I installed LineageOS over the weekend and over 2 days of testing can honestly say that I love the customisation but hate the stability issues I’m facing. Plus the fact that I now have to rely on less secure NFC bank cards because Google Pay/Wallet doesn’t work on custom ROMs.
Can I go from my Android 13 LineageOS 20 (20230716-NIGHTLY) back to FPOS with this newest update?
My LineageOS install shows “vendor security patch level: 5 May 2023” and “Android security update: 5 July 2023”.
As far as I’ve been able to read into this, there is a patch level that needs to never be downgraded or else I get a shiny brick. What I am unsure of however is the custom recovery and the higher android version, hence the question.
EDIT: Also another question, this time more related to the update. Is the auto-brightness bug fixed? I didn’t see it in the patchnotes…
LOS generally should be very stable. We use iodéOS (LOS fork) and almost never face instabilities (FP3 & FP4).
As long as you don’t relock the bootloader, the patch level doesn’t matter. But I assume that you want to relock the bootloader, so pay attention to the Android security update patch level. And since you installed LOS with patchlevel 2023.07, there is currently no way to install the FairphoneOS and lock the bootloader again afterwards, since it just got to patchlevel 2023.06 (and the OS images for this update are not available yet anyway)
The recovery will get flashed with the OS. And the Android OS version (11, 12, 13) is not important afaik - only the android patchlevel.
As I understand it, I cannot “sign” the lock of the bootloader with an inferior patch level to the previous signature of the bootloader lock. This makes sense. Does this requirement still apply to non-bootloader-locked OS installations done on an unlocked bootloader? As you put it, it sounds like a “yes” but I’d like to make sure I don’t do something stupid.
I guess I’ll have to sport an open bootloader for now just to be sure and wait for a new FPOS update with patch level higher than 2023.07. Hopefully then, I’ll be able to relock the bootloader.
My wording here could maybe have been better…
I use Microsoft launcher, mainly for the customisation - including removing the google search bar that was added in Android 12 - and while booting and from time to time when unlocking the device the whole phone just freezes and refuses to do anything. This has so far led to the phone rebooting itself twice in the 2 days I’ve had LOS 20. This never happened on FPOS in more than 8 Months .
Maybe it’s just related to the launcher, but since I’ve never had this problem on FPOS or on my Samsung S9 before with the same launcher, I am assuming that the OS is somehow not playing nice.
Maybe you try with a different launcher first
I can definitely recommend Nova Launcher. I have been using it for years with LOS and AOSP based systems and now on FPOS.
You mean if you install FairphoneOS and leave the bootloader unlocked? That should generally not be a problem (apart from security considerations). But some apps don’t like an open bootloader.
And as soon as you’ll relock the bootloader in the future, your phone will perform a wipe again.
hmh ok, I don’t really know this launcher. But as @Lars_Hennig said: you could try other launchers. If I search on F-Droid there is a huge amount of open source launchers available
The apps that don’t run is part of my issue. Now two days later into using my phone and I’m starting to get other problems that make me wish I never did this OS install. Biggest dealbreaker being the autocorrect in whatsapp not working properly when writing in multiple languages with Swiftkey or GBoard.
I know somehow with the community’s dedicated efforts there’s a solution to all my problems somewhere… but I can’t be bothered looking for ways to make everything work the way the stock OS does and setup everything. I just want to have a working phone, I guess I’m not the 20 year old with his shiny new HTC Wildfire and eons of free time anymore.
Also, I had hoped to get a fix for the brightness issues, but that’s still there in LOS so that’s a bummer. Maybe it does give a bit more customisability, but in the end, the stock OS with a custom launcher is what gives the most freedom while not breaking everything else (banking, authenticators, google pay, and others) so that’s gonna be the way forward for me.
I’ve also tried Nova launcher as suggested by @Lars_Hennig but it wasnt the right fit. If anyone has good suggestions, I’m happy to try aome others.
I suggest to check your keyboard settings. There, you should be able to choose the autocorrection languages
Which brightness issue do you mean) This one? I might have to check our FP4 with iodéOS if it is present there too. But since custom ROMs rely on the firmware blobs Fairphone provides, this issue might effect most of them.
That being said: In our use case all banking and payment apps are working flawlessly. However, we don’t use Google Pay.
I’m fairly confident it has to do with the OS and the way MindtheGapps works. Something from the GBoard/Swiftkey keyboards is not giving information in real time to the system about the current language when using a multilingual keyboard.
Like in this example:
The keyboard allows you to use multiple languages at the same time and recognises the language as you type the first word or two and then selects the language for the autocorrect. This is a great feature but unfortunately, I haven’t seen it working. Choosing a single language keyboard with the default AOSP board does work and changes language as expected but… The convenience of having the 3 languages I use for work be always active is now lost
Yes, that’s the one. According to this post it seems as though the iodé team has found some sort of fix. I don’t know whether the fix is still working…
Unfortunately, I’d like to be able to use google pay, that’s also why I’m not really willing to sort out the other problems. Especially since every guide I’ve found over the subject from 2017 to today says something along the lines of “Use this at your own risk, this workaround may or may not stay working with future updates as google may change the safetynet and other google pay API requirements.” Given the multitude of different methods I managed to find over the subject. I decided not to bother trying.
That must have been a different bug, check the date: “March 2022”. It would be surprising if the Iodé folks managed to fix a bug which at that time hadn’t appeared yet.
As for the keyboard autocorrect, it’s mostly hit and miss on my stock-everything FP4. I’m communicating in French and German (and some English from time to time), and it does have problems detecting which language I’m currently using. English is detected very quickly, German and French (in that order) are more hit-and-miss. For them it takes several (3-4) unambiguous words for the keyboard to know what language to suggest from, and even then it sometimes still suggest from another language (just in case?..).
Dont mix issues: the issue back from the beginning fixed by Iode in March 2022 has nothing to do with the current dimming issues which is completely unrelated to the automatic brightness.
Just scrolling 1 post below the above mentined confirms it I would say
Several people recently confirmed in the dimming topic they have the issue as well.
Fairphone 4 with latest LineageOS + Google Pay here.
For me it sounds a lot like you installed the Google Services wrong. Maybe you did a boot of the OS and after that installed MindTheGapps. A wrong Google Service installation can cause issues with crashes and non-working apps.
.
