There should be nothing an end user can do without disassembling the phone that can make it catch fire. If there is, then someone will do it. And personally, I wouldn't think twice about connecting the HDMI without connecting the power, for five minutes, to get hold of some document.
I don't own a Pinephone, and from the looks of this debacle I never will. It doesn't seem that OSS is safe to run in safety-critical contexts.
Sound rather limited, almost stupid.
OSS runs in various safety critical software, FreeRTOS, also Linux and various other projects run in very critical environments, far more critical than a smartphone.
https://scholar.google.at/scholar?q=open+source+software+in+... https://scholar.google.at/scholar?q=linux+in+safety-critical...
You know that something is OSS allows letting anybody check this out in the first place, do you really think a proprietary phone is safe from this? There are many reports about iPhones and other smart phones catching fire each year.
Why would you be running on battery while connected to the dock and an external monitor?! That seems like doing some math without thinking about the practical mechanics of being docked.