Easy Installer - Documentation Suggestions

May I introduce this recent post Unable to finish /e/ installation on Samsung Galaxy S8 as a well written case study of the events which have been observed by quite a number of users of Easy Installer, where the OP is given insufficient information to break the inbuilt Samsung design security.

While this is a serious issue I raise it here in the context of broader Documentation.

I believe the Easy Installer is deficient in not saying something like this:

  • Your Samsung device has reported to us that TRRP was successfully installed.
    The key combination Volume down + Power on it’s own will cause your phone to reboot and the device will over-write TWRP back to original, preventing the install of /e/, without further warning.

  • Please now Force stop the phone (in the current “Download mode” never mind the message stating that it shall not be turned off!)
    Use Volume down + Power to force stop.
    Attend carefully, keep holding the buttons - it may take about 7 seconds, the instant the screen goes black (black as in off) and before the device starts to restart,
    instantly change the finger press to Volume up + Bixby + Power,
    be prepared for another 7 second hold without relaxing, TWRP will start.

Now I am saying that a good part of that should be written into the Easy Installer UI, but I am bringing it up here in the broader context of better documentation for all users.

A thing that makes this worse for /e/ is that while LineageOS can write as a “Software project”, /e/ is also actively a “Hardware project”.

/e/ has a duty of care to users to provide essential information.