edit: pasting in the important bits, in case something happens to XDA.
Process:
1- Boot into Fastboot (like you have a choice, lol)
2 - fastboot oem allow-flashing
3 - You need to get a Fairphone package, extract it. Look at the “flash_fp5_factory.command” file and manually flash each and every image. Something like:
I am 99.9% sure it won’t work on an FP4. I did see a dump of oem commands for the FP4 and “allow-flashing” was not one of them. There was an interesting one about rollback protection though, that the FP5 did not have. I found the FP4 oem commands dumped by someone in a massive thread on this forum somewhere.
I actually don’t know why it bricked. I tried to install Iode and it just said “your device is corrupted” then went to Fastboot. After thiat it would only go to fastboot. It could be rollback protection, or it could be my Fairphone does not trust the Iode keys (its a Murena one).
I do not think it wipes data, I’m not sure. Since I was just happy to unbrick I did a full restore to FPOS including wipe data, so I could get a clean slate to start from.
Thanks for the details: So just to ensure the obvious and for documentation purposes: you could not unlock the bootloader again when you was stuck, i.e. you did try
fastboot flashing unlock
correct?
Well yours were wiped by locking the bootloader so surely difficult to say.
Just chiming in to say thanks for looking into this. Like others, I also get the “Flashing Unlock is not allowed” but at least I had a glimmer of hope for a while!
It’d be nice to get my FP5 working agian. I tried to get help from FP support but it took over a month for them to get back to me and then there was two weeks of contant nonesense like “have you updated your apps” and “try doing a reset” taking days between repsonses. I ended up claiming on my insurance and buying a Pixel 8 Pro. It’s infuriating that a phone that should have lasted into the 2030s didn’t even make it to it’s first birthday. I don’t have any faith in Fairphone helping me and I won’t be buying anything else from them (my Fairbuds XL also died) but it’d be nice if this brick could actually be made useful and maybe given to a family member rather than just being more ewaste. So I appreciate your the efforts of you and people like you for sharing your knowledge with us all; it didn’t work for me this time, but I’m sure this will help a lot of people.
Did yours get bricked on the Android 13 bootloader? If so… thats not good. I hope that one day the EDL loader does become available for it, since that is always a much better failsafe.
Honestly, I am fairly disappointed with Fairphone. The phone itself is really nice but same as you dealing with their support is hilarious. Currently they are quoting 10-12 days just for a response, to an email!
Even more disappointed with Murena. I really really wanted them to succeed but their development team is just not capable enough with device engineering (kernel, etc) to be selling devices right now. Its a shame, as the frontend to /e/ is actually really nice and quite polished. Fairphone 5 is still on Android 13 over there with crazy bugs (still no 90hz, lol) that have been going on for well over a year. If its a trivial bug stopping them releasing Android 14 for FP5 you can expect that it will never arrive.
I do sympathise though, it must be so hard to get the funds and skills to be able to develop something like this.
Community build = no OTA, have to wipe for every major upgrade, have to unlock bootloader to flash it, have to have stupid message on every boot about custom OS
If I was going to go that route, might as well run Lineage OS and have Android 15. I shelled out good money for Murena device for an OEM feel. Given that 90hz doesn’t work and they’ve had ongoing random reboots for over a year I can’t imagine what bug must be preventing them launching an OTA for Android 14. It looks like 2.7 isn’t going to include it either.
OTA upgrades to new Android versions usually aren’t available immediately with the new Android version, as they need to be prepared first.
I won’t argue about bugs, these are there and factual, and I don’t have the device. But this speculation about what they are doing or not doing with Android 14 (U) is leading nowhere, proceedings in this regard don’t look unusual so far. Community build is out, official build will follow in due time, and as the device is sold by Murena an OTA upgrade will follow as soon as developers get around to prepare it, as is always the case over there .
My Saviour !
I just bought my first Fairphone (5, with /e/OS preinstalled), but the experience was really disappointing, as it was “bricked” since the very first power on…
And of course, bootloader locked.
With you tip, I was able to flash the stock Fairphone OS (corresponding to the bootloader version), and now the phone has started.
Before turning again to /e/OS, I’m setting up the phone to verify that everything is working fine (transferring data from my old phone…)
Hey @tofbouf . This is actually interesting, because /e/ only has Android 13 for Fairphone 5 right now so the fact you could unbrick using this method is… strange.
I wonder if it works for later Android 13 bootloaders also… or if your Murena phone shipped with an unreleased version of Android 14.
In fact, when received, the bootloader version was still FP5.UT2E.B.078.20241105, which corresponds to Fairphone OS Android 14. As if /e/OS installation was failed…
I flashed this version, to check the phone was functional under Fairphone OS.
Then unlocked bootloader, to flash Official /e/OS (Android 13).
Since then, I kept it unlocked (because I understand from what you say that allow-flashing is not available with Android 13…)
.