Hi
I tried the system recovery, but it sais “couldn’t mount sd card”. I really want to avoid a factory reset, since I haven’t backed up my data for a long time. What would you recommend?
Thank you!
I think I squelched (deactivated) youtube app shortly before the update. Shouldn’t affect this i think?
Well you wouldn’t think that deactivating any other GAPP should affect the OS update either, but it clearly does. So I’d assume it’s all GAPPS that should be reactivated before updating.
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Fairphone should tell this every owner before releasing the update. Maybe the updater could show a warning?
I followed this thread and can reactivate all apps before the FP update (before every upcoming update?). But not every FP owner will read this.
@schmulschubiak Hey, thanks for the info. I’ve “invested” most of the day yesterday trying exactly the same. I managed to sideload the firmware update file via adb, and dammingly enough I even saw the filestructure on windows. Sadly after that my pc won’t recognize my phone and adb won’t allow me to do anything, even though I see the device being connected. I get the whole “error:closed” issue. I even got to recognize the phone on a Ubuntu VM (dmesg and lsusb show me the device) but it won’t mount or, at least, I can’t find the device on the fs or in gparted.
Could you tell me how did you proceeed? (I.e. which steps you took?)
- Connect the phone to a pc with xy OS (does your OS recognize the phone? I suppose you couldn’t directly access the files)
- Turn on the phone (was the phone on bootloop or in recovery mode?)
- If the phone was in recovery mode, did you need to select the “update via adb” option?
- Did you get any of the “error:closed” or similar errors?
- Did you do it via adb command line tool? or via adb IDE?
Sorry for the millions of questions, but I feel like I am so close to be able to salvage some stuff. Luckily it is only 2 weeks worth of stuff, but still it would suck super much to lose it.
@Shwaetsbaesi Hey, I had the same problem. I ended up downloading the platform-tools (version r25.0.3) from android studio website and, with cygwin, called ./adb.exe sideload FP2_XXXX_OTA.zip (the sw update). You might have to call start-server and/or devices and/or usb to get it to work. Check https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/207914363-Manually-install-Fairphone-OS-for-the-Fairphone-221 for some info.
@FeuRenard It actually does, it tells you to backup your stuff. The thing for me was that, until this time, everything went without a hitch so I didn’t think of doing a backup right before updating
Cheers,
Suckelo
The release of this update was a mistake as Rick explains here:
I’m sure for the official update FP will think of a way to warn everybody to reenable GAPPS before updating.
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You actually describe the issue very well. Why shouldn’t other Fairphone users act like you? There is always the instruction to have backups before updating. If there was no problem yet, they probably won’t care about the backup this time, too.
It seems to be totally preventable that users have to rely on their backups (which maybe don’t exist) after the upgrade due to disabled GAPPS. So this should be prevented.
I hope they do. Maybe the updater app could do this automatically. No user will be surprised that deactivated apps reappear after an upgrade (not update).
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But before the reset i saved my picture data via adb pull /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/
I was slowly finding my way with adb to recover my pictures ; your post saved me some time. Thanks!
What would be the path to pull the contacts data?
You’re right of course, in this case it’s an upgrade. But the problem will persist with following updates. FP is currently working on a way for the updater app to detect any sort of system or GAPPS modifications and refuse to update/grade then.
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Thank you for this answer!
This sounds like in the future (with Android 6) it won’t be practical to deactivate Google apps. It would be annoying to activate them before every update and deactivate them after the update. This means that you can no longer argue that preinstalled Google apps aren’t bad because you can deactivate them. It will be a pain with future FPOS updates when they are deactivated 
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Is it save to switch to Open OS (Android 5.1) after this horrible Upgrade to Android 6 
? This Update made a mess of my Phone. There was a new Bootloop after the Upgrade, when I had deactivated the Google-Apps again.
I had this too once. I don’t think it’s a thing that will happen all the time - otherwise they’d just disallow deactivating GAPPS - or rather only happens the first few reboots after the update (when some Optimization is still going on).
Anyway I switched back to Open OS after testing the beta update too (it was never my intention to stay with FP OS anyway) and had no problems with it.
- Linux OS. When i saw the Fairphone boot animation (with the 4 blue dots) I connected in commandline to the phone via
adb shelland navigated to/storage/emulated/0/to simple note the desired folder paths, then i copied everything viaadb pull xyz - phone was in bootloop
- I tried update via adb, but it didn’t stop the boot loop, cause the update itself was never the problem
- No never
- via adb command line tool under Linux
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@schmulschubiak Thanks for the info.
I could not replicate the steps, so I swallowed the bitter pill and wiped it out. It worked, and that’s that.
@paulakreuzer I guess It has been covered in other topics but, is this an android marchmellow “as is”? No more fairphone flavour?
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No it is not AOSP, it’s still FP OS, just with a few less FP specific features.
However you still have a (different) FP-launcher, FP wallpapers, the inactive Apps feature and of course the FP updater app (& there are probably more).
Calm down. 
This issue is very specific, it’s not about being unable to deactivate “GAPPS”.
This only concerns the Google App, not “Google apps” in general (like Hangouts, Drive etc.).
Android 6 has a new feature called Assist. The Google App is set as the default Assist app. If you disable the Google App, you have to set the Assist app to None or you will end up in a boot loop. You only have to do this once.
Since this setting does not exist in Android 5, you have to make sure the Google App is enabled before you upgrade. After the upgrade you can disable it again, set the Assist app to None and you’re good.
This is not specific to Fairphone, it’s a well known issue. But I agree that the Updater should at least warn you about that.
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Thanks @ChuckMorris for this info. Could you add a description on how to set the Assist app to none in the wiki above. PS: Thanks!
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Thanks for your suggestions, I’m afraid I got stuck at 2), there is no sd card in my Phone.
Also, 3) requires a fairphone 2 operating normally, that’s exactly the problem, it’s not operating at all.
I’ve tried to read the pages about adb and noticed that for any option that has been suggested here, something is required that I don’t have (sd card, a functioning Phone, a setting in developeroptions that I never set). So thanks everyone that had tried to help, but I’m afraid that I will have to just do a factory reset and loose anything I haven’t backed up.
Hello! So could anybody come up with a solution to avoid a complete wipe out/factory reset? I contacted FP two times via mail but they don’t answer. I also tried to save everything via adb but it didn’t work. Does my phone have to be rooted to do so? I didn’t study IT so all this is really new and annoying for me, I just want my phone to work again…
Can somebody please help me??