Hello everyone! It has been a really busy time for us here at PINE64 as we’re working hard to deliver outstanding PinePhone UBports Community Edition and Pinebook Pro shipments. The big news of this month is that we’re excited to announce that a postmarketOS Community Edition PinePhone will be available for pre-order early next month. 

There are a lot of topics to cover this month, so let’s get to it.

This month’s TL;DR

ROCKPro64 Cluster Move June 5-10

The process of moving our end-user services to the ROCKPro64 cluster will be taking place in the coming days (5-10 June). I am not going to pretend like this is the best time for the move to be taking place, since it is not. Many users are relying on our infrastructure for information and community support, particular now that people are receiving their devices and many more are waiting for their units to ship. But things are what they are, and we have a strict deadline we need to adhere to.

In practice, this means that at different times during this...

Welcome New Community Members!

With thousands of Pinebook Pro laptops and PinePhone smartphones shipping in the next days and weeks, I felt that a short introductory blog post aimed at newcomers was in order. To this end, the primary purpose of this entry is to give you an overview of all the resources at your disposal. 

You can follow the shipping progress of both devices in a dedicated PINE64 forum thread. 

I will update the thread on a need-be basis as new information becomes available. Support and Info teams receive the same status updates that I post on the forum, so...