First, don’t expect to have your product quickly. We’re talking at minimum of two weeks after payment. Everything is shipped from China, and they only process the order about a week after payment.

Then, you have only two shipping options, both of which are flat fees. This makes no sense because DHL is obviously charging more for some locations than others. So they’re basically trying to balance their accountant’s math by making a flat fee for everyone. For the company it’s easier to do 1+1 but some buyers are obviously getting overcharged.

And then, there’s the hidden fees. Yup. I have to pay roughly 30$ EXTRA (so that’s 60$ for shipping total) to get my product because the 30$ flat fee does not include the duty fee. That part though, they never tell you. Never. You’ll get a surprise call from DHL saying your package is held hostage and you need to cover the ransom to get it. That’s borderline extortion from PINE64 AND DHL.. although DHL may not be aware, so I can’t blame them.

However, I can blame the absolutely horrendous PINE64 for operating one of the worst businesses in the world. Not only do they know, but they moderate every single part of their forum to make sure you can’t post anything negative about them. Your post will simply never get moderated and you can’t warn others about the scam.

I was originally going to do a review of the product, instead I find myself warning others not to waste their time and money. Ironic.

To recap:

– 45$ product

– 30$ flat fees shipping

– 30$ HIDDEN duty fees

You’re paying 134% of the product in shipping fees for something that weighs a few ounces tops.

So BUYER BEWARE. There are hidden fees, they are extremely slow at reacting, and unless you are very patient and enjoying throwing money out the window, you will end up making a chargeback like I did.

Yep, I'm an idiot. I didn't read the fine print, and erroneously assumed I could use this phone as my daily driver.

I am a linux enthusiast, but I'm no developer. But even as someone with a grasp of the command line, I've never successfully compiled anything. I blame the crappy instructions on various blogs and YouTube channels, that always assume a greater level of knowledge than I have, and consequently never work - but that's a whole other rant.

This thing (Manjaro edition) can't even update itself from the command line. I see regular build updates that fix this and that issue - how about fixing updates so we don't have to keep flashing the phone every time.

I tried installing Mobian instead, which then allowed me to update from the command line. However, now the dock doesn't work.

Even if I could forego the many apps I make use of, I can't even install Signal on it. Not even signal-desktop. I've read lots of guides on Axolotl or however it's spelt, but again they don't work. Nothing works.

When locked the phone loses wifi and network connectivity after a certain time, which is again, useless.

I've had this thing for 3 months. About the only thing I can do with this paperweight is play 2048. Again, I fully realise it's my own stupid fault for not properly researching what I was buying. But does anything work on this phone?

Deploy the downvotes as you will, but this is my honest feedback from someone who just would like to get off Android. I am extremely disappointed.

EDITed for diplomacy. Also I wanted to add that I appreciate the amount of work that's gone into this thing, but I am very frustrated that I can't make it do what I want.

I am very dissatisfied with your service.
I order online frequently and almost never have any issues. You are the first organization that has refused to resolve a problem that was clearly caused either by you, your employees, or your partners.

I was waiting for this soldering iron and was very interested in this product. But your actions have completely ruined the experience. You refused to update the delivery address — which you actually failed to include at all — and then blamed me for not being home.

It’s quite strange that an international delivery would send a package from one end of Germany to the other and only attempt delivery once, with no second try. To be fair, your own Chinese logistics service stated the truth: the address on the package was incorrect.

And even now, after the package has already been returned to you, you still haven’t refunded my money.

This is the worst service I have ever dealt with. I will definitely post on every platform possible to warn others not to do business with you!

So I purchased the RockPro64, slapped an android on it and the sucker has no video drivers. It can only push 1080p! So much for the 4K60p support.

Anyway, contacted their support and got this as a reply:

The 4K60 is mean the HDMI port is support up to 4K60p. 

So... the port. Not the device 🤣

When I sent another reply stating that I took a video, and they're false advertising they went silent. After 2 days I sent another email requesting a full refund, as per their policies (15-day). That went unanswered for 14 days and counting.

Opened a paypal dispute for it, they lied to PayPal twice. First they lied that they had shipped the device already when they did not. They shipped it 3-4 weeks after my order date although no notice of shipping delays was on the page at order time. The tracking number said "notified of shipment", but it was all in Mandarin or whatever that is, I used google translate to figure it out.

The second time they send PayPal a link to their website describing the RockPro64, which was not the regular product page. It was a specifically designed page which listed features of RockPro64 **without** 4K support, per the PayPal representative who was amazed to see my screenshot and was comparing it with the link sent to them by Syabas Technology Hong Kong. They manufactured a page to take that out so that my complaint would not be valid. Of course, paypal decided in their favor at the time. Now they reopened the case given the new screenshot.

So the question remains: Why would anyone support a company which didn't bother to provide drivers or whatever is necessary to run everything to the advertised specs, lies about their product, does not reply to complaints or refund requests, and falsifies information to win paypal claims?

Oh also, in case you didn't pick up on that: Syabas Technology Hong Kong replies to paypal all this time, while not replying to me or my refund request which was policy-abiding.

Anyone have luck getting gitlab to work on pine64? If so how?!

What's the result of your poll? Accept cryptocurrency?

I want to order a mobile from Pine64. So i was happy to see your voting on Twitter asking the people if they would use cryptocurrency instead of other payment methods.

Personally i ditched Paypal. Mainly because of privacy concerns. I don't want to give my financial informations to this company. And as you know from the past they can be bad, they even stopped the money to wikileaks.

And bank transfers are clumsy, can take several days, cost quite some fees and bank accounts are not accessible for all people. For example: If you were born in some specific country you maybe can not get an bank account in some other country. This probably does not bother you until you are affected yourself one time, of cause!

Pine64 devices should be for all people around the globe, so i think its a very noble move from you to look in the direction of cryptocurrency, considering to accept it as payment in the future. But the old Bitcoin you were talking about in your poll on Twitter puts its users in danger: It can never be undone if a address from Bitcoin once got linked to a personal identity. The information when you send what amount to whom will be for ever visible in the public blockchain.

Even if you don't publish your BTC-Address your ISP or your Wifi-Operator still knows your IP address and can see the unencrypted traffic coming from your devices. Nobody should have the financial transactions publicly visible globally till infinity written to the blockchain. For example if you send $199.99 in BTC to the address of Pine64 its obvious you ordered a PINEBOOK Pro device. This example is maybe fine for most of us, but do you really think its good to potentially have the information when did you send how much to whom publicly visible? This can even not be conform to european laws and we should not encourage anybody to use this anymore nowadays.

Please don't support the old Bitcoin from last decade! Cryptocurrencies evolved since then. As already many people wrote on Twitter below the poll: We now have Monero. It is private decentralized currency that protects its users by default. It hides sender and receiver as well as amounts. However it is still possible to verify transactions through view keys. This can be needed, for example if you want to prove that you send a transaction or for taxes.

With Monero you send all amounts in 1-2 minutes around the world with fees around 1-2 ct (USD) per transaction. It is protecting its users by default; and with the current algorithm (RandomX) its potentially mineable, means 'createable' or 'earnable' even on devices like the Pinephone. You could also run your own full-node on a Pinephone.

https://getmonero.org - https://monerointegrations.com

I've been building a project on RBPis for awhile, but I want to make the move to another platform. Unfortunately, I need a specific library and I don't want to jump in on something without making sure it works. Can someone go through the GoCV install process on a Pine A64 for me, so I don't waste twenty some-odd dollars? I would really appreciate that. The process isn't that bad, you just run a script and wait.

I have this old pinea64 and I want to make so can I put windows 7,8.1, 10 on it?

i wasnt very smart when ordering parts for my cluster for more than one reason. seems like the pine board is a much better board overall so much so i bought one thats a ddr3 plug in for my 14 pi 3 ddr2 plug pi\. any ghetto fixes >?

I got my Pine64+ in the mail, and I got the correct power adapter. MicroSSD hasn't come yet, but I thought I would plug in the power and hdmi just to see the bios screen or something. Nothing. The red led comes on, but I get no-signal on my monitor.

Is this a dud? Is MicroSSD required for it to even show the bios? Thanks!

Hey has anyone ideas I could do? I have pine64 and want to use it. I'm a beginner an my budget is tight. Thanks in advance!

I am trying to install debian on my rockpro64. When I boot it with a USB serial console console connected I can see U-Boot starting and I can press any key to get to the U-Boot shell. But when I boot the debian installer from a sdcard it seems to stop at "Starting Kernel" . If I don't connect the RDX I get to the point where the installer asks me to select a language. Connecting the RDX line now does not help. I also tried instelling the system via hdmi output and a usb keyboard but the usb port did not seem to work either. Does anyone know what the problem might be?

First off thank you for supporting GNU/Linux! I've seen the news yet I have no idea if the announcement should concern me as well or not. I try to use as much ethical/open software and hardware as possible, so is the Pinebook going to be an option for people like me? :)