pine64 News - Page 8 of 15 - CNX Software

July 16, 2020July 16, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Pinephone “Community Edition: PostmarketOS” Launched with 3GB RAM, 32GB Flash, USB-C Hub

After PinePhone “BraveHeart Edition” with any OS pre-installed introduced at the end of last year, Pine64 launched PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” with Ubuntu Touch last April, and now the company is taking pre-orders for Pinephone “Community Edition: PostmarketOS with Convergence Package”. Besides using a different operating system, the new PinePhone also got a hardware upgrade with 3GB RAM and 32GB flash instead of the 2GB/16GB configuration from earlier models. Due to the changes and the addition of a USB-C dock for convergence, the price has also gone up from $149.99 to $199.99 with shipping scheduled to start at the end of August. If you don’t need the extra memory, storage, and convergence package, you can still pre-order PinePhone with postmarketOS for $149.99. PinePhone “Community Edition: PostmarketOS with Convergence Package” specifications: SoC – Allwinner A64 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.2 GHz with Arm Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 3GB […]

July 15, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

GloDroid Brings Android 10 OS to Raspberry Pi 4, Orange Pi SBC’s, PinePhone, and PineTab

The community of developers working on software for single board computers often prefer to focus on Linux support, as companies will often provide Android firmware images. But those Android OS images are often not maintained at all, so we’ve seen some projects like the past such as H3droid bringing a better Android OS to Allwinner H3 and H2+ boards and devices. The project is still using Android 4.4 KitKat and that’s getting old with some apps like the latest version of Kodi not working anymore. But a new project has just been brought to my attention with GloDroid leveraging AOSP to bring Android 10 to various Allwinner based boards and platforms, as well as Raspberry Pi 4B. List of supported Allwinner hardware: Allwinner H3 (32-bit) based – Orange Pi Plus 2 SBC, Orange Pi Plus 2E board, Orange Pi PC Allwinner H5 (64-bit) based – Orange Pi Prime, Orange Pi […]

July 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Debian based Mobian Linux OS Brings Librem 5 Phosh Shell to Pinephone

2020 is the year of the Linux phone. Sort of… At least, we now have smartphones that ships with Linux thanks to PinePhone and Librem 5, and several Linux mobile operating systems with Ubuntu Touch based UBPorts, postmarketOS, and others. Mobian is another Linux distribution which as its name implies is based on Debian and targets mobile devices. Interestingly, the project relies on Purism Phosh phone shell/user interface used in Librem 5, but the first Mobian image has been released for PinePhone with plans for PineTab and Librem 5 support coming later. Mobian supports a nice list of apps include Chromium, Firefox ESR, Calls, Files, Telegram messaging app, MPV media player, GNOME 2048, and more 3D graphics works, you can make phone calls, browse the web, and use GPS/GNSS applications, but it’s still work in progress as for example, USB and the camera does not work, the phone may take […]

June 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

PineTab 10.1″ Linux tablet Launched for $99.99 with UBPorts OS

As expected, Pine64 PineTab Linux tablet with Allwinner A64 processor, 2GB RAM, and a 10.1″ touchscreen display has just launched for $99.99 or $119.98 with a detachable backlit keyboard on Pine64 Store. Note those are pre-orders with shipping scheduled for the end of July. PineTab won’t shatter performance records with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-400MP GPU, 2GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash, but it’s one of the rare Linux tablets on the market, and certainly the most affordable. The tablet offers a decent set of features too with a 10.1″ 720p capacitive display support for M.2 SATA SSD, Mini HDMI output, front-facing, and rear cameras, built-in WiFi and optional 4G LTE via the M.2 socket. It also comes with a 6,000 mAh battery that should be good for many hours. PineTab also leverages all the software work done since the launch of Pine A64 board in 2016 including mainline U-boot […]

June 8, 2020April 15, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linux 5.7 Released – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS and RISC-V Architectures

OK… I’m a bit late on that one. Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.7 last week: So we had a fairly calm last week, with nothing really screaming “let’s delay one more rc”. Knock wood – let’s hope we don’t have anything silly lurking this time, like the last-minute wifi regression we had in 5.6.. But embarrassing regressions last time notwithstanding, it all looks fine. And most of the discussion I’ve seen the last week or two has been about upcoming features, so the merge window is now open and I’ll start processing pull requests tomorrow as usual. But in the meantime, please give this a whirl. We’ve got a lot of changes in 5.7 as usual (all the stats look normal – but “normal” for us obviously pretty big and means “almost 14 thousand non-merge commits all over, from close to two thousand developers”), So the appended shortlog is only […]

May 18, 2020May 18, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

PineTab Linux Tablet Coming Soon for $100. Watch an Ubuntu Touch Demo in the Meantime

PineTab Linux Tablet with Detachable Keyboard

People have been trying to launch Linux tablets for years from PenPod 700 to Jolla Tablet, or more recently NTablet. You may not know or remember about those, as Linux tablets that actually shipped never really gained traction. But in early 2019, Pine64 started to mention development work on PineTab, an Allwinner A64 powered BSD/Linux tablet, and the company/community is really good at developing low-cost hardware and providing decent firmware support, so hopes were high. After COVID-19 related delay, Pine64 has now announced the first PineTab tablets would go for pre-order at the end of the month for $99. PineTab specifications: SoC – Allwinner A64 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Arm Mali-400 MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 RAM Storage – 64GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot, M.2 slot for SATA SSD Display – 10″ MiPi 720p Capacitive LCD Video output – Mini HDMI up to 4K @ 30 Hz […]

April 6, 2020April 6, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Rosetta@Home Now Supports 64-bit Arm SBC’s and Servers in the Fight against COVID-19

Folding@Home and Rosetta@Home projects aim to perform biomedical research using the computing power of volunteers. Basically, you just need to install a program on your computer, and it will use idle computing power to perform complex calculations without slowing down your computer as long as you are not short in RAM. The projects are now working on COVID-19 to understand how SARS-CoV-2 protein is structured which could help find a cure. The programs have been available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 targets for years, but very recently Rosetta@Home has been made available for 64-bit ARM targets so people can also run BOINC program on Arm Linux SBCs such as Raspberry Pi 4, NVIDIA Jetson Nano, or Rock64, or even powerful Arm servers to help with Rosetta@Home project’s COVID-19 research. As explained in an article on miniNodes, you’ll need a board with at least 2GB […]

April 2, 2020July 14, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” Linux Phone Launched with Ubuntu Touch

PinePhone “BraveHeat” Limited Edition Linux smartphone launched last November as promised for $149.99. As the codename implied, it was for the enthusiasts as the phones that were part of that product batch may have had some defects, and came without an operating system, meaning the users had to flash the firmware themselves. But there’s now a new edition, namely PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” pre-loaded with UBports with Ubuntu Touch featuring Lomiri user interface. The specifications are exactly the same with an Allwinner A64 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, a 5.95″ display with 1440×720 resolution, and 4G LTE cellular connectivity. The only difference is that Ubuntu Touch is preloaded to the device, and the back of the phone should have a marking showing you purchased UBports Edition. What should be noted is that it’s still not considered as a consumer device, as UBports is still beta, and the […]