FP4 Android 15 - Launcher has dementia forgets app icons after reboot

Help Fairphone 4
,
1

After the disastrous Android 15 on my stock rom with the launcher continuously restarting and the phone rebooting every 5 to 10 mins, forcing me to do a factory reset and having to set up all apps again, I’ve found another rather annoying bug with the new stock rom on my 2nd Fairphone 4 (the primary FP4 runs Iode, that had no problems with the update to android 15 whatsoever).

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Insert microSD card.
  2. Format card as “shared internal memory”
  3. Install an app, go to “app info” and move it to sd card.
  4. Place the icon for that app anywhere on your start screen, or move it to the quick launch row.
  5. Perform a reboot.
  6. After the reboot, the launcher will have forgotten the app’s icon on the start screen and/or the quick launch row.
  7. Wait for the fsck of the microSD card to finish, icons will still be missing.

Please keep in, this is all on a phone I did a factory re-set on barely two weeks ago.

Older android versions did this differently. Apps that were not available immediately after reboot, due to being stored on the microSD card waiting its fsck to finish, were greyed out in the launcher, but the launcher never forgot their position. Once the fsck finished the apps were available again normally.

This is how I would expect this on any normal recent android device having the microSD formatted as “shared internal memory”.

This is how my primary FP4 with Iode OS does it.

Now, on the FP4 with stock Android 15, I have to re-place several app icons on the start screen after every reboot.

Yes, there are workarounds available. Yes, I could move all apps to internal storage. Yes I could install an alternative launcher.

Yes, despite these available workarounds, I find this bug rather annoying. FP4 with stock android 15 is the only device that gets this wrong. The FP4’s update to Android 15 was a mess anyway, but could you at least try exert some effort not to break default AOSP features?

Iode was able to get this right and give my primary FP4 a seamless upgrade to Android 15, why can the stock rom not do this?

I am a repeat customer, owning 2 FP4s and having beet quite happy with them despite a few minor quirks and rather short batter life. Please keep in mind that there is plenty of choice available on the market for Android phones. The perks of the Fairphone products more than make up for minor bugs, I bought my two FP4 more for political reasons, anyway. Howerver, if things like this keep happening, I will not come back for FP6 nor FP7 nor…

Please fix this, I would really appreciate that. Thank You.

2

While I would never recommend this, as its coming with way too many issues up to complete data loss, I’m also wondering why people still want to move Apps on the SD card instead of moving only the Apps data to the SD card? The App itself isnt the factor when you want to save GB on the internal storage its the data.

Either way contact support, to have this fixed.

3

Hello ymuell and thanks for the quick reply.

How do I go about contacting support about this? The support webpage seems to deal with hardware repairs only.

Regards,

4

I hope it helps to have a look at contactsupport .

Regarding your SD card usage I recommend to read sdcardguide (of you haven’t already).

5

Hello Volker,

thank you for your replay. After my initial confusion and me interpreting the support website to be only about hardware problems. I managed to file a support ticket. I am curious on how that will turn out.

Thanks for pointing out the sd card guide. Whilst I know my way around android phones and do not really need a guide for setting up the sd card, I found it sadly surprising that the guide actively discourages formatting the sd card as internal storage. Even further so, as my primary FP4 running Iode OS seems to be running rather fine with this mode.

So far, formatting the sd card as internal storage had been working well on the stock rom for me. At least it did so before the update to Android 15 came out. I do not see any good reason to put having with a feature that worked well getting significantly worse with a new software update.

I value the moderators’ uncompensated volunteer work on this forum. But please, do not make up excuses for Fairphone making things worse. This is Fairphones fault and they shoud fix it.

Pointing towards the sd card guide, making me feel stupid for using a normal AOSP feature the same way I have used it on other phones before, is not the way I want this conversation to continue. Fairphone should really fix this messy Android 15 release.

But either way, I thank Your for pointing out the sd card guide, for reading it was still quite educative. It seems to me, that, using any recent Fairphone with a stock rom, one should not expect this feature to work well. Unfortunately, I do rely on that feature for several reasons and would rather change to another brand than do without it. Well, I guess that means, sadly so, my next phone will probably not be a Fairphone.

Regards,

6

I don’t know if it’s the phone’s fault or the phone’s stock SW fault. But I’ve read a lot of reports on this forum of people having used an sd card as internal storage and having run into various problems, including very regrettable data loss. So I’m sure this is why the sd card guide has been written with it’s recommendations - and not to “defend Fairphone”.
So if you see this as a reason to change to another brand, that’s ok, it’s completely up to you.
And good, that you managed to raise a ticket covering your problems! Hope it will help! :slight_smile: