Doubling the PinePhone storage speed with a soldering iron

[ArgyleSound]

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?

[thinkmassive]

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.

[negative_zero]

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

[bArray]

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.

[namibj]

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.

[usui]

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.

[jacquesm]

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

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

[ncmncm]

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.

[anaphor]

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.

[MartijnBraam]

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

[molticrystal]

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.

[ruph123]

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.

[asdfuiopasdf]

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-...

[3np]

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)

[jacquesm]

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 ;)

[unwind]

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...

[burnished]

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.

[baybal2]

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.

[nixpulvis]

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

[burnished]

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