Samsung - Galaxy Tab S5e (Wi-Fi) - gts4lvwifi - Documentation Suggestions

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I just flashed a used Tab S5e and the docs here were sorely lacking. The documentation doesn’t mentioned odin / heimdall flashing tools at all. This device doesn’t support fastboot from what I can tell, and thats what the docs recommend. It seems like it needs to be re based on the lineageOS docs here. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/gts4lvwifi/install

I tried getting heimdall to work instead but had to use Odin.

Additionally I discovered that Samsung mysteriously hides the “OEM Unlock” option in the developer options for seven days. I was able to use method one here to restore it: https://www.droidwin.com/fix-missing-oem-unlock-samsung/

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Thanks for the inputs… We will update the documentation accordingly. The fastboot references in Samsung devices install and upgrade guides are to be removed.

That is the way we plan to do it. Maintainers are asked to check the guides when they are released and let us know in case there are any changes required. The problem comes where devices do not have maintainers or testers which is why we started these Documentation Suggestion sections where users can let us know what modifications need to be made.

Hi,

Still No mention here about flashing a modified vbmeta.img (proposed by the twrp team) before flashing TWRP (as advised on LOS wiki for Galaxy Tab s5e)
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/gts4lvwifi/install

Thanks for pointing that out @piero will have the missing section for the gts4lvwifi added.

Hello.

I successfully migrated to /e/ on my S5e wifi.
Yet I used the S binaries (recovery and /e/) as indicated in the doc Install /e/OS on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e (Wi-Fi) - “gts4lvwifi”
The problem is that an updated S5e runs an Android 11 (R version), at least at 2022-11-20. Maybe will S5e never be migrated to Android 12?

I’ve been told that normally this R and S mixing is totally not recommanded! (I did that because it was not aware that R and S mean “11” and “12” !!! :wink: )

It ended well for me, but should a “caution” be added in the doc?

Unfortunately it seems I just managed to break my device (Galaxy Tab S5e Wifi). The reason I think was that I downloaded and flashed the vbmetar.tar File to the device, as the docu suggests “Download this VBMeta image .tar file.”. Afterwards the tablet kept booting in the TeamWin application. I also tried flushing the device with the custom S5e tar from the TeamWin website, but Odin just closed without any errors on my Windows machine. Because I could not work with Odin, I tried following these instructions: https://youtu.be/TZyqFzsXYek
Unfortunately after the installation /e/ OS did not start, which is why I tried to recover from a previously created backup. Since then, the device just keeps restarting and never stops. All buttons do not respond anymore.

Here my suggestion for the documentation: Please be more specific on which file to download from TeamWin.

Any ideas on how I could recover the tablet are much appreciated. This was a costly adventure. Hope the easy installer will soon support more devices.

hi,
I’ve managed to move from latest stock Samsung firmware (Android R) to /e/ (Android S)
At first, no problem with flashing vbmeta.tar with Odin. But right after having the OEM unlock i had to make a hack with the date (as i did not want to wait for 7 days ;))
Flashing the /e/ recovery (or lineageos one by the way) was not possible with Odin, neither with Heimdall : first Odin crashes if the name of the recovery tar file is to ‘complicated’, and I had to rename the .img before taring to avoid crashing. Second problem with this recovery flashing (with Odin - any version - or Heimdall) was a systematic failure . I did not find its cause…
So this procedure worked for my tab : 1) flash twrp recovery with Odin (this one worked), 2) go to recovery (twrp) and copy the /e/ recovery with MTP from the PC 3) flash it with twrp (install to recovery feature). Then go to /e/ recovery to adb sideload /e/ os.
All is working well so far. I just would like to get rid of the warning when booting the tab, but this one is minor issue.
Reading lots of article on this forum and xda one helped me a lot! Thanks to people who shared experiences and tools :wink: and of course thanks to /e/ team !!