3 days ago I installed Calyxos on my Fairphone 4 and I just want to let people know of my experience and opinion of it. I’m a programmer techie nerd so my phone is my life.
The Pros:
The first 3 days were absolute bliss. I loved working in Android 13 and Calyxos is really very very well done. Only one bug I found in the whole thing in their Knock-off of GooglePlay if you somehow miss hitting the “install” button after downloading a new app the only way to continue is to restart the phone. But for such a huge software that is really a very very minor bug. Everything I really needed for banking, communication, etc, all worked perfectly. I’m not interested in avoiding the evil Google Corp so my goal was to just get everything I need to work. Others prioritize avoiding Google and there Calyxos Shines victorious, but then, very little will work of course since Google is so powerful.
The Cons:
Not everything works. Probably 95% of all you need/want will work. Eventually you will find things that don’t work. Not Calyxos’s fault at all. A very few apps that love the evil Google Corp will eventually find something they don’t like about Calyxos and refuse to work. For me it was the following
Samsung Wear and all samsung apps for my watch which means my watch was toast. Too bad because I loved Samsung pay and my watch. I could buy a new Garmin watch which others say works.
All my streaming apps refused to work. You know, like Netflix, however I don’t have netflix myself. Apparently they check if the phone is root unlocked and refuse to work if it is. I assume it is to protect their copyrighted material.
So I re-rooted my Fairphone 4 back to the old Android 11. That went rather well with only a few minor hiccups. One major note here!! “You must re-lock your root or your streaming apps still won’t work”!! Now actually I realize that although Android 13 was a little more eye pleasing than Android 11, actually android 11 is just as good and even some of the eye candy in android 13 is actually irritating in the long run. So for now I am very happy back on Android 11.
You could have locked the bootloader on calyxOS, too, if that’s really what Netflix checks to run.
(Afaik calyxOS installation guide even recommends to relock the bootloader)
You reinstalled stocks OS if I understand correctly. This has nothing to do with rooting. Rooting is not necessary to install an OS on a FP3.
I suppose you mean here that you have to re-lock your bootloader.
Yes, yes, and yes . I also thought about locking the bootloader on calyxos but never tried it. I just felt if they’re so careful to check the lock they probably have a way to check the validity of the android. They don’t give any decent error message. Just don’t work when you start a stream.
On the other hand immediately after re-installing the stock android I tried the streaming apps and they still refused to work. I then locked the bootloader and the streaming worked perfectly. It was quite frustrating that when you lock the bootloader it erases any data or apps so I lost a few hours work there.
For 2 days now, I’m trying to root latest CalyxOS, but it always gets stuck in a boot loop. What I’m doing:
Install Magisk App
Upload boot.img that comes with CalyxOS
Patch that boot.img
Copy it back to my PC
Install CalyxOS with device-flasher.linux
fastboot flash boot <modified boot.img>
fastboot flash vbmeta --disable-verity --disable-verification vbmeta.img (the vbmeta.img that comes with CalyxOS
fastboot reboot
And then it’s stuck in a boot loop. But even when I flash back the unpatched boot.img from CalyxOS, it stays in boot loop. I can go back to Stock ROM, but I don’t seem to be able to root my CalyxOS. Has any one succeeded? Please advise!
Don’t directly flash that boot.img, unless you want to make OTA-updates unnecessary complicated. You also shouldn’t / don’t need to flash vbmeta, just follow the usual root procedure:
I’ve been running CalyxOS rooted since it’s been released, no issues so far. (Obviously you loose the ability to lock the bootloader, it will always be a compromise)
Using fastboot boot <patched boot.img> didn’t work either. It showed the boot screen for 1h, and then I turned off the phone. Am I patching the wrong boot.img? I’ve tried using the one from the latest stock and the one that comes with CalyxOS.
I reflashed the full thing with the stock system. When that booted properly, I re-installed CallyxOS, didn’t patch any partition, but tried to boot directly into the patched boot.img from CallyxOS. That one then lead to the phone shutting down and turning itself off
Update
After fastboot boot boot.img the image that lead to the phone shutting itself down about 4 or 5 times, it eventually booted and I successfully rooted the phone. This is really odd.
Sounds like a problem with your USB-cable / -port, I don’t think fastboot boot checks what you send over for integrity, maybe some bit flipped in transit
Did you try to boot into CalyxOS before you started with root?
I assume this happened because it unsuccessfully tried to boot from one slot (e.g. slot a). After several unsuccessful retries it automatically changed the slot (e.g. to slot b) and could successfully boot from this one.
EDIT: the statistics of the fastboot command fastboot getvar all might back this theory.
That could play a role here, good point, but I’ve never had a CalyxOS installation stuck in the wrong slot after installing and I’ve done well over 50 at this point
If that is indeed what happened, there is probably a bug in the device-flasher that needs to be fixed. That could lead to problems if the phone gets locked at the end (as it’s supposed to).
Shouldn’t that issue have prevented the initial boot as well?
At least with the stable Nikita (and Greatness) version I tried, I had to enable AUX camera #2 in the settings, have you tried that?
It’s under Settings → Advanced → Auxiliary camera → switch 1st and 2nd lens to on.
Other GCam versions, like BSG (I use) and Wichaya, seem to pick it up automatically.
it works with nikita when enabling auxiliary lenses (also tried with BSG 8.1 and indeed it works by default in this case), however the refresh rate seems much slower than with the main lens, is it expected ?
We’ve had some discussion about that in another thread, seems like an issue with GCam in low-light situations. It’s working fine if the environment is well lit.
There might be a setting in GCam that needs to be changed
It’s working without issues in OpenCamera, so it seems to be GCam specific. You might want to switch to OC in the meantime, if you often use it in low-light conditions.
hi there, I just bought a FP4 last week and was playing with /e/ and CalyxOS. I managed to install both easily. Right now I am running CalyxOS 4.3.0. It works quite well but it seems I have some problems with notifications on some apps downloaded from Aurora.
Did you disable microG when installing Calyx?
If you didn’t, have you enabled Cloud Messaging in the microG settings and do the apps you have problems with show up in that list?
I don’t think I have disabled it when installing, at least it’s definitely installed now with everything set on it seems. Thank you for the suggestion.
I do receive notifications on some apps (like ProtonMail) but it doesn’t seem to be as responsive as before when I was on a Pixel phone, but I need to confirm this with more usage, I still have some messaging app to install or check with bank app notification when making a payment (i.e. Revolut Bank). But in general I am quite impressed how well it works, amazing to have a 5G ready ethical phone without Gmaps or GDrive pre installed for Christmas!
After more days of usage, I can say CalyxOS + FP4 works greatly. I think the problem with notifications was a mix of apps being updated (maybe normal updates, or bug, or to support Android13 since it’s now being deployed on many phones see here) + the fact I use pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net) at home, which does block a lot of things.
Fairphone should really partnership with Calyx as they did with /e/, it’s a shame they still haven’t updated to Android 12 while CalyxOS fully supports Android 13.
. I also thought about locking the bootloader on calyxos but never tried it. I just felt if they’re so careful to check the lock they probably have a way to check the validity of the android. They don’t give any decent error message. Just don’t work when you start a stream.
If you messed with that partition, that might keep it from booting correctly.
