Still waiting for /e/ for the Poco F2 pro I found another phone instead. The Poco sometimes is too big at work. I will not replace it. But sometimes tiny is more useful…
So I found the really small unihertz Jelly2. It’s biggest fail so far is that there fits no micro SD while using two SIMs and another launcher ist needed to show more symbols in a row and get a usefull “Desktop” without the mass of icons…
But without google it would be even better…
The Atom L (4" rugged phone) and Atom XL (same but with additional DMR) would be interesting to. But I tried the smallest… (less expensive and with IR-Remote funktion…)
As they all offer 6/128GB they should be nice with a longer support without google.
Hope others would be interested in using it with /e/…
Follow (roughly) the directions here from https://doc.e.foundation/how-tos/install-GSI (you need Arm64 A/B),
abridged as follows:
a. Download the ARM64 A/B image from the install guide linked above.
b. Open the zip file
c. Run: fastboot flash system system.img
d. Run: fastboot -w (this will delete everything on your phone, so
back up first)
Reboot the phone
If you need to install updates – /e/ isn’t providing OTA updates yet –
just repeat steps 9 and 10 with the newer version of the OS. Steps 1-8
are one-time things related to installing a non-stock OS. If you want to
go back to the stock firmware (I didn’t), there is a guide on Unihertz’s
website.
Thanks a lot for that. Having done it, how does it run on the phone? I’m thinking specifically about it have a lower resolution than most other phones, has that caused an issue? I would be interested in seeing some pictures or screenshots of it if is not too much trouble.
Don’t have any screenshots or photos handy right now. It works fine, with no real trouble from the small screen. I replaced the launcher with a different one, though. The keyboard is a little small, but that’s a general issue with the phone and on-screen keyboards.
The only major issue is that VoLTE does not work – I’ve reported a separate issue for that and am hopeful it gets resolved soon, as it seems to be just a minor bug in the build rather than a serious long-term problem.
Sorry, did not really know that makes a big difference. Thought more on more switches to change in general…
First I found the way to Unlock the Bootloader at https://droidwin.com/unlock-bootloader-jelly-2/
“So head over to Settings > About Phone > Tap on Build Number around 10 times > Go back to Settings > System > Advanced > Developer Options > Enable USB Debugging and OEM Unlocking.”
Like written here by “nwforum” in 21 I flashed the “vbmeta.img” from the Unihertz System I found: 2023010417_g55v71c2k_dfl_tee.zip before. (So far it seemed to work.)
Then I tried to flash the latest version I found:
IMG-e-1.17-q-20231110351091-dev-treble_arm64_bvN.zip
The firmware on the phone was the latest automatic updated (Should be Android 11) with last available Security Pack. But that’s not really fresh…
Jelly2 works with Android Dynamic Partitions. Several files (system, product, vendor) are combined in one super.img file.
So if you want to install a GSI system.img on the Jelly2, you have to (over)write it to the physical partition super.img. In Android, these dynamic partitions can be accessed via fastboot reboot fastboot (= fastboot ‘D’ mode).
…:~/Downloads$ fastboot flash super system.img
target reported max download size of 134217728 bytes
sending sparse ‘super’ 1/22 (131068 KB)…
OKAY [ 4.113s]
.
.
.
OKAY [ 0.854s]
finished. total time: 144.016s
It seemed to work fine. But entering
…:~/Downloads$ fastboot -w
wiping userdata…
Invalid erase-block-size 0: must be a power of 2 and at least 4096.
mke2fs 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
/tmp/TemporaryFile-Hwy61p: Nicht implementierte Ext2-Bibliotheksfunktion beim Erstellen des Superblocks
/usr/lib/android-sdk/platform-tools/mke2fs failed with status 1
mke2fs failed: 1
error: Cannot generate image for userdata
And trying to reboot the phone leads to endless reboots with warning:
Orange State
Your device has been uplocked and can’t be trusted
Your device will boot in 5 seconds
This seems to go on until Battery is empty…
Found no way to stop it…
I found a hint to press Volume up and Power…
If done in the right moment (right when display goes black) it takes longer to restart and leads to a follow up screen with the open android robot and No command…
Here pressing Power should lead into another menu but doesn’t…
So the only difference is it just goes into a dark screen after some time und going back to No command after pressing any key except for bringing it into the endless restart mode again…
