Android KitKat (4.4.4) for FP1

hi all together, i managed it to update to Kitkat because some apps does work anymore on icecream sandwich. it works well. But: i´ve one question how to install the googleplay store, i can´t manage it, i tried to download older version on APKpure and the installation runs well but the app won´t run. does anybody know how?

Hi Fairphoners,

I have a GPS-Question:

I updated my FP1 to Kitkat 4.4.4 some days ago…

Before this (in the very beginning of my FP1-Days) I optimized GPS with all the stuff postet in the www. and got a fix after about 16 seconds.
After the years this changed to 40 seconds despite nothing at my system had been changed.

Now after the Kitkat-Update it takes about 70 seconds.

As I tried to optimize everything again I recognized that there seems to be no EPO-Option any more.

Is this (70 seconds) poor GPS a matter of fact using Kitkat?

Or is there something I can do? What happend to EPO?

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Fixed.
The culprit was the setting ‘show notifications on lock screen’.
After disabling this setting battery usage was back to normal.

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You need to flash gapps, checkout the third bullet point in “INSTALLTION”:

I’m using this rom now since 2 weeks and so far i’m quite happy. I found two things:

  • I’m constantly getting roaming notifications even if the sim shouldn’t be in roaming mode. Not sure if this is a bug or a weird sim/phone combo
  • The screen of my fairphone is a bit broken and probably also the proxamity sensor. If i’m playing voice messages in whatsapp the screen turns off and on and stops the playing which is quite annoying. Same for calling a person, but there it doesn’t stop the call automatically :smiley: Is there any way to just disable that? Didn’t find anything in the settings and also changing permissions of /system/etc/permissions/android.hardware…proximity didn’t work as it’s a read only filesystem/mount. Maybe i could remount it, not sure?

For that I would probably have to “backport” the national roaming configs from newer Android versions to my build - so android_packages_apps_CarrierConfig/assets/carrier_config_23203.xml at lineage-16.0 · LineageOS/android_packages_apps_CarrierConfig · GitHub becomes android_frameworks_base/core/res/res/values-mcc232-mnc03/config.xml at cm-11.0 · LineageOS/android_frameworks_base · GitHub for example.

Can’t help you with the other question though (but thinking about it, I believe that the proximity sensor on my unit is also broken)

The proximity sensor is a delicate component (or a dumb camera), and requires a clean window, outside and inside.
Usually, keeping the phone in the pocket gather some dust between the proximity sensor and its window.
Opening the unit up and removing the dust should tame your sensors.

I have found repeatedly now that the CWM recovery does not properly wipe. A factory reset via CWM failed to delete user data today on at least the third FP1 I tried it on. I was only able to succeed in wiping the FP1 after I had downgraded to 4.2.2 and the old recovery was back and allowed me to do the wipe.

I just did the update to 0.0.3-pre5 on my FP1 FE (almost 5 1/2 years old), and thanks to @z3ntu and @urs_lesse it works very well!

But of course I overlooked the warning “Only install this on a FP1 with the unified storage partition!”… and did the upgrade without unified storage partition - and ended up without /dev/block/mmcblk0p8.

Is there a way to get it back in the state the phone is now or would I have to go back to the official FP1 OS, then upgrade the storage to unified partition and then upgrade again, if that is an option at all?

Cheers,
Torsten

That would be my first recommendation, yes. You can find the necessary files (2nd download first for getting back to your previous OS, 3rd file then to unify the storage partition) here:

https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/201189497

That was a quick reply…! So I will do it like that and report back how it went.
Thanks!

It was a bit bumpy ride, but it worked. Now I have 14 GB internal memory + my SD card with Android 4.4.4 which is very nice because that does not only solve the issue that Signal Messenger would have stopped working in a few days but that I have much more memory available now. I completely missed out on that unpartitioned storage…

The bumpiness was that I had to try to downgrade and upgrade incl. wiping SD card more than once until the OS came up, once installing from SD card didn’t work so I used adb sideload, and of course I had to flash the recovery image again before the final update.

So far all seems to work fine - so thanks again to everyone here for the great work and for sharing! :slight_smile:

Since the battery is still okay I think I can hope now the FP1 will make it until there will be an FP3!

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Off-Topic: Is there already a date known when Signal will stop working on Android 4.2? My mother still has a phone with Android 4.2. In the case Signal stops working, I will have to urge her to a new smartphone (which she already bought).

Not sure about signal, but i’m using DeltaChat which is a fork of the Signal UI and they have trouble keeping up with the ui stuff for 4.4.4 and newer devices because some things changed. So it seems to be hard to support both android versions. Maybe signal puts more effort into this, but the core problem will be the same for them. Highly offtopic, maybe ask them on their github repo?

I started a topic regarding Signal messenger here: Signal Messenger will stop working soon

So, I have researched: Signal expires 90 days after creation of the APK. For Android 4.2 users, there is a version 4.36.2 with disabled expiration.

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Just wanted to mention:

  • IMEIs did not get lost at any time during my upgrade - downgrade - upgrade mess
  • Media playing works just fine (VLC)
  • Very nice: Voice messages sent with Signal to an iPhone that were completely garbled with the official 4.2.2 OS sound perfect now
  • Since the last freeze with battery removal the phone is stable so far
  • I found my old ringtone back

I’m very happy the old FP1 is now usable without limitations again! :+1: :slight_smile:

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Another thing I’d like to mention is that I think restoring certain settings with Titanium Backup caused quite some trouble as part of the upgrade:

  • Restoring phone settings seemed to either make the phone function and SMS/MMS disappear or crash in an infinite loop
  • Restoring some system settings (unfortunately not sure which one) put the phone in a state where it was not possible to install most apps, regardless how (Play Store, F-Droid, Titanium Backup, local APK, …) with the error that there is not enough space/insufficient storage. Only restoring apps + data does not cause the issue.

And, when trying to add this widget to a screen, it crashes with the following exception:

I/ActivityManager(  688): [AppLaunch] Displayed Displayed com.android.settings/.AllowBindAppWidgetActivity: +105ms (total +31m12s910ms)
D/ActivityManager(  688): AP_PROF:AppLaunch_LaunchTime:com.android.settings/.AllowBindAppWidgetActivity:105:21509098
E/ActivityManager(  688): mtprof entry can not found!
E/ActivityManager(  688): java.io.FileNotFoundException: /proc/mtprof/status: open failed: ENOENT (No such file or directory)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at libcore.io.IoBridge.open(IoBridge.java:453)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:78)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:105)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at com.android.server.am.ActivityRecord.mtProf(ActivityRecord.java:1156)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at com.android.server.am.ActivityRecord.reportLaunchTimeLocked(ActivityRecord.java:911)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at com.android.server.am.ActivityRecord.windowsDrawn(ActivityRecord.java:948)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at com.android.server.am.ActivityRecord$Token.windowsDrawn(ActivityRecord.java:298)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at com.android.server.wm.WindowManagerService$H.handleMessage(WindowManagerService.java:7917)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:110)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:193)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:61)
E/ActivityManager(  688): Caused by: libcore.io.ErrnoException: open failed: ENOENT (No such file or directory)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at libcore.io.Posix.open(Native Method)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at libcore.io.BlockGuardOs.open(BlockGuardOs.java:110)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       at libcore.io.IoBridge.open(IoBridge.java:437)
E/ActivityManager(  688):       ... 10 more

Probably because the Mediatek mtprof driver is missing?

Did un upgrade from unified 4.2.2.
Had to wipe cache and data.
Experience an odd behavior:

  • the device can last as long as needed in recovery,
  • the device reboots within the 1st minute of normal usage.

So the usability gets limited.
I tried both z3ntu images 0.0.2 and 0.0.3-pre5.
Any idea what it could be ?

Did you update to 0.0.3-pre5 “on top” of 0.0.2 (i.e. you did not go back to 4.2.2. in between)? If yes, then maybe I’d try another “clean install” instead.

If you do so, I would appreciate if you could test my observation about the (in)effectiveness of the CWM recovery wipe. :angel: