I don’t really understand how I could have tried to install Google before the upgrade was complete? I mean I may have done but if that’s the case it means the process is confusing.
For me, yes, I had manually altered my partition but this caused me no problems on upgrading to 1.6 or 1.8. [The only major issue I ever had with 1.8 was the SD card was continually ‘dropped’ somewhere, which meant I couldn’t have any SD-loaded apps on my home screen.]
So for this upgrade I tried to go to 1.8.5 via updater and it downloaded it then before hitting ‘restart’ I was told something like /cache full and then when I tried ‘restart’ I got file not found: /cache/fp_update_21.zip
I tried restarting and clearing the updater’s cache and data but this had no effect. I even stopped the updater.
I then decided to try to downgrade to 1.6 first but I had exactly the same cache issues.
Next I backed everything up and did a full factory reset. Still it didn’t work.
So I decided to use the manual option and put myself back to 1.6. Then I attempted to update from 1.8.5 at this point, but still the Cache issue. This meant I decided to update to 1.8.5 via manual, following this page:
https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202478028-Manually-install-Fairphone-OS-software-update-version-Kola-Nut-1-8-5
I elected to download the Storage Updater 1.8.5 since I hoped to avoid the issue with the SD Card ‘dropping’ and removing apps from my home screen.
I did this installation and then I found I *still had the cache issue for Google Apps. Someone on here mentioned the ‘signature verification’ thing, so I followed the first process on that, which was to use the Recovery to wipe and format the cache. This failed to make any difference, so here I am.
Fundamentally, I am not okay with no Google because I cannot use Winamp + Last.FM to note what I listen to (I like statistics) and because my family use Google Hangouts to communicate and because my wife and I use Instagram to send pics of our daughter to each other or to our parents. These are things that are impossible without the Play store so far as I can see.