I . . . really don’t want to deal with any workarounds here.
It has to run!
Well I can imagine many people don’t want to work at resolving problems they have and would like others to so, especially when they spend £450 on a product.
But given the Fair production focus it seems to me that other aspects like hardware and software are of secondary importance, so I expect to have to something.
Luckily I uninstalled lots of Google apps on receipt of the phone and haven’t suffered from this issue.
I get it that you want it to run, but it really doesn’t have to run either perfectly or to a persons expectation.
Still this issue is a huge issue but if you have read much of the above it seems like a Google auto update not a Fairphone issue,
@anon9989719
I understand your situation for the moment and I’ll always support if there is any problem.
But in this case I’m not able to activate the workaround within the given 10 secs and I need my phone for my daily work.
So - from my point of view - it must work independent what’s the problem is.
And for the moment it seems it is only a problem of Fairphone.
So please find a solution that enables me to use my phone …
And inform all the users that a reset does not solve the problem. Maybe there are some users that destroy a lot of work or photos without solving the problem
I used the command below to open the settings screen of the Google play services. I launched it via adb when the os is starting. That gives you time to click on the three dots and uninstall the updates.
adb shell am start -a android.settings.APPLICATION_DETAILS_SETTINGS package:com.google.android.gms
Hello, my FP3+ was not affected by these boot loops. But to be prepared, some days before I
removed the updates for Google Play Services
deactivated Google Play Store.
So everything went fine.
Like @Blaffi said in this post, the root cause is removed and it is safe to reenable everything again.
I am just a bit scared to do so, so my question is:
Is there somebody who was never affected by the boot loops, took these steps as a precaution and then reenabled Play Store and updates for Play Services again? Does everything work fine?
What’s App disappeared in the fire, since apparently it was not backing up after all. When I opened my laptop instance, it needed a new login - which showed that everything had been wiped except 4 threads (ie rest was local not cloud backup as set).
But, good solution suggestions if you can get them to work!
Appreciate the effort, thank you.
Unfortunately, the level of knowledge is beyond me - I don’t have the bandwidth to have to hack my phone (otherwise I would be using Linux), I just want it to work, or problems to be patched. This instance was all a very unpleasant surprise and waste of half of my weekend.
Thanks @anon64862762. But I can confirm what @Jonibhoni says: Disabling these security services does not solve the issue. Still “Deinstallation failed” messages for Google Play Services…
In my case it is day number five without a usable phone and for me the issue is far from being solved:
The communication from Fairphone side is poor. There is no information on the website, there are no emails to registered Fairphone users, there has been no dedicated respone to my customer support request.
The proposed workarounds via Google Play Services and Play Store don’t work in my case. I have considered all the remarks and hints in this forum. Factory reset is not an option due to data loss.
I am so much supporting the philosophy and journey of Fairphone. But in essence I still expect a working tool as well as clear and swift communication.
Same here. I am totally lost since a few days. It can not be that these are the only solutions. I think it’s great that the community finds solutions quickly. But for the normal user, these are not applicable. The Google Play service can not be uninstalled because of the authorization of find my phone. But this can not be deactivated either. The slider just turns gray. I hope Fairphone finds a solution quickly. I simply can not afford to do without my phone for several days and not be reachable by customers.
FYI: Before the workarounds above were discovered I’d encountered this issue and performed a factory reset, and thankfully didn’t lose any data; the only issues I had were:
I had to re-enable MFA wherever I’d used an app (e.g. Google Authenticator, Okta Verify, etc) instead of just SMS challenges.
I had to re-authenticate with services (i.e. on first opening apps like WhatsApp and Facebook I saw the login screen; once logged in all worked as normal).
That worked because I have backups enabled on my phone.
You can view when your last backup was taken and what apps were included by going to https://one.google.com/storage#backup and selecting your device.
If you don’t have backups enabled, or don’t have everything covered in your backups, you may be able to enable them… I’m not sure as I can’t test this.
Without entering your pin swipe down from the top of your phone
tap the cog to go to settings
enter your pin (this is when the timer starts!)
Swipe up to quickly see the end of the list
The second to last entry is System - click it
Click Backup
Toggle Backup by Google One to On (so the blue circle is on the right side of the toggle)
Restart your phone (hold down the power key, tap power, tap restart.)
By restarting your phone before the bug causes it to restart the settings should be saved. You’ll know this has worked as your phone will return to the normal logon screen instead of going to the Android Recovery screen (i.e. if you see the Android Recovery screen it means the bug caused the restart before your manually initiaged restart got there).
Now leave your phone plugged in and on wifi; after 2 hours of charging the backup should start / after a while you should then see this backup show up on https://one.google.com/storage#backup (refresh the page to see updates).
Once you know you’ve got a recent backup you should be safer to do a factory reset. I can’t guarantee anything here / every app* may have its own oddities; but if you have backups the factory reset is far less scary than you may imagine
Once you’ve done the factory reset you get prompted for a bunch of things as if setting up a new phone… One of the prompts is to select your old device so you can transfer settings from an old device to your new one - choose this, but then say you don’t have the device; that’ll cause it to suggest restoring from backup. By entering your Google account’s credentials it’ll be able to find the relevant backup and recover from that. It takes a while to download everything, but eventually you get there.
Some people mentioned that they had issues with MFA with their Google account whilst restoring their phone… For me the SMS authentication worked fine with my Fairphone (i.e. it could still receive and process the challenge whilst recovering). If that doesn’t work for you though you may be able to borrow a friend’s device, pop your SIM in there so they get the SMS, then use the code supplied from that.
Obviously avoiding a factory reset is preferable; but in my personal experience the reset was far less painful than I’d expected.
Hi, I am new at the forum, hopefully doing it well.
Thanks for the workaround, it fixed the problem on my FP3+ for this moment.
I had the problem on my second account and could fixe it from the main account by disabeling the Google Play Services, as you discribed. This disabled it for the whole phone, including other users and it worked.
I am also looking forward to an “official” solution.
Thanks to everybody helping to solve this issue!! Today I am very happy, because, now I have access to my photos on the second user, and this is the account for my job!!
I must say that i am truly dissapointed in how Fairphone handles this issue.
My phone is unnusable for 5 days now. This has never happend over all the years i have used smartphones from various other manufacturers.
As far as i can tell this problem presist for a week now and still there is no solution but a workaround that relys on the unser beeing realy quick with his fingers or beeing tech-savvy.
There was no official statment about this issue on Fariphones website or social media.
Just a week ago i would have recommendet Fairphone to annyone who asks me and i frequently did so over the past year. But now i would advice everyone to stay away from it.
No matter how environmantally-friendly or ethical your phone is, it’s useless if the software won’t work.
The environmental benefits dissapear as soon a conventional phone is needed as a backup, which is the case for me right now.
I think its not needed to deaktivate the Google Play services or play store if you have deinstalled the updates. However as you have a second user, please see here as well
you have several official statements here in this topic, so I dont understand your disappointment. Fairphone was quite fast to sort this out with google and I think asking a user to quickly press 5 buttons or so is not that burdensome
