I especially made sure that the AOSP Security Patch Level (in my case May '25) was older than the e/OS patch level (which is apparently August '25 according to that intsall guide: (Security patch: 2025-08-01)). So that should not be the problem.
The phone was already rebooted (that was probably my fault…) and in the e/OS setup screen when I ran fastboot flashing lock_critical and confirmed it. Then it apparently rebooted a couple of times, but then it went completely dark.
I cannot bring it to life anymore, not by pressing the power button, the power and volume down button. Heck it doesn’t even show anything when I plug it into a charger! WTF?!
Is my phone now completely dead and I just wasted 600€?
Last question: This is not a normal brick, right? It is a completely unusable phone, so something really bad must have happened? Is it even repairable?
If bricked, it is likely a “normal” brick for a Fairphome. Contact Fairphone to double check; the last quote mentioned on the forum for reimaging was 52€.
For info there are two different security patch levels. There is
Vendor SPL and
Android SPL – only Android SPL matters.
I clearly don’t know but possibly May 2025 was the Vendor SPL ?? If Android SPL was much more recent this might account for the rollback error.
How would I know whether it is Vendor or Android SPL? I checked according to the above mentioned guide in “Android Security Patch Level” and there it said a date in May 2025.
And I doubt that… not showing any signs when being plugged in, isnt’ that weird?
That is the way to test, and just that result is reported before. The Android build can usually be reimaged onto the SoC but the Firehose method has never been released or leaked as far as reported here.
But ofc you may have something different.
It is very difficult now. When liberating a phone with /e/OS I take a screenshot of all the software information before I start.
Actually, I got it to work again by pressing the power button for a very long time (certainly 10+ seconds). I would not have expected this to work because normally it needs a much shorter press. I am a bit dumbfounded and will try to work from here…
Great. Perhaps save yourself a screenshot from Settings > About phone> tap on Android version, in case anything else crops up … maybe some hardware issue ??
