How to fix Sony Xperia XA2 missing sim card

Damio · April 11, 2019, 6:29pm

Hi Folks,

As you can read at My experience on Sony Xperia XA2 topic, updating /e/ on my XA2 ended in “missing sim card & bluetooth issues”. As a result I used an /e/ build of early march. So i digged in this issue and did some ducking

I found out this Sony uses A/B updates. (see https://source.android.com/devices/tech/ota/ab).
I then discovered if I installed a new build on my B partition it didn’t find the sim card No matter if I sideloaded it or uses the updater. Also I mentioned some errors in mounting the /firmware partition in TRWP if I set the active partiton to B. So some firmware files seems missing. My little quess is that Sony don’t install firmware on the B partition but they are packaging this with every update or their updater copies it.

Then I stumbled upon this pages:

I followed this steps to install new firmwarm on my B partition using XperiFirm tool (for downloading the firmware) and Newflasher (to flash the firmware). After rebooting into my B partition /e/ booted fine but still the sim card error. So further actions had to been taken.

As you can read in the github link someone suggested to dd some firmware from A to B. Some ducking provided the right commands: LineageOS dd commands

After reboot /e/ booted flawless from both A and B partition. So I upgraded OTA.

By now I have the latest build on my B partition and the older one on A.

Happy

andre · April 13, 2019, 6:52am

Hmmm my old Moto G4 without a sim used to ask me for the Sim code on startup and that was it. Now it requests a sim code after boot (after screen lock?) but doesn’t accept it anymore. Thanks for the hint to have a good look at the latest update.

Andre.

andre · April 14, 2019, 8:56am

Managed to get past entering the sim and unlock the phone again

Damio · April 14, 2019, 12:32pm

Great. Good work. Glad it worked!

andrelam · May 1, 2019, 5:57pm

How’s the camera on XA2, quality the same as the stock firmware?

Damio · May 1, 2019, 7:38pm

No, in normal daglicht camera is ok, but not that good. In low light it’s worse. No to say, it’s shitty in low light.
Last week i was at a basketball game and filmed some things.

Damio · May 1, 2019, 7:46pm

But still very, very happy with my XA2. Thought at first I would use it a month or so and then buying a flagship phone with e. But there is no need to change to another phone. Compared to my iPhone 8 this cheap thing is as good.

(One thing: typing and autocorrect isn’t that good)

andrelam · May 1, 2019, 7:47pm

Thanks, the only thing i miss using /e/, is great camera quality. I used iPhones for a long time, so i guess i’m a bit spoiled

Damio · May 1, 2019, 7:50pm

Same here. Maybe Samsung S9+?

Manoj · May 2, 2019, 3:21am

We do have a number of complaints about the camera across devices. In fact there is a request for developers to improve the OpenCamera here.

vlag24 · May 2, 2019, 1:57pm

a little bit off topic but about the camera image quality -
well, that’s the only point I was disappointed at using /e/, my device Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro, with the default chinese rom (Miui 9, not Miui 10 crap), had a very very great camera handling, that’s why I purchased it in the first place. With /e/, Opencamera is working good but not as good as xiaomi default rom camera. Footej camera, a little bit more great but not excellent.
Then I found a fix for my device using Magisk and one of its free module called “[SDM660] Camera All-In-One for AOSP/LOS”. This module offers you some patch options to test, MIUI defaults camera and even Google Camera. The first time, I jumped on Google camera option. At the end no camera at all were working on my device, I installed the module again and choose different options to find at last the best option (sadly I haven’t written the right one so I don’t remember but you can try all the options proposed using the volume buttons). Now the quality of my camera is excellent, as excellent as the default Miui 9 one. And the quality is the same using OpenCamera, Miui Camera, Footej Camera, MiX camera…

andrelam · May 7, 2019, 1:16pm

What ROM was on partition A?

Damio · May 7, 2019, 4:21pm

/e/ rom build 20190312
by now I have some build of early may on A and some of end april (26 I think) on B. Running on A by now. later on this week OTA to the latest build running on B

andrelam · May 7, 2019, 9:41pm

I got myself an used XA2, and installed /e/, but i don’t experience any of the mentioned issues, Bluetooth/ SIM all works. How can i see in wich partition /e/ is installed?

Manoj · May 7, 2019, 11:08pm

I have a custom TWRP for MiA1 where there is an option called tissot manager which shows me the current active partition A/B. Something similar should be there in the standard TWRP as well.

Damio · May 8, 2019, 7:52am

Boot in TWRP, think you can find it under reboot option. There’s the current slot, and you can change the boot slot.

tiktok · August 16, 2019, 7:27am

I installed e on a new XA2 yesterday, did the inline update today - and bam! no wifi, no sim card etc

Can anyone advise on a quick fix, thank you OP, but that looks quite compolicated without step by steps!

EDIT: UPDATE - So I booted into TWRP and saw that my device was now on slot B (the failed update), changed the option to boot from Slot A (the originally installed firmware) and its now working again.

Thats a quick fix, back to the previous version.

But how does one update, without going through the process by OP ?

UPDATE 2: as per the OP, I simply followed ONLY the dd commands as my B partition was corrupt, then did another OTA update and it worked fine.

Damio · September 6, 2019, 10:47am

Glad you managed to get it working. It’s really a nice phone with /e/ installed… only camera quality is really poor…

tiktok · September 9, 2019, 2:40am

Yes it is. The only remaining issue I have is the e App store does not find updates and f-droid repository update fails every time unless I reinstall, then it works on the first run only.

The only app store with working updates for me is Aurora which is obviously missing many of the opensource apps I use.

Damio · September 9, 2019, 5:35pm

My Apps store and F-droid are working just fine… really no idea what this can be.