I’m currently using a OnePlus 7 Pro onto which I’d like to load /e/, but I thought it’d be nice to have a backup device in case the installation goes sideways. (The bootloader’s already unlocked, but I’d never pulled the trigger on replacing the firmware.) I dug up my old Moto Z Play, on which I had installed an earlier version of /e/ at some point (it said it was on Android 7) and planned to update it first, since it’s still supported.
First, I updated the bootloader. I couldn’t use adb reboot bootloader to get there, but I used the volume and power buttons to get to an older /e/ bootloader. fastboot flash recovery recovery-e-1.20-r-20240221382014-dev-addison.img then put the current bootloader on, and I then proceeded to wipe the phone and try loading the image.
adb sideload e-1.20-r-20240221382014-dev-addison.zip wouldn’t work from within /e/ recovery. Enabling sideload mode didn’t make any difference. (It shouldn’t be a cable problem, as fastboot worked to update the bootloader.)
I then thought I’d go back to TWRP, since I’d used it on a number of devices in the past. Back to the bootloader, fastboot boot twrp-3.7.0_9-0-addison.img, and now we’re in TWRP. I put the /e/ image on an SD card, popped it in, and navigated through TWRP to install. It started installing and made slowish progress for a bit…but then it stalled out somewhere around 80%.
After about a half-hour, it only occasionally wakes up when I press the power button, and “swipe to unlock” isn’t working. I’ve tried every combination of buttons to try to force the phone to shut off.
Where do I go from here? Do I let the battery run down and try again? Should I try one of the older images? Is there an older version (perhaps not as old as 7) that’s known to work on this phone?
Update: I finally got control again…tried /e/ recovery again to get the error message it was giving me on adb sideload:
adb: sideload connection failed: no devices/emulators found
adb: trying pre-KitKat sideload method...
adb: pre-KitKat sideload connection failed: no devices/emulators found
I tried moving the phone off the hub I was using to a USB port on the computer…still no joy. I’ll try one of the older /e/ releases at https://images.ecloud.global/dev/addison/ with TWRP and see if it goes any better.
Update #2: I flashed TWRP to the recovery partition, put /e/ 1.16 on the SD card, and booted into TWRP. I told it to wipe the device (again) and then install /e/. Some errors that had shown up on the previous install attempt (I’m assuming the lines of red text that scrolled by occasionally were errors) didn’t come back this time, and the installation was a success. I did the first-time setup thing, joined it to my WiFi, and now it’s trying to update to /e/ 1.20 OTA.