Impossible installation on Pixel 4a 5G

Hello everyone and happy new year to you all,

I just bought a Pixel 4a 5G for upgrading an “old” S7 edge on which I had installed e/os. I am pretty happy with e/os and that is why I wanted to renew the experience with Pixel 4a 5G, shown as compatible with the devices list (and easy installer).

But I just cannot install it via Easy Installer, with all the methods of the previous topics that I’ve read :

  • first try : Downgrading to Android 11. It did not solve easy installer stuck on “try again” downloading
  • second try : still on A11, with the recommendation here. I did not pass the fastboot recovery mode, even with tweaked recovery img and sha256sum
    third try : recommendation here. it did not work with easy installer
  • fourth try : upgrading to A12. No success.

tried with all OS : Linux, Mac and Windows …

Any clue why this isn’t working ? If that helps my checksum is : 0b59db7938c7b7923ac817a824dbf8f7fefb65a1c0e8d8e3bbda5fbf282b0b74

Many thanks in advance,

Nico

hello,

when easy-installer is stuck with “/e/OS-R” stable (android-11 based)…

since september, bramble is officially “/e/OS-T” dev (android-13 based) supported

why not follow https://doc.e.foundation/devices/bramble/install ?
.
https://images.ecloud.global/dev/bramble/
.

So the Pixel 4a5g is currently at android 11 stock correct. Did you OEM unlock the phone and enter developer mode?

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The Pixel 4a5g was delivered with A14 in it. I downgraded to A11 as suggested and also OEM unlock that allowed me to enter fastboot. But I am stuck on the “recovery mode” step.

piero,

Is that true with easy installer has it been update to use e/OS T? I think easy installer is still at android e/OS-R.

But I like you suggestion don’t use easy installer and just do it like in the page you link.

User Inco I always find it best to use the full install as linked above and not easy installer. You would first have to bring the Pixel up to Android 13.

Hello Piero and thank you for your reply. I did not fully understand the steps here. I will read it slowly tomorrow morning. It seems too difficult for my basic skills

thank you Jets, I will try it tomorrow morning after carefully reading. I hope easy installer will support this in the future

Inco,

I am going to do a 4a5g tonight after work (North America) so around 9:00 PM EST (if I get to it) I will let you know the steps I had to take. I will first try easy installer the if necessary the manual way. I always use the manual method.

Let me know if you need help. Are you in NA or EU time zone, if that’s OK to ask?

may be it is capable, but for this device stable is still on R based version
https://images.ecloud.global/stable/bramble/

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bramble features in this issue Easy Installer always delivers Stable build ? - No, sometimes dev.

Easy Installer will be aiming to collect url: https://images.ecloud.global/dev/bramble/e-latest-s-bramble.zip.

The proposed fix would collect url: https://images.ecloud.global/dev/bramble/e-latest-t-bramble.zip (personal understanding, this is actually latest).

There is a merge request in to fix, but it will probably be a while in testing.

I would go for manual install today.

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Many thanks for your involvment Jets ! Truly appreciated. I am currently in France and it’s around 8 pm here. There are no worries if not possible for you.

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Just for reference:

  • Merged June 2023: R to S merge request: !207
  • Created 2024-01-03: Promote community devices to Android T: !223

I have another 4a 5G to be installed in the next days and I’m not sure what approach to go and when an image is considered to be stable.

Personal opinion based on the last roadmap, we see mentioned “Community devices”; is this a reference to diffs with commercial “sold by Murena” devices, idk. Purchased devices are proposed stable.

Throughout the project “best endeavour” provides all users with a very useful system.

For each device I do not know the exact detail of how far stable and dev diverge. But most of the time stable builds will be significantly less likely to contain “methods in development”.

As for your second link, this is a draft, on the subject of moving from stable to dev. Today, a post holiday weekend, I am optimistic about the draft moving forward next week.

We seem to see Easy Installer partially moving out of stable. This reflects natural improvement and development.

  • Personal outsider view.

Today, I feel a dev bramble T, would suit me better than a stable bramble R.

Others would still consider manually installed stable, in case it might perform better perhaps with some banking apps, if their research suggested this.

Edit Maybe we do not yet know the full impact to Custom ROMs of the “baked in” anti rollback in Android T.

Does anyone know which specific version should I get on this list ? Many thanks

Ok it seems that manual install worked great on my smartphone thanks to piero’s advices. I downloaded the first packages below the “Android T” versions → e-1.18-t-20231209360971-dev-bramble.zip + https://images.ecloud.global/dev/bramble/recovery-IMG-e-1.18-t-20231209360971-dev-bramble.zip

I encountered some difficulties, but you have to make sure those packages are in your “platform-tools” folder, which may be located on your C:/ if you are using windows
Another one was in the last step : “adb sideload downloaded_file_name.zip” ; while being stuck at 47% as described you have to click on your device on “no additionnal packages” or something like that

I will now install all the apps I had on my previous phone.

Many thanks to you all for your time,

Long live e/os

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This had been merged on Feb 2nd. So now a Pixel 4a 5G which is on stock Android 13 (if not, this version needs to be installed first) might brought with Easy Installer to /e/OS T. I Think I’ll give it a try in the next time.

Version 0.20 of the Easy Installer had been released on Feb 1st, it does not include the merge to version T yet.

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