Google Apps can't be reinstalled

Help Fairphone 1
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Ok, this is for now the only working methode of getting GAPPS and 1.8.5 working on a FP1 model having gone the manual 1.8.5 FP1U route.

Beware Only use this method if you are absolutely sure you are fine with flash your phone using SP Flasher!
Warning Only use this method after a BACKUP! (or if you already used the Recovery route, in which case you probably wiped your data partition anyways…)

To get you kickstarted, you need:

Then:

  • connect your phone while in recovery mode to your PC (it should install the MTK6589 drivers, if not see bottom of this post)
  • Unzip both sp flasher and binaries
  • power down your phone and take battery out
  • start SP flasher
  • Use scatter-loading button (right, 2nd button) to load scatter file from 1.6 dir (MT6589_Android_scatter_emmc.txt)
  • Press Download button (top of screen)
  • After you press download, connect phone to pc by cable, THEN insert battery WHILE pressing volume UP
  • SP Flasher should now see your phone and start flashing

After you see the big green completed sign, disconnect your phone, reboot phone!
Then go ahead and connect to wifi but skip everything else.
Go to FP updater, it should say v1.6 and offer you the 1.8.5 update.
Go ahead and update.
After reboot, V1.8.5 wants you to connect to wifi again and offers to reinstall gapps.
After reboot Google wants your account settings.

DONE!

Now reinstall apps from backup or play store and enjoy 1.8.5 with gapps on a FP1 Unified Partition!

Offtopic: I think something still needs fixing, because I now have a recovery that is not accepting my external SD, that didn’t magically go away…)

Driver: if your pc doesn’t install the MKT6589 divers and you don’t have them, the original post points to http://d-h.st/p3m but I recommend http://gleescape.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/MT65xx_USB_Driver.zip. I didn’t need this driver package, but if you do: I recommend manual installation of the driver (by letting windows detect the device and the going to the x64 or i86 dir and pointing to the driver, instead of using the dodgy installer that is in the first package). My preferred source for the drivers (on gleescape) doesn’t come with an installer which is fine. Right-click the android_winusb.inf file and select Install from the windows popup menu.

UPDATE: Thanks to @Kephson there is a slightly quicker option that he used: you need the scatter file he posted in Google Apps can’t be reinstalled and the 1.8.5 binary image FP1U. This will save you 1 step: you’re flash directly to 1.8.5 and don’t need to update ‘twice’. I haved used this myself and you need to trust him in giving you a correct scatter file. Other than that it is one step quicker.

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