Questions about root, about TWRP, and about the "LINE Messenger" app on Fairphone 4

Help Fairphone 4
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I hope I posted this in the correct forum. If not, I’m glad to move it to a more appropriate place.

I am ready to buy a Fairphone 4. But before I go forward with the purchase, I want to make sure that I will be able to do a few things that are important to me …

(1) Ideally, I’d like to be able to use TWRP, because I prefer to be able to do nandroid backups. Is it possible to use TWRP successfully on a Fairphone 4?

(2) I want to be able to root the phone. I assume that it’s possible, but I want to know under which OS the rooting will be the most successful. I’m thinking of using /e/, but I’m open to other possibilties.

(3) I need to be able to run the “LINE Messenger” app. I want to make sure that I can successfully do so on a Fairphone that’s been rooted, on whichever OS is the best for this purpose.

Is it possible for me to have all of these things on a Fairphone 4? And if so, what is the recommended OS to use?

Thank you very much in advance.

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Welcome to the community :wave:

  1. There’s no full TWRP support, it’s missing access to the encrypted /data partition:
    TWRP for Fairphone 4

  2. As long as you don’t lock the bootloader you can root any ROM:
    FP4 Root Access is possible, maybe a bit risky - #43 by hirnsushi

  3. No idea :man_shrugging:

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Thank you very much. Actually, I could live without TWRP. And in any case, there are new versions of TWRP that keep coming out.

The rooting instructions are for the stock OS. Has anyone successfully rooted a Fairphone 4 running /e/ ?

I assume the stock OS gives me normal access to Google apps on the play store … correct? If so, then I’m guessing that I could probably run “LINE Messenger”, But I’m wondering whether anyone here might already be successfully running that app on a Fairphone 4.

Thanks again, in advance.

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Apart from the boot.img you have to use, the process is always the same.
I’m not running stock either and I wrote those instructions.

It does, and it’s the only OS that ships the Play Store by default.

/e/OS, iodé and CalyxOS all come with microG, which will make installing the real Play Store harder.

If you need proper (real) Google Apps support and want to run a custom ROM, LineageOS with GApps might be what you are looking for.
If LINE works fine with microG, I’d suggest one of the other three.

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Thank you again!

One further question about rooting: which version of Magisk is recommended? I’m using Magisk-v23.0 successfully on a couple other devices, but there are new several newer Magisk versions. But the problem is that these newer versions are much more complicated to use and are therefore easy to misuse, resulting in a bricked or bootlooping device.

Can I be safe with Magisk-23.0 with your described rooting procedure?

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I’m always just using the latest stable version (25.2 at the moment) and I’ve never had issues on any of the devices it’s running on.

I wouldn’t suggest using a version that’s almast two years old at this point, so much has changend including Android itself.
You will inevitably run into issues with some Magisk modules if you do.

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There’s no full TWRP support, it’s missing access to the encrypted /data partition:

Is this an impossibility or is it being worked on? Do you know it?

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It’s not impossible, but there have been several failed attempts and there hasn’t been any progress in over a year, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Doesn’t mean that nobody is working on it, I’m just not aware of any ongoing efforts.

I personally just use backups + syncthing, haven’t really missed TWRP much :man_shrugging:

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I just installed it on my FP4 with LineageOS + microG and it at least started without any issues. I don’t have an account, so I can’t test it further, but it at least is a good sign.

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