Fairphone Open 17.06.4 (Android 6.0) release

You may wanna try using the SD as extension of the internal storage. Than it smoothly combines internal storage with the SD. Great advantage also, your SD will be encrypted. Downside: you can’t take it out for use in other devices.

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This is a deal breaker… as my SD card serves as backup and passing from FP1 to FP2 (when I get too irritated with one of the two I change… :grin:)

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It is not exactly a combination of the storages. I have the internal storage for app data only, which is too much.
Google could have done better here. Either a real combination (addition) of both storages, or leave it 2 accessible storages as it was before.

Both Open Camera and Titanium Backup can use the ‘storage access provider’ or however that is called. This way you can grant it access to the SD card. Took me a while to figure that out, but works like a charm now. Some apps don’t seem to support that though (e.g. I had troubles with oandbackup).

??? Where is it how does it work???

As @rkennke mentioned, it’s app dependent. Reading manuals (if available) or searching for SD card issues related to the app in question is a good start. To take the two examples mentioned above:

Open Camera FAQ

How can I save to my external SD card? - This depends on your Android version:

  • Android 5.0 onwards - The restrictions on SD cards introduced in Android 4.4 still apply, however instead you can enable "Settings/More camera controls/“Use Storage Access Framework”, and this should allow you to save to external SD cards. If when choosing a folder, you only see “Recent”, you may need to click on the three dots at the top right to open the menu, to enable showing the drives (e.g., “Show internal storage”, and hopefully you’ll see something similar for the SD card).
  • Android 6.0 - On Android 6, some devices support “Adoptable Storage” allowing you to select to use an SD card as internal storage. Note that not all devices support this, even if running Android 6. If your device doesn’t support this, or you want to instead use an SD card as “portable storage”, you’ll have to use the Storage Access Framework method as with Android 5

Titanium backup, nothing on their site, but using an internet search engine gives multiple results that suggest:
Preferences > Backup folder location > Storage Provider > Document Provider

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Waou thanks! It works! I never thought to check the specific applications solutions as I thought it was OS related…

Thanks again! :raised_hands:

Guys!
Did i missed anything, or there is no fp2-sibon-17.06.4-manual-userdebug.zip on the Fairphone Open Download Page?

Nope. Tweaking the URL doesn’t bring anything, neither, :frowning:

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Still I can’t change the wallpaper. It’s only my issue?

Yes. Me and my SailfishOS guys have no problems with wallpapers. THe PNG FIle need to be 1080x1920

Me too.

My context:
Flashed on FPOpen using mechanismen of plain delivered Fairphone with onboard tools
I had last update on 16.12 at beginning of 2017 via intern updater.
I added openGapps using this post: ✏ Install OpenGAPPS (Step-by-step guide)

Everything fine, battery lasted round about a day, FP2 “struggled” with highconsuming apps while charging.

Then I didn’t any update until yesterday.
Changed to 17.06.xxx

these effects appear:

  • Now I can literally watch decreasing battery on front screen
  • every minute “Google play services has stopped”
  • on “top” line the message is “google play services needs to be updated”
  • I turned FP2 off and started charging over night. But next morning it was only 21 %, I plugged in at 9 %. Battery history shows “nothing happend during night”.

tried solutions:

  • recalibrating distance sensor - did nothing
  • apps battery optimization is “all apps optimized”
  • cannot uninstall “google play services”

As I want to keep openGapps “out” for next month, I hoped it just got lost using fpOpen update, but it did not.

next steps:

  • trying backup-apps, but not so important, save my data anyway
  • will try to use TWRP to install 16.12 again using https://code.fairphone.com/projects/fp-osos/dev/fp2-blobs-download-page.html
  • surprise here: current release is called 17.03 instead 17.06 - why?
  • if it works, will go same way step by step to 17.01 etc.
  • if it not works, I will start to flash / wipe FP2 entirely for clean install

Because I assume Gapps will stay with intern mechanism.

Will report later, is my first real disappointment, “regular” restarts … I got used to it.

That is the BLOBs page. Those ZIPs are not flashable.

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oh, thanks, I was still on my way to understand the technical part of my next steps.
How do I get flashable older versions?

It appears part of opengapps survive a system update (or installed apps assume it is there because it was at setup time, and freak out if it isn’t). Previously this had led to bootloops if opengapps wasn’t installed immediately after installing the FP openOS update package, as described here.

Why does this matter: I’d say there’s a fair chance that if you flash the old system without either installing opengapps or wiping your data or doing something smart that I don’t know about, you’ll still end up with a misbehaving phone. You might not run into that problem, but if you do, reflashing opengapps might solve it. If you do the latter, remember to download the latest version of opengapps for whichever android version you’re installing it (different versions for Android 5 and Android 6).
Chances are that your battery issues are related to the malfunctioning gapps installation.

Try the forum topics for the respective versions, IIRC there’s a request for a direct link for the manual install version in most of them. There is at least a direct link for 16.12, which you mentioned you were on before. You will need to use fastboot to install those images. No need for installing intermediate versions.

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Replace manual with ota and you got the flashable ZIP: https://storage.googleapis.com/fairphone-updates/a3f25298-dd8e-430a-a198-2be103ae710c/fp2-sibon-16.12.0-ota-userdebug.zip

No need to flash intermediate versions neither, it is a complete release, not partial.

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Thanks for detailed explanation, will now start with new openGapps just to get a usable phone and try “resetting” to without openGapps later.

I read my way through this complete topic, but I’m still confused what I have to-do to smoothly update my
FP2 to 17.06.4 (currently running: FP Open 17.03, no-Gapps, Xposed, TWRP 3.1.0-0, F-Droid as normal App). When I flashed the last few updates I simply followed the instructions here: ✏ Update Guide for a modified FP Open OS (with Gapps, Xposed and more)
But it seems that this is not the recommended way to update to this A6 version?
I’m afraid of running into boot-loops (or brick it completely), destroy my contacts-data (or other app data) or have to downgrade as worst case.

So is there any recommended straight forward procedure which minimize the risk of any of the mentioned problems?

Thanks in advance.

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Hello,
I have dared to upgrade as well. Of course after a backup with Titanium Backup…
So far my experiences are:

  • Update (using the standard updater-notice) went smooth
  • Installing Xposed (new version) was without problems (GravityBox also needed new Version MM)
  • No data losses
  • I did have froozen screens, when I tried to open amaze. Reinstalled it and so far it did not freeze any more and did not reboot by itself
  • The phone got extremely hot during the upgrade!
  • I like that the lockscreen is more simple now with just the time. I did not like the old “you own your phone since…”-stuff
  • Battery life seems (subjectivly) longer
  • Some apps work now, that did not work before. For example “outdooractive”. This app had a problem with the fused provider. Now this issue is gone
  • I tried to restart the phone in airplane mode and it seems that it remembers the time now. This would be a great success for me, because I am often in areas without reception and it was a pain not having the time any more.
  • SD-card seems to work better no. You have write permission (if it is kept “external/portable”) and can use it for backups with Titanium Backup without changing the platform.xml. Nice! I did format the SD as internal storage, but then I could not access it from a computer any more and the additional storage was recognized. I think then it can only be accessed by the phone, which makes no sense to me…

I do have a few quesions, which are not answered for me clearly yet (I have not found a solution yet):

  • The edge-swipe is gone. Is it possible to get it back with gravitybox? Is it possible to disable the “hot seat” (line with the 4 apps and launcher) with gravity box?
  • Is it possibe to reactivate the differnt options of the powerbutton (restart, boot to recovery) with GravityBox?
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Helo

I’ve updated my FP2 with the update app and I get pretty much the same problem as described above: screen freezes as soon as I try to do something and the phone rebooting in loop. The phone is encrypted and doesn’t use fancy apps like Exposed.

Booting with TWRP, it can’t mount the /data partition: mounting /dev/block/mmcrblk0p20 on /data failed: Invalid argument. Mounting manually through the terminal gives the same result. Thus, I can’t backup the /data partition.

So far, I’m not sure what I should do to fix this up. Many answers have been proposed, but I don’t know if they’re related to my case. Moreover, there are several conversations running simultaneously on this thread, which makes things worse. Since a lot of people suffers from the same problem, what about creating a new thread for this? Or wouldn’t it be nice to have a howto from the devs?