The first pinetab for Early Adopters they have arrived. As soon as you start them, a notice appears that you are one of the first in the world to have it, and that, together with the fact that it is the most immature edition, also means that it has arrived with problems. Several of them have already been identified and published on the page they have opened in the tablet wiki. Some have solutions, but for most we will have to wait for the developers to correct them.
The first thing we do when buying a mobile or a tablet is to test its camera, and that is something that we will not be able to do in the PineTab at this time. There may also be a problem with the WiFi, but it seems that this setback is something that non-English speaking users will not experience because it is related to the physical keyboard. Below you have the problem list that PINE64 has posted on his PineTab, and some that I will add on my own.
PineTab Early Adopter First Problems
- The mouse cannot be moved across the entire screen, only in an 800px horizontal box. This is solved by disconnecting the physical keyboard when starting the PineTab for the first time and updating the operating system, which will go from Ubuntu Touch v3 to v4.
- Bluetooth is not working because it cannot be activated. Yes we can give the switch, but it does not activate or look for accessories.
- The cameras don't work, neither of them. It seems to be an app problem (?).
- Portrait mode does not work. It is constantly in landscape mode and it does not matter if we try to hit the switch several times; will not go.
- There is an error that makes the tablet only have access to 16 of the 64GB it has of storage. PINE64 said that it can be fixed by increasing the partition size manually, but on the wiki, and something that I have been told personally, they say that UBports is working on a solution that will do it automatically without us losing any data.
- The WiFi disappears, probably because I started with the physical keyboard connected. There are several solutions for this:
- Deactivate and activate the WiFi from the switch.
- Restart the PineTab.
- If the above does not work, we will open a terminal and type the following commands (without the quotes): "nmcli r" and "nmcli r wifi on". Those who started the tablet with the keyboard mounted can also try putting the command "sudo service urfkill restart".
- Copying and pasting in the file manager can restart the operating system.
- Screenshots don't work, but this doesn't work on the PinePhone either. The problem is that the volume buttons are together, so the combination off button + volume up does not work. One of the lead developers at UBports told me that there is already a patch on this that will make the option appear on the shutdown button next to the options to shut down and restart the PineTab.
- Accounts cannot be added from System Settings.
- Libertine graphics apps don't work unless you switch to xwayland.
- As a tip: if updating remains black for a while, personally it has been good for me forcing it to turn off (the off button for several seconds) and turning it on again. It is not a big problem to know if you are doing something or not because the PineTab makes a small noise when it works; If nothing is heard at that moment, we have already turned it off and can turn it on again.
- Some apps from the OpenStore crash after installation, something that also happens on the PinePhone. Sometimes the solution is to open them first in the Desktop version.
Arrives with a beta version of UBports
The PineTab arrives with a beta version of Ubuntu Touch from UBports, so the failures are normal. As time goes by, things will change and I can't help but imagine a future where the PineTab or any other mobile Linux tablet is a great option.