It’s not uncommon that users switch over from the Fairphone 2 to the Fairphone 3.
The Fairphone 3 got some things which resemble things many users know how to deal with on the Fairphone 2, examples:
- TWRP is available.
- Installing a stock version of Fairphone OS is possible (Fairphone way / community way).
- Custom ROMs are available, e.g. /e/, LineageOS or GSIs.
The Fairphone 3 is different from the Fairphone 2, however, and so not every prior knowledge carries over well to the new device.
Here are some things not to do the same way as on the Fairphone 2.
This post is a Wiki, so feel free to edit it so it gets better and stays accurate over time.
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Don’t install OSes intended for the Fairphone 2 on the Fairphone 3!
- This shouldn’t be possible at all, because not surprisingly the OS will not work. But as the installing scripts for Fairphone OS and Fairphone Open OS for the Fairphone 2 apparently don’t care enough about the device they alter, not getting a working OS may be the least of your concerns.
There’s a good chance you will get a bricked Fairphone 3.
(Source, and Source, and here’s a possible remedy for that.)
- This shouldn’t be possible at all, because not surprisingly the OS will not work. But as the installing scripts for Fairphone OS and Fairphone Open OS for the Fairphone 2 apparently don’t care enough about the device they alter, not getting a working OS may be the least of your concerns.
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Don’t use the Fairphone 2 Updater App on the Fairphone 3, it will not work. (Example topic)
- On the Fairphone 2 the Updater is an App which comes pre-installed, but is also available in the Google Play Store.
- On the Fairphone 3 you will find the Updater by going to Settings - System - Advanced - System update.
- When you change phones you will understandably often try to install the same set of Apps you used before, and there are convenient ways to do this easily.
If this results in having the Fairphone 2 Updater App on your Fairphone 3, you can safely delete the App, as it will not work anyway.
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Don’t install TWRP on the Fairphone 3 before you really know what you are doing!
- On the Fairphone 2 installing TWRP simply meant to flash a TWRP image to the recovery partition. At least Android OSes didn’t care, and their OTA updates didn’t care (as long as TWRP managed to install them).
- On the Fairphone 3 installing TWRP means to alter the boot partition in order to embed TWRP in it. (Source)
This will break OTA updates for Fairphone OS, because the updating process checks whether the partitions are unchanged and will not update when detecting an altered boot partition. (Source) -
Installing TWRP isn’t necessary.
"You can boot into twrp usingfastboot boot <twrp.img>" and “Make sure you have the option ‘Mount system partition read-only’ checked in TWRP if you want to be able to OTA.”
Installing TWRP can still be fine if you want to run custom ROMs or if you don’t need OTA updates for Fairphone OS.
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Don’t treat the Fairphone 3 modem.img the same as the Fairphone 2 modem files.
- On the Fairphone 2 any version of the #modemfiles could be installed independently of any OS (or OS version) running on the phone. There were use cases for trying out different versions of the modem files.
- On the Fairphone 3, if you are running Fairphone OS, you might want to reconsider before you flash a modem.img of a different Fairphone OS version. (Source)
- Installing a different modem.img version could also break Fairphone OS OTA updates on the Fairphone 3 if there are changes in the modem.img. (Source)