Hello,
during the never ending discussion about using a Covid19 app with /e/ I changed my operating system from /e/ (q 12) to Fairphone OS (q). Nevertheless I think the “Id/e/ales” are important and worth supporting.
Now the discussion seems to have come to a good end and I want to return to /e/ (q 13).
Is it possible to install /e/ (q 13) on a Fairphone 3 with FPOS (q, latest update) WITHOUT the loss of personal data and installed apps by “wipe data”?
I am thankful for every hint…
Nope, only thing you can do is backup important stuff and recover that. OS clean install will always cause data and installed app loss.
We finally have Exposure Notifications support since 0.13 (yesterday) by the way.
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Thank you for this answer - I read about the EN yesterday, that was my trigger to come back “home”. 
I read somewhere, how to backup and restore the whole data partition and the user-data (internal data) after a system update. This might be the way for me, because my bank will kill me, if I ask for activation code for their banking app again and again…
Your bank doesn’t just… have an online method to activate the app?
unfortunately not… 
They sending QR codes by (paper)mail.
Hi,
My 2 cents, hope it will help.
I think you can’t keep the whole data partition, as it includes os-specific system data.
However, some app may help to keep your banking app settings :
- Titanium Backup (non-free Pro version, won’t work correctly with multi-part APK)
- OAndBackupX
NB : both require root (Magisk)
If you’re feeling comfortable with adb shell, you could also try :
- in Settings/App : force stop the app, note it’s technical name in Advanced (something like “com.mybank.app”)
- go to root adb shell, cd /
data/data, then tar the folder with the app technical name (I prefer the GNU tar as it will allow to save some xattrs info ) - as an alternative you can also use TermUX from phone and it’s integrated tar, you’ll have to add a “root” solution to it
- after installing you new OS, install the app, stop it, restore it’s data using same method (take care of uid/gid/, xattr, acl if included in backup)
NB : your banking app may fingerprint some OS information (ROM name, OS version, installer name, …), unfortunately in this case there is not other solution but getting another QRCode 
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After all, the real challenge would be to transfer the Exposure Notification data. Especially since he switched because of the Covid-19 app.
I also have an FP3 with LOS right now (17.1 GSI), but without being able to transfer the collected data of Exposure Notification I can’t go back to /e/.
There has been a thread (and an answer of the creator of microG) concerning the problem, but it is so vague that I am not willing to try it at the moment:
https://community.e.foundation/t/microg-what-you-need-to-know-a-conversation-with-its-developer-marvin-wissfeld/22700/25
If someone was brave enough to try, I would be interested in detailed instructions
Thank you for this advises. I remember, I was able to start
adb root
in the past. But now it only shows
adbd cannot run as root in production builds
I read about this issue on the web (checked if system is rooted - which is not…) but nothing helped. Maybe it depends on the latest update of FPOS.
@dalas.revo
I tried to restore the data of the corona tracing apps after changing to /e/ - but I had no success. It works with some (more simple?) apps but the corona tracing apps just crash after overwriting the data/data with the data from FP-OS. Sorry…
I would press the 
button if it wasn’t such a bad news Thanks for being brave!
I’m not an FP3 guru, but as I understood if your bootloader is unlocked you should be able to boot temporarily to TWRP from bootloader mode (fastboot boot twrp.img from PC).
In TWRP you should be able to open an adb shell, make a tar archive for some apps, pull them from PC.
If your bootloader is locked, you may try a root solution like this one
To be confirmed by FP3 experts
Thank you again. I saved the data/data folders of the concerned apps via TWRP. The restore in /e/ via adb root followed by the changing of owner and rights didn’t prevent the tracing apps from crashing. It worked fine for other apps, preserving their settings. So thanks for your ideas! 
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Glad to read it almost worked ! 
However, I’m out of ideas for the tracing app …
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