Doubling the PinePhone storage speed with a soldering iron | Hacker News Reader

Doubling the PinePhone storage speed with a soldering iron

tuxphones.com

201 pointscunidev60 comments

I guess the one thing this article doesn’t answer is why the default hardware configuration is for the slower transfer rate? Is there some downside to this mod?

Right, seems pretty irresponsible for the article writer to be writing to an audience that is geared towards beginners or at least people that don't understand electronics. It is irresponsible to not write about or at least try to deduce what the ramifications of doing this mod will do. And if they can't do that, I argue it would be better to stay out of the topic for writing purposes.

It's a phone, not a pacemaker. Contributions to the sum of human knowledge should be welcomed even if the person isn't "qualified", those with more to add should do so if they feel inclined.

Who's opening their phones and soldering them without a basic understanding of electronics?

What are you talking about? It’s a cell phone. And besides the world does not need to hand hold every singe scenario in case someone not smart enough comes along. Ya working with electrical mains should put out a strong warning but this is nothing. If people can not evaluate the skill level required before they do something that is on them. If someone needs to tell you taking the exposed electronics of your phone and taking a several hundred degree hot soldering iron to those electronics and then also removing parts that there is a risk you could damage something then you have a lot more to worry about then ruining a phone.

Hard disagree. No one should do anything if they don't understand the consequences. It's no one's job to baby proof the world. If someone hasn't learnt that lesson yet they might be paying looks up PinePhone price $399 to learn it.

The PinePhone is $150 with the convergence model being $200. The unreleased Pro model is $400, but this hack presumably wouldn't apply to that one.

The pro an rk3399 which deals with the MMC supplies itself so it can actually switch the voltage in software

A lot of people write SW without underestanding the consequences. See recent NPM disaster for one example. Or Firefox (UI, "features") for another example. Ok, and Solar Winds for the best example.

I wrote software without understanding the consequences. That's how I learned.

Nobody paid me to do it, sure, but I did anyway.

Yeah, all those absolute beginners with PinePhones and soldering skills. Or, maybe it isn't a problem because almost anyone who can read and understand the instructions let alone casually follow them is probably going to be OK.

If the article instead purported to show you where on the Switch you could attach a car battery using jumper cables and spit to unlock Yoshi's Island then I could see you having a point.

> If the article instead purported to show you where on the Switch you could attach a car battery using jumper cables and spit to unlock Yoshi's Island then I could see you having a point

Wait do you have a YouTube video on how I can do this?

If I did then I would be too busy recuperating to respond.

They're not. Anybody that has a soldering iron warm and that doesn't shy away from hacking on a board populated with SMD components and that makes it past the 'do this only if you feel confident with the procedure' warning is well above beginner level.

PinePhone's likely are mostly in the hands of people who have significant overlap with those in that group mentioned above rather than your average grandmother, unless she takes after Grace Hopper.

Finally, this is hacker news, which once upon a time meant that people who frequent this site knew how to make things, and there are still a few of us left. So bring on the soldering required articles.

See also the recent thread on headphones where people are complaining about non-replaceable batteries and longevity, but a minority are digging out soldering irons and replacing batteries and fixes broken devices.

Probably just a fail-safe configuration that never got adjusted after so many iterations. As I understand it the hardware is still developed by a small team and they are working on a diverse number of different platforms (PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, Pinebook, Pinebook Pro, PineTab, PineCube, PineDio - the list goes on). They tend to have their hands full just getting things working and fixing bugs.

It seems the issue is that they are trying to develop too many things.

I think this wide approach works really well with their goal of community driven development. All the hardware variety gets more people interested and more people contributing. A person who cuts their teeth on one device might be a pioneer for the next one.

I feel I'm a sucker for these devices. I love all of them =)

The pinebook pro caught my attention first (actually bought both an ANSI and ISO variants). Then the pinephone was delivered to my house. The pinepower followed shortly thereafter by the pinetime. I am anxiously awaiting for the pinenote to develop into a useful device, and I'll prolly end up getting that as well.

I've had a great experience with nearly all of the devices. The pinephone is a bit anemic power/ speed-wise for me to use it often, but I knew that going in. It still has a lot of potential and development on the software side has been fun to watch.

  > I feel I'm a sucker for these devices. I love all of them =)

I would very much love a PinePhone, but I'm married to the Samsung Note stylus. Is there any really good active stylus, that works as well as the Note? I don't need any particular app, just using a stylus on the screen for general use (clicking, swiping, keyboard, long-press) would be great.

The rubber stylii are decent for clicking, but horrible for swiping.

I reluctantly gave up on the Note series after the Note 4 due to cost. I do miss the stylus input.

That might be by design. Hardware design is expensive and investing many hours on each device is unsustainable unless you have big volumes.

They also released a .. soldering iron, named Pinecil. Apparently it's a great tool.

If anything, I expect this to use lower power. However, it won't work with some SD cards that one could possibly want to use via an eMMC breakout adapter. That's my suspicion for why they had this in a late board revision in the first place.

There is a separate microsd slot on the pinephone, why one would want to use an adapter from the semi-proprietary emmc connector to microsd is beyond me.

In the Future Improvements section on the linked blog post to the original mod it says "HS400 mode is supported by hardware but it's not currently supported by the sunxi-mmc drivers in the Linux kernel."

So it seems plausible that support for the faster HS200 mode (that's enabled by this mod) was added after the original devices shipped. Just a guess though.

If you do the mod and it causes issues, you can revert to the original DDR52 mode through software, assuming you didn't break anything while soldering.

Just off the top of my head (without doing in-depth research in the to PinePhone specs), potential gotchas:

1) The 1V8 power supply cannot cope with the additional power demand (just cause "it boots" doesn't mean it will be fine in all scenarios).

2) The SKU of the chip used cannot operate (or is not guaranteed to operate) at the higher speed + lower voltage.

3) The phone stops being EMC compliant.

A bit of research, probing and testing can answer those questions and screen for others. The PinePhone seems like it is aimed at a very technical crowd so I'm sure someone will figure it out :)

edit - formatting

This is the better article, linked from the one here:

https://izzo.pro/pinephone-vccq-mod/

The very last few lines of that page seem to say that it doesn't actually make it faster, or maybe makes it only a little faster. Anyway, not twice as fast, as promoted.

From the article:

> PinePhone 1.2 pmOS CE (convergence package) with 32GB SanDisk eMMC: before 55MB/s, after 125MB/s

> PinePhone 1.0 Braveheart edition with 16GB Kimtigo eMMC: before: 80MB/s, after 110MB/s

So this blog post covers the 1.0 hardware revision, but I just opened up mine out of curiosity and realized I have the 1.2 revision, which uses the sandisk chip, so everything is different. Not 100% sure which components need to be changed there, but it would be good to figure out the exact instructions for both types.

Only the flash chip itself is different. The board layout around that part should be the same

good to know! I was a bit confused by that at first :)

They already moddded a 1.2 here is the result:

>Here are the results on the two PinePhones I modified: [0]

    PinePhone 1.2 pmOS CE (convergence package) with 32GB SanDisk eMMC:
    before 55MB/s, after 125MB/s
    PinePhone 1.0 Braveheart edition with 16GB Kimtigo eMMC:
    before: 80MB/s, after 110MB/s

[0] https://izzo.pro/pinephone-vccq-mod/

They also wrote:

>Adding support for HS400 mode could bring speed improvements, but there is a caveat:

>From the Allwinner A64 SoC datasheet we can see that the eMMC clock is limited to 150MHz in HS200 mode and 100MHz in HS400 mode, so the speed improvements depend on whether it's higher the speed gain from HS400 or the speed penalty from the clock reduction.

Is there a more gentle guide with photos how to do it, so once can judge if this is a task that one is able to do?

Just "desolder this resistor and solder it here" does not help me to judge if it is within my soldering ability to accomplish it.

They have a picture of what appears as the same operation. I'm not confident with electronics at this level.

edit: PINE64: "Also for liability sake: we're not responsible if you break something from doing this. You have the right to mod hardware you bought, but this isn't officially supported. :)"

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/PINE64_PinePhone_(pine64-...

Looks like an 0805, that's not too bad if you have decent fine motor skills and two soldering irons. If you have enough motor control for decent handwriting you'll be fine, just don't get frustrated and dwell too long, you can practice with the irons off.

you could use an appropriate hot air station + some flux as well I think (and a good pair of tweezers designed for electronics)

Also, kapton tape is very useful if you're afraid of damaging stuff around it

I did the mod with a Pinecil and some tweezers in my kitchen table in 15 minutes. Might look hard but if you have steady hands and a $25 soldering iron you can do it without issues

I think you're off by a lot, the black square at the top left is probably a QFN-24 (i.e. ~0.5mm pin pitch), which would mean it's actually an 0402.

I agree with you, a 0805 would look pretty big there. I think some of those large caps are 0805.

The photo shows an R0402 on it. 0805 is definitely doable by a beginner. 0402 though is at the edge of what could be done without a microscope and not something I’d want to touch with beginner gear.

Ahh yeah I think you're right, I was just going by feel from what I remembered of the board.

This is the operation:

> Desolder R615 0 ohm resistor and solder it to R614, or bridge R614 with solder.

It's just a jumper! This is super easy for a beginner because you only need to desolder and then drop a blob of solder.

Yesterday I encouraged a sharp but inexperienced coworker to depopulate the automatic reset capacitor on an Arduino Nano. He was quite skeptical about the rework, so I went ahead and popped it off with a single iron tip to show him how. I then put the cap back on but offset so that it wouldn't get lost in case we wanted to put it back. I'm pretty sure it was 0402. I'm also pretty sure it was the right capacitor... :-)

I'd say it's actually easier to remove an 0402 than, say, a 1206. Since it's so small, both pads heat up to the point of melting whether you intended to or not, and then the surface tension takes away the component with the iron tip. No need for any specialized reworking equipment. I think 0805 is the sweet spot for easy hand assembly and rework, though.

You don't need two irons, you can touch the tip sideways and it'll melt both pads and the part will stick onto the tip by surface tension.

Thank you!

And uff I don't think I or my TS100 can do it. Might try though as my PinePhone is collecting dust right now anyway.

If you open the phone, take a look at the resistor, and are still not sure, I think the answer to that question is “no”.

(No shame in that and I don’t think photos would change that significantly. But hey, you could practice on something similar but cheaper first to feel more confident, like some broken board you may have lying around or pick up at a thrift store)

This is an excellent answer.

I wouldn't do this as my first SMD project, but if you practice for a bit on SMD based kits you can gain the proficiency required to do it. You may need to invest in a magnifying solution and a very small soldering tip or an air gun and paste. I use a 0.4 mm tip and when I look at it through the microscope while doing SMD work it always looks as though I'm wielding a battle axe to do surgery on a mouse. Usually it works ;)

I would recommend getting a roll of kapton tape as well (make sure it's not counterfeit), and then use that to mask other components so you don't accidentally damage stuff

> make sure it's not counterfeit

'Koptan', no kidding! At least the counterfeiter had a sense of humor.

Good point, thank you I did not know about SMD soldering kits.

desoldering an SMD resistor is actually pretty easy. Just blob some solder on your soldering iron so that the ball on the end of your iron is about the width of the resistor. Then basically place the iron right next to the resistor with slight pressure to the side. the blob of solder will transfer heat to both pads, and it should dislodge pretty quickly (~2s or so). If it doesn't budge, feed in a bit more solder right at the resistor.

It would certainly help to have a temperature controlled iron (but not required). If you are buying an iron new, there is no reason not to buy a temperature controlled one these days. Something like the SH72 is more than adequate for this (~$21 on amazon, cheaper on aliexpress). There are also much better ones available if you are willing to spend some more. (I highly recommend any of the T12 soldering stations ~$50-60 on aliexpress)

You might want to get a little help? My limited experience suggests you'd probably be fine but a little practice helps give a better feel for how much heat you need to pour in. And you probably don't want to let the magic smoke out of your phone while practicing.

As noted in another comment, the resistors on the schematic are specified as size "0402". You can look at this guide [1] for information about surface-mount component size codes, it's quite exhaustive.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to quickly determine if Pine64 use metric or imperial, and the same code is used for two different sizes (!) depending on that. Nice, huh?

If the schematic is imperial (win) the component is 0.04" by 0.02" (1 mm by 0.5 mm). If the schematic is metric, it is only 0.016” by 0.008" (0.4 mm by 0.2 mm).

[1]: https://www.additude.se/bloggar/thomas-lovskog/smallest-ridi...

It's rare to see a mobile device these days working on 3.3V. Most of it now comes at 1.8V, and transition to 1.2 seem to be looming.

So many words for, "we changed the voltage".

Did you not read the parts addressing how where and why?

Funny, that's that part I wish they went into more detail on. Mainly, the why. The how and where are basically a matter of a single trace label.

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