Fairphone’s approach to root on the Fairphone 2

I was like you and didn’t install any of the messenger, because I didn’t want to give all thos companies all my data. Luckily I only had to wait for about 5 days after my FP2 arrived to get root. By now we even made a wiki article with detailed instructions here: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/pencil2-howto-root-with-superuser/12375
Just follow the B) variant and you’ll have a rooted FP2 in about 15 minutes :slight_smile:

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Wonderfull !
I will give the page to my wife, she’s the personn in charge ! :slightly_smiling
Thanks a lot.

Hi everybody,

@anon90052001, a month after, is Fairphone having at least a timeline to announce in providing an acceptable “yours to open” rooted and easy to switch to, operating system for FP2 ?

Ok, Fairphone was 2 months late delivering wrong colored devices, but I was trusting you not to jail me. The right way to describe the problem is : How to jailbreak FP2 ? I would not imagine having this to search over the net the day after having receive my phone.

I now see how laughable I was, advocating FirefoxOS or other free alternatives… Fairphone seems to willingly ignore that fair software or not is what their customers are experiencing everydays after a purchase, while alleged origin of materials keeps abstract.

If I am to struggle for freedom against my provider, I would be better returning the FP2 and buy a cheap Wiko instead (~100€). It would require me the same amount of time to put in escaping from Google.

With Fairphone, everyone in the supply chain is treated well, but customers are imprisoned.

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I have my FP2 since 2 weeks. One hour after I unpacked it it was rooted and google-free. All I had to do to root it is here in the forum, I just had to read a bit …

Rooting FP2 is very easy!
Spielmops

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Still, I bought this expensive phone because the provider would do the liberation job for me. It is a political position. At least… it was, with the previous model.

It’s this I was wanting to support (for at least 50%) with my money.

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They never said that they would provide a way to root the FP2, only that it will be easy to root it. Also they never said that a OS without GAPPS will be available at the release date, only that they will be working on it later and I’m sure they are.

You’re not the only one who assumed that you’ll be able to root and ungoogle the FP2 right away, but they actually never gave any reason for that assumption.

I started advocating OS freedom here in august 2014, and may have taken my dreams for reality while this poll was conducted : Closed Poll: Future Fairphone OS Development
71% of 400 respondants chose « Open source / Community developed OS (i.e Firefox OS, Cyanogenmod etc) »
So I’m surprised when @keesj speaks about a “vocal group of people”, like if it was a annoying minority poping out of the blue. I think that Fairphone customers are buying a better world, but not just for the supply chain.

Nowadays, Mozilla stops FirefoxOS for smartphones, and Jolla hardware is outdated and discontinued if I’m right…

So, if I may, I’ll stay a little longer here, and install back my 50 f-droid apps when FairphoneOSOS or SailfishOS will be available.

As the Fairphone way looks like being : “with important delays but well served”, I’m wondering about what kind of delay we’re currently speaking :slight_smile:

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71% of 400 respondents here on the forum is how much % of all FP1-owners? :wink:

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It’s a shame. But I guess it’s hard to build a ‘fair’ phone for the masses using of the shelf hardware and with google in your back. And you don’t make any money building Android devices anyway, it’s just a game for Sony, Samsung and two or three other players buying and selling each others hardware with proprietary software and googles data collection code.

I’m still waiting for the last official 4.4.4 release for the FP1. But have you tried this approach? It doesn’t take as long and so many resources as building the full ROM yourself.

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I’ve read that @paulakreuzer bricked his phone some times, but I’m still interisted in this method.

I was happily surprised that I did pretty much what is explained here : Living without Google 2.0 - A Google free FP2 but it’s just a luck.

It’s takes so long to study and learn all this, while I thought I bought this work from a company…

I’m not sure what @paulakreuzer did, I’m talking about @Max_S approach. But I admit that I haven’t read the whole thread, but most people on the top seemed to be happy.

So better get started :slight_smile: The company is understaffed and has a lot of goal conflicts, so it’s better to support them right now I guess … I assume you want a Google phone and root from the company? I guess those times are over, if I understood @keesj correctly. Only the google free version will be rootable and only this version may be offered by FP later. But you can install GAPPS on top of it later if you want to.

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I bricked the phone by using root to delete google apps. But it as easy to fix with a hard reset and a software reinstall.

That’s not what most people mean when they say “bricked” though :slight_smile:

Soft bricked devices[2]
are generally those devices which show some signs of life. A soft
bricked device usually boots unsuccessfully and generally gets stuck on
boot logo, or reboots endlessly, or, while in operation, suddenly shows a
“screen of death”.
[…]
A device can recover from a soft bricked state by simply clearing all the internal memory and flashing the firmware.

Quoted from Wikipedia

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That’s a soft brick then :slight_smile: Most people understand this though: “In the common usage of the term, “bricking” suggests that the damage is so serious as to have rendered the device permanently unusable.”.

The reason I mentioned this is that some people might hear “a phone has been bricked by a rooting attempt” and will not try it because they think it will destroy their phone. I’ve never heard of a case where an android flashing attempt has permanently bricked a phone though.

I wouldn’t consider this bricking, but breaking the phone. Not even a hard-brick is neccessarily permanent.

Also I never said I bricked my phone rooting, that’s what I was trying to clear up. I bricked the phone by using root for something that simply shouldn’t be done.

But usually requires hardware diagnostics ports like JTAG or SPI to fix :slight_smile:

No worries!

I assume you want a Google phone and root from the company? I guess those times are over, if I understood @keesj correctly.

No :slight_smile: I personnaly find this option not interesting. I’m happy with what is announced and I’m asking for a timeline of it, as a month passed since the announce with no further info, while the matter is urgent now phones arrives. It will be a pain to wipe the phone memory to get use of the FairphoneOSOS that emerged from the poll.

I just want to use reliable, without-ads, libre softwares. And as you spotted I’m on my way for this (I would like to write despite Fairphone stock ROM and lack of alternative currently, bu to be true, I’m on my way thanks to this forum which is already something great, I contribute to not only to growl).

I will get the phone rooted, and get rid of Gapps (ok @paulakreuzer I’ll have to be carefull) and even of the iFixit bloatware (I mean : no use of it without internet, and no use of it without an account = bloatware).

So, as the FP1 was, I thought I found an ally with FP2, but no. After half a thousand € purchase I still have to become an Android expert on my own to get control over my machine.

Here we are in the “home DVD-player” configuration. This machine you bought it, brought back home, it’s yours by law… but it won’t allow you to skip advertisments before showing you the DVDs you also bought to play with. You don’t really control the machine, but to be true it controls you, or, for the extend, what you can see.

A phone became your inner-most personnal digital assistant. Fairphone even tells me at each new install if the software is threatening my private life (thanks for this !). So I won’t handle over (to a stock-driver megacorp) the control of half my digital private life. I will choose which softwares I install and which I remove, or I’ll choose another phone.

And I don’t think that putting lambda users in a straitjacket is an good model, even with the idea of protecting from the rest of the world, in fact including them in.

Regarding DVDs… it became illegal to read DVDs with a free software player in France since HADOPI law (~2009). I’m not nitpicking small issues unfortunately :slight_smile:

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Just in case, I guess it a good idea to continue discussing here:

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^^ what he said!