New software update Kola Nut 1.8.5 is ready

Could you elaborate a little bit on this? If I install the new Fairphone updater app (pre-update) on a 1.6/1.8 phone it doesn’t remove/kill my app store.

The pre-update step kills g-apps completely on a 1.8 phone. After the reboot g-apps is gone. When updating to 1.8.5 gapps gets reinstalled.

This is the root cause of all people having (in 1.8 before update, after pre-update step):

  • a grey wifi symbol
  • messages complaining about apps that require gapps sing-in
  • play store missing

I did the PreUpdate, now the updater app doesn’t start anymore. Restart the phone and clearing cache and data from the updater app as paulakreuzer mentioned above doesn’t change anything.

What should i do now?

Instead of having my only free evening this week with my family i have to work out the problems you did with this buggy update. Thanks for wasting my precious time…

For with the same issue:

I installed the version Storage Upgrade 1.8.5 manually.
No I have at least the latest version.

Nonetheless, GApps is not installing properly.
The support guys said the GApps is to blame and they are going to work it out tomorrow…

…so no solution tonight

@Flavio_Ranica - it’s hard to track replies in here but I don’t think anyone has responded to you.

You could try the guide here How to restore Fairphone if you totally bricked it

You might be able to connect with the SP Flash Tool and reinstall using the binaries. You should be able to use this binary file which will bring you up to v1.8.5 in one install

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I tried to install the storage upgrader via the recovery mode, but installation fails (even after wipe).

I thought I’d follow your procedure… I’m all set, connected to my phone with an adb shell, but…

there’s no “fs_upgrade.bin” in the /system/bin/ folder of the storage upgrader.

do I have the right file? FP1-Fairphone_OS_v1_8_5_OTA_2015-05-07.zip

where do I go from here?

a list of commands I can input into the ADB shell would be great

@gsoundsgood Did you try a sideload of the 1.8.5 zip? or are you in adb shell?

Please note that upgrading manually will get you in the gapps install loop. If you do not need to upgrade tonight consider waiting for tomorrow.

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I keep getting “updater has stopped”. I tried deleting the updater’s cache, then I tried deleting its data.
Last thing I tried was factory reset, but the problem persists even with that.

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Wow. Update, complains, months of software development, betsa testing group, and still lots of problems. But I guess that is very hard to avoid when FP owners have root access, custom partitioning, update from different software versions, etc.

Good luck making the next updates more foolproof. I do hope all who post on this thread are the only ones having issues :slight_smile:

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Don’t go into adb shell, but try the following:

On your phone: Enter recovery mode and choose “sideload”. Connect via USB.
On your computer: Issue adb sideload FP1-Fairphone_OS_v1_8_5_OTA_2015-05-07.zip.

The process of updating should start.

Thanks a lot for the interactive tutorials. After following the steps everything did run through without any issues.

I hope the other users are also sucessful.

Greetings, Thomas.

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@jopi79: Although it may seem easy, to change the partitioning in “the right way” is most likely not as easy as you think. It has worked out well, so far, for you. But now the software update gets trouble. Good, that there are ways to manually continue with their Storage upgrader (beware of the missing line breaks in 2).

If I see the effort that other vendors (your mentioned “big players”) do with it, or even with plain software upgrades - if they release them at all -, then I have big respect for the work for Fairphone’s work.

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I could fix the problem for me with a complete flash of the binaries, see here: Google Apps can't be reinstalled

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I see the same problem here, on top of that there was a brief pop-up messages, stating that some file was invalid due to a ‘bad signature’. I couldn’t reproduce this, though.

Hi Flavio,

sounds like you have the same problem as most of us here. Hopefully there will be a solution available soon. In the meanwhile, you can try Chris_R’s solution. People in this forum have reported that this works out.

thats why 1.6 was mentioned all the time! Now I understand we updated to 1.6 but without bugs and all! Documentation is too abundant to have noticed or understand, I’m afraid. I joined a movement, not a softwareclub, so I don’t pay too much attention to technical stuff. Although I checked the repaired bugs in Android and found that half of them is unique to Fp, but I never had problems with them.
Thanks for explaining the withdrawal of 1.8, and thanks to RL1 now at last I understand that a launcher is what my screens looks like, and that ‘V2.launcher not in new OS’ (I read that) means that we change back to the old 5 screens (but I just discovered still the list of last used and most used) etc. Probably lots of users have asked for this?
I do my best to keep up, but I’m not digging into the insides of my Fairphone on a daily basis, so I had forgotten that version 1.8 included v2.launcher and what it consists of for me as a user and so what I can expect when it’s not there anymore.
I’m glad that I can get it back if I want to, and will consider it.

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By the way: How to become a beta tester?

I am a quite tekkie guy with a bit of understanding for hardware and software.
I have had much trouble with my fairphone - I hope most users didn’t, because this must be very frustrating for non-tekkies.
I would be open to have some more trouble with the phone to save the non-tekkie users a bit of trouble…

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You can’t be serious; I never ever mess with my phone and only follow updates that present themselves. Hence I am (was) on 1.8, and now you say ‘this isn’t official’? Come on :frowning:
Anyway: although I never liked the 1.8 launcher I would have preferred to keep it, as it would save me the trouble of reinstating all my launcher-icons again :frowning:

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The same here!!! It’s really annoying to get no answer from anyone.

Here you go: But I guess it will take some time until the next version is ready for testing.



Sorry that phrasing was a bit unfortunate. What I ment to say is that - although alot of people updated to 1.8 - Most FP users were (are) still on 1.6 or lower (plus some on 1.7) and to not confuse them and keep them from troubles 1.8 has not just been pulled from automatic updates but also from manual updates and there is also no more interactive tutorial about 1.8.
But it’s not my place to say what is “official” as I am just a user like everybody else here.



I’m sure if someone who read your posts had an answer they would have provided it by now. The last post by a Fairphone Employee in this thread was yesterday at 8:34pm the first one at 9:32 am wich means a workday of 11 hours. I’m sure they’ll be back today to try and find solutions to existing problems and probably thought (dreamed) all night about them. :wink:

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