Very basic questions about connecting FP3 to Mac

Hi,

Sorry I feel very stupid asking these things. I am trying to unbrick a fairphone that I bought last year, based on the advice here:

Original issue is described here:

Basically I have only just found the time now to try and fix this, but have come up against my total lack of knowledge of programming. I can put my phone into fastboot with power and volume down buttons and I’ve downloaded ADB and fastboot, but I’m not sure that I’m installing/opening them correctly on my Mac and when I type “./adb devices” there is no device listed, which I assume means my phone is not connected to my laptop.

Can someone point me in the direction of a very basic level tutorial of how to connect my phone to my mac and load ADB/fastboot? I’ve tried searching for this both on this forum and elsewhere but it seems too complex for my inexperienced brain! After that I then need to work out how to flash the file in the first link above, which again is not something I have any understanding of, so if anyone could point me in the direction of a basic tutorial that would be amazing.

I’m so sorry to ask all this simple stuff, I have a feeling that if I could get the right information this might not be so complicated, but it feels like a totally alien language and I’m worried me messing in Terminal without any knowledge might just make things worse.

Thanks in advance,

Donald

Just as a further update I have tried this workaround:

I can see the device on system information and tried what it suggests about using the vendor ID in terminal, however still when I then input ./adb devices there are no devices listed as being connected. This seems to be my first (but I’m sure not only) issue. If anyone has a workaround or any tips I would hugely appreciate it.

Thanks

Donald

Just to be sure, because it isn’t clear to me when you try this … the adb command doesn’t do anything with the phone in fastboot mode, the fastboot command does.

When you have the phone in fastboot mode, does ./fastboot devices say anything?

Okay that’s very helpful information!

With the phone in fastboot mode I typed ./fastboot and it says:
A209FNHS0201 fastboot

(sorry, I can’t emphasise enough how embarrasingly basic my understanding of all of this is).

However, I think I might now be cooking with gas! After your helpful advice I used the fastboot command followed by this:

And I think it worked! Unlocked the bootloader, now I need to work out the next step to getting the phone working which I think is something to do with “flashing”, another concept I don’t understand but this feels like a bit step forward. Thank you AnotherElk!

@D00nad
You don’t say whether wanting to re-install Fairphone OS or different OS, but for Fairphone this resource may be of help: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/18896094650513-Installing-Fairphone-OS-Manually. I am a Mac user and have both flashed Fairphone OS and iodéOS in the past.

I’ve now had some excellent progress, managed to install fairphone OS using the directions you sent and looking into now instead installing e/OS to get away from Google…

Thank you again to both of you for your advice!

D