Pinebook pro: Battery doesn't charge in Brazil, Sao Paulo?

Hi, Pinebook pro battery doesn’t charge anymore with standard charger.

Tow Boot system.

$ acpi -i
Battery 0: Charging, 13%, charging at zero rate - will never fully charge.
Battery 0: design capacity 9800 mAh, last full capacity 9800 mAh = 100%

I am in Brazil, in Sao Paulo, the electrical voltage is 10 A & 20 A 100 – 240 V or 127 V or 220 V ~ 60 Hz is there a risk for the pinebook pro? :frowning:

It looks like the PSU does provide enough juice to charge the battery and at the same time keep the system operational.

I would

  1. check the charger output - 5.2v 3A (15watt)
  2. check the internal connectors for the powersupply and battery

To get an indication you could power off the system and let the PSU sit there for a couple of hours - then power up the system and check the battery status - if the percentage increase - good - then it is likely the PSU - but if the percentage has dropped - then you have a problem.

It doesn’t charge even if it is power off. Now pinebook pro is out of power: it doesn’t restart. Do the ac adapter OK for brazilian electricity power? I at sao Paulo and other x86 notebooks works and charges. Smartphone charges. All electrical thinks work but pinebook pro. Charging red light is flashing.

The pinebook is charged by using a 5VDC 3A powersupply. As I do not own a pinebook I don’t know which type is used. If the pinebook uses USBC any PSU conforming to the USB-C charger specification will do.

If you are not using the supplied psu and the connector is a barrel connector - do observe the polarity of the connector - as a reversed polarity will damage the system.

If you cannot get it to charge either the powersupply or the cable may be defective.

Of course it may be something internal in the pinebook - I don’t know anything about that.

1 Like

Have you already tried an other 5V USB-charger ? (:point_down:)

The PBP uses a specific barrel charger. So if you used a non-official one for it, it might have fried the barrel charging circuit inside the laptop.

1 Like

Thank you for your answers.

I bought a USB-C charger, and although the acpi command says the computer charges “at zero rate” and “will never fully charge”, the battery still charges (0% to 40% in several hours).

The features of the new charger are as follows:

AC Adapter
Brand: Lenovo
MODEL: ADL-65A1
INPUT: 100-240V~1.2A
OUTPUT: 5V⎓3A;9V⎓3A;12V⎓3A;15V⎓3A;20V⎓3.25A
POWER: 65W
DC: USB Type-C

The characteristics of the original charger are as follows:

AC Adapter
MODEL:EE-0530-E
INPUT:100-240V~50/60Hz 0.5A
OUTPUT:5.0v⎓3000mA

As we see, normally the original charger should work for a voltage of a hundred volts, as in Brazil. But apparently it doesn’t. Maybe someone can test the standard charger with 100V to charge the Pinebook Pro, to see if it’s the charger that has the problem or if it’s the electrical network where I am whose voltage is too low. I don’t know, I don’t know much about electricity.

Anyway, my problem is solved with the Lenovo USB-C charger described above. :slight_smile:

Thank you all!

1 Like

Then the charger is discharging the battery - which could indicate a reversed polarity of the charger.


The specs. on pine64eu.com states Pinebook Pro supports USB C charger

  • USB 3.0 Type-C ports with alt-mode display out (DP 1.2) and 15W 5V 3A charge

It’s an interesting hypothesis…

If that’s true, I’m happy to be able to contribute to the Brazilian grid with my modest battery.

More seriously, I did some tests before going to bed:

After fully charging the battery, while the pinebook pro was on, I unplugged the USB-C charger, and plugged in the standard charger: the light diode indicates that the battery is charging (continuous light).

I then unplugged the standard charger, and plugged the USB-C charger back in: the light diode indicates that the battery is NOT charging (blinking light).

So I reversed the chargers again, the battery went on charge again (continuous light), and went to bed (with the standard charger plug-in, so).

The next day, the battery level was down to 50%.

So the hypothesis of a polarity reversal is credible, maybe true…

So I reversed the chargers, and used the USB-C charger. Now the battery is charging.

This is a situation that I have never observed in Europe. In Brazil, electrical outlets can suck electricity? Really very strange.

According to this article, Reverse Polarity is NOT a good thing. Do I need to do anything to make sure the battery , charger ou pbp is not damaged?

You are not charging the grid - if the circuits allow power to pass back to your barrel charger - my personal opinion - this is bad design.

However since the usb c port is designed to power external devices with 500mA and it may simply be an oversight when the power is also allowed to pass in reversed direction into the charger.

Never leave your equipment plugged into an inactive charger as this is likely to drain battery.

The same is valid for a pinephone.

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.