I was notified this morning that a fresh system update is available for my Samsung A5 2016. After the last couple updates had all been going smoothly, I did not hesitate and pressed download / update.
I’ve seen the fastboot screen coming up, and later on I noticed the phone rebooting. Everything seemed fine.
But now the phone is stuck rebooting, it shows the initial splash screen (“Samsung Galaxy A5-6, powered by android”). Then the display turns black, then the splash screen returns. On and off, all the time. I’ve pressed all buttons to hard-reset, then power on again, same behaviour.
Is it possible for me to somehow enter fastboot mode and revert to the last working system-version?
Thanks so much for your quick response ! Everything running again
If anybody else, like me, didn’t know how to boot to TWRP on Samsung: press three buttons at once: Home, Power, Volume up
When being prompted with the directory tree, move on up to arrive at the data-level.
I had the same problem with my A5 2017. I tried installation over OTA and later manually with adb sideload. In both cases my device ended up in a boot loop.
Finally I flashed e-0.13-p* using adb sideload and everything is up and running again.
I’ve opened an issue on gitlab, if anybody else has the same problem with samsung and is able to observe problems in more detail, maybe you can pitch-in?
I have a similar problem with an Asus Zenfone 3. I have replied to the gitlab issue, because the forum posts here seem to indicate that several different phones are affected.
Today I’ve got a notification for a new update. As the last update was pushed to my community-device (Samsung A5 2016) by error, I now wonder, if this time I should try. What’s the easiest way for me to check if an update is actually safe for me or not?
I also saw the arrival of 0.15-p on my phone.
According to this post from @Manoj (Week 11 : 2021 : Development and Testing Updates) we should see an update to Android Q coming.
For my part, I’ll wait to see the developments of the work mentioned in the above post before considering an update.
aha, now I am counting 1+1 together = it seems my device is on a dev-channel. Didn’t know that before, as I didn’t set up the system myself. I suppose that’s something that you decide at the time of installation? Or is it possible to switch from dev to community any time?
Here some explanations on the channels: https://doc.e.foundation/build-status
I have the impression that for the a5xelte, only the dev-channel is available
Some days ago, I was notified for the new 0.17 version. Hoping for information on the forums (if somehting doesn’t work) and also that the previous problem would not occur again I installed it today: Again boot loop. I really do not get the idea of updates if they crash your device?
My Samsung A5 2016 just turned to an irresponsive black brick, from one hour to the other. I had to get a new phone. Previously I had given up trying to update in the end, and I understand if a programmer is not intrigued to do hard (voluntary?) work to keep /e/ running on such old phone-models that are doomed to break/get lost and get extinct in the end.
Instead of buying another old used phone I have now bought myself a fairphone, thinking that this way I will be part of a more sustainable long-term ecosystem (very narrow choice of models with long-term hardware support improves chances of developers willing to invest coding time?). I just hope I’ll be able to keep my part of sustainabilty, not loosing or breaking the phone…
All the best.
