I am still on 1.5 years old Android 10 firmware 8901.3.A.0136 which causes a bad feeling due to omitted security fixes, but according to OS Release Notes, no newer Android 10 firmware exists. So I’d need to upgrade to Android 11 or 13. That makes me fear I will again loose data/functionality that is important to me, just like upgrades in the past. Skimming the forums, I saw so many mentioned issues for upgrades to Android 11 and 13 that I am simply overwhelmed.
Does a consolidated listing of known issues or potentionally undesirable side effects exist? Ideally, whether the issue as solved e.g. by newer firmware release or a user action. EDIT: Such a wiki page exists for FP4 Known reproducible and reported issues of the Fairphone 4 and FP5, I’m looking for FP3.
Is there a proper “undo upgrade” feature? By proper I mean if I recognize a few days after upgrade that I miss something, that I can revert back to last Android 10 state including software and user data.
I forgot to add that there is a thread of Android 13 problems, but I’ve opted to stick with A11 due to the fingerprint sensor debacle. As a result I haven’t been following that thread. Maybe someone else can link you to it.
Edit:
I happened to find the thread FP3+: Issues with Android 13 update it has over 300 posts so it way take a while to digest. Note that there has been an update for A13 and some of the initial problems may have been solved. I don’t know as I haven’t read it.
Secondly here is a link showing options for upgrading your fairphone manually. Some of the options are without losing data, but I’d back everything up before deploying any of the options to be on the safe side.
Here is a list with all Android 11 versions and a link to the Forum topics which will tell you more about issues.
Having back-ups is always a must have. Things can go wrong, there is never anything like 100% safe.
I so far never faced data loss or serious issues with an update in 7 years of Fairphone.
Thank you for the OS listing, bookmarked. What I look for is similar to that wiki page, just not listing OSes but listing issues of Fairphone OS 11 respectively 13.
Backup does not help against lost functionality (i.e. bugs in new version) Concerning data losses: I had a backup, but only when trying to restore I detected that the backup missed contacts of one of the 8 accounts – following Murphy’s laws, the account that was discontinued in the new Android version and thus deleted by intention during the update process. Would have been user friendly to notify for this intended data deletion in advance, so I could have moved contacts to another data pool. For the other losses, well, I do not know of a convenient & reliable way to backup & restore local application data, but I am happy to learn about it
That does not exist and everyone is free to create.
That sounds like a very very special case. All my contacts are easily and automatically backed-up using Davx5 with my posteo account.
Just do some search and reading here in the forum thats discussed in tons of threads. There are more or less convient options. When you dont use google backup or are rootet, you need a bit more manual tools. So if you really have no backups, do this irrespective of updating the phone or not.
What I do: my pictures are uploaded automatically in my Hidrive.
Whatsapp, Signal and 1-2 other apps back-ups are copied to my PC from time to time, might be possible to do this through Hidrive as well never tested it.
Other important documents I upload to my Hidrive
So I dont always have a very up to date backup of whatsapp e.g. however I’m aware and would survive this loss.
Concerning data losses: I had a backup, but only when trying to restore I detected that the backup missed contacts of one of the 8 accounts – following Murphy’s laws, the account that was discontinued in the new Android version and thus deleted by intention during the update process. Would have been user friendly to notify for this intended data deletion in advance, so I could have moved contacts to another data pool. For the other losses, well, I do not know of a convenient & reliable way to backup & restore local application data, but I am happy to learn about it 