Stuck in a bootloader loop

[Carangse]

I’m in a bit of a pickle. My new Fairphone 4 arrived today and I didn’t want to sign my life over to Google, so after doing some preliminary setup, like going through the process of OEM unlocking the phone, I installed eOS on the device. However, even on the pre-installed OS, the phone wasn’t connecting to the cellular network, but there was a notification about setting up 5G after I connected to wifi, so I figured it was just Google gatekeeping me or something? But after rebooting into eOS, there wasn’t any change. The phone could read the SIM just fine, it had all the details correct, the APN settings were correct. I tried rebooting; taking the SIM out, wiping it, and putting it back; disabling the SIM and re-ebabling it; enabling and disabling airplane mode; selecting a different preferred network type(s)… all the recommendations, but nothing.

So I figured I’d just re-install the pre-installed OS, but I’m guessing I did something wrong because now I’m in a bootloader loop.

• Selecting “Power Off” and hoping for it to boot into eOS or FP4 Android does nothing, it returns to the bootloader.

• Selecting “Recovery mode” does nothing, it returns to the bootloader.

• Using fastboot reboot recovery does nothing, it returns to the bootloader.

• Using fastboot reboot emergency does nothing, it’s an invalid reboot target.

• Using fastboot reboot fastboot does nothing, responding with: “Failed to boot into userspace fastboot; one or more components might be unbootable.”

• Using fastboot flash <anything> <anything> does nothing, responding with: “Flashing is not allowed in Lock State”

• Using fastboot flashing unlock does nothing, responding with: “Flashing Unlock is not allowed”

• Using fastboot flashing unlock_critical likewise does nothing and responds with: “Flashing Unlock is not allowed”

Here’s what the FastBoot Mode screen looks like:

PRODUCT_NAME - FP4
VARIANT - SM_ UFS
BOOTLOADER VERSION - 
BASEBAND VERSION - 
SERIAL NUMBER - [redacted]
SECURE BOOT - yes
INTERNAL STORAGE SIZE - 128GB
MAIN MEMORY SIZE AND VENDOR - 6GB SAMSUNG
DISPLAY PANEL NAME - DJN hx83112a
DEVICE STATE - locked

I’m assuming that something caused the phone to re-OEM lock, so I’d need to go back into Settings and OEM Unlock again… and I would do that if I could boot into an OS. I’m kinda at a loss here. I saw someone mention an Emergency Download Mode, but I don’t know what that is or how to access it.

Please help

[hirnsushi]

Welcome to the community

If you followed the official instructions to reinstall stock FPOS, did you lock your bootloader in the end?
From what you posted, it’s locked, but that doesn’t happen automatically.

In any case #contactsupport as soon as possible, they can take a while to respond and you probably won’t be able to fix this yourself.

[Carangse]

After FPOS was successfully reinstalled with no logged errors, I relocked it, yeah… was I not supposed to? Surely that alone doesn’t make the device unrecoverable…

[hirnsushi]

Did you check if it was bootable?

Did you update it to the latest version, as noted in the instructions:

If you’ve installed an OS with an older security update, Android’s roll-back protection might brick your device when locking the bootloader! Wait until you get a newer security update before locking it.

The factory images are on version A.142, if you had a newer release installed at some point, that’s why your device got bricked.

I’m sorry this has happened to you, but you’ll have to talk to the support, the community can’t help you

[yvmuell]

Just to add some reference, there are more topics already in the forum

Trapped in fastboot mode with locked bootloader and corrupted custom ROM

After installing the custom ROM /e/ I locked the bootloader and unfortunately disabled “OEM unlocking” in the development settings. Then I restarted my device and always got in the fastboot mode (see attached image). I can’t even go to the recovery anymore. So I have no access to anything (not even adb) except to the restricted (because OEM is locked) fastboot command. Is there a possibility to reset back to stock ROM or unlock the OEM bootloader from fastboot mode with some secret code? Can s…

Device not booting after flashing factory image and locking bootloader

He asked me if i tryed to flash e/os and I said yes. But I locked myself out after flashing StockROM. He told me, that it should be not a big deal, specially because Fairphone invite users to flash e/os. I was surprised aswell, thought they gonna charge me about 50 to 100 bugs.

[Carangse]

UPDATE: Thank you for your suggestions: I have read through and tried each but unfortunately there’s no apparent way, yet, to fix this issue at home. The EDL solution was by far the most promising, but the loader necessary for FP4 is not publicly available for security reasons, which is unfortunate.