FP3 + TWRP: Phone not recognized anymore via adb command

Help Fairphone 3
1

Dear community,
I am new here (and new to FP3). I somehow made a mistake while installing a new ROM. Somehow I am not able anymore to get into TWRP and I really d o not know what to try next.

The old system is wiped. Adb and fastboot are installed (I use a Debian-kind of Linux). I tried to use a different USB cable - nothing.
On the phone side I do manage to get to the bootloader. But on my computer the device is not recognized anymore (adb devices: list o attached devices is empty), therefore attempting “adb reboot bootloader” or “fastboot boot twrp.img” aren’t successful neither.
So I cannot install neither TWRP nor a new ROM. Anybody out there with a suggestion for a way out of my dilemma?

2

You usually don’t install TWRP on the Fairphone 3, you just fastboot boot the TWRP image when you need it.
The Fairphone 3 is a so-called A/B device, it has a different partition layout compared to older Android phones. It doesn’t have a recovery partition anymore, so installing TWRP instead alters the boot partition. The implications of that vary by ROM. Fairphone OS for example doesn’t do OTA updates anymore with this, /e/ for another example just restores its own recovery when updating.

Just to be on the same page … What do you mean by that?
Bootloader means Fastboot Mode, it looks like this (displayed data may vary, image borrowed from here) …

grafik

ADB doesn’t work in Fastboot Mode, only the fastboot command does.
If you are in Fastboot Mode, fastboot devices should regognize the phone, and you could proceed from there.

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3

Hi, thanks for the quick reply.

  • Yes, I recognize that I have not used a/b devices before. I am just a bit puzzled as I managed to get to twrp before and now not anymore. But if am fine if I could do without.
  • I confirm, I manage to enter the fastboot mode.
  • I was actually trying to install /e/ following the instructions on their website but I got stuck already on the first command: fastboot -w. Not sure what to do with the error message.

fp3-fastboot-w
fp3-fastboot-w1247×224 52.2 KB

4

This is known to come from partly malfunctioning fastboot commands that were around in Linux for a while (this was prominently discussed in the /e/ forum, perhaps a place you want to check out when you consider /e/).

Make sure you use the current Android SDK Platform Tools instead.
/e/ also added a warning to really do this to the install instructions a while ago … “Please ensure you follow the instructions for adb and Fastboot setup exactly as given in the previous step to avoid unexpected issues during device setup.”

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