Week 25, 2022 : Development and Testing Updates

[Manoj]

Builds and Releases

v1.0

Status: Released

• v1.0 released on 31 May, 2022
• Release code name was Alicante
• Release notes
• Milestone details here

v1.0 build released on

• R
• Q

v1.0 was not released on

• Pie
• Oreo
• Nougat

For Pie, Oreo and Nougat the official /e/OS support draws to a close.

Reasons for dropping official support are:

• newly released applications like App Lounge, Advanced privacy code has not been customized for these OS versions.
• lack of dedicated ROM Maintainers
• no support upstream (Lineage dropped support for Pie sometime back)
• device trees will continue to exist in the Gitlab and users with build skills can create custom ROMs on these builds
• Security patches and vendor patches for the Pie, Oreo and Nougat code will be updated based on availability. Google stops security patches for OS after some time. Similarly, Vendors drop support for older models when they release newer models in the market. Then it depends on developers from various communities to backport the patches.

Issues detected by users on v1.0

• FP3 sluggishness and battery drain
  • Update v1.0.1 for FP3 released as a fix
• OnePlus Nord avicci Qualcomm CrashDump Mode - reported by only some users on forum - issue on gitlab
• AppLounge - bugs + feedback +Improvement suggestions in Gitlab
• Issue with Contacts app - On forum - in Gitlab

All issues have been reported to the dev team

GSI

• GSI builds on v1.0 are available here
  • Sources of last GSI release can be viewed here

OTA OS upgrades planned

Status: To be released / planned

• Samsung s7 / s7 edge OTA OS upgrade on v1.0 code
  • Released
  • Note : The older OS builds will not be visible on these devices as the builds would on Nougat or Oreo and can confuse some users.
  • An issue has been reported while upgrading Signal app on the s7 /s7+ Please check this thread for details

Upcoming OS OTA upgrades

• Samsung s8 /s8+
  • ETA Sep end
• FP3
  • ETA not available

OTA OS upgrade means the upgrade to a higher OS level. Updates will be delivered Over the Air (OTA). The OTA upgrades are available on official builds only. Users who have unofficial or custom builds will not get the notification to install the upgrade build. They will have to manually download and flash the Q builds once they are released.

Difference between /e/OS build types

Development Activity

Status: In Progress

A summary of issues dev team is investigating or working on given here

• Bliss launcher upgrading and existing issue resolution
• eDrive code refactoring to optimize the application
• Updating Applications where forked …ongoing task
• EasyInstaller to adapt to upgrade OS builds…investigation only
• Android 12 or S porting to /e/OS… in final stages. Hope to have some positive news around this soon.

This is a subset of what the team is working on. Most of these tasks are under development and in testing phase. Some of the issues will be confidential and not visible to all users as they contain user specific details.

Announcements

Roadmap 2022

• Read all about the /e/OS plans for 2022 and beyond

Teracube 2e and emerald
Teracube users please note there are two different versions of the device now. 2020 released devices are classified as 2e on our site, and those released in 2021 are code named emerald. We have added a warning in the guides to help users. 2e guide and emerald guide.

Gigaset GS290

• We have stopped the sales of the Gigaset GS290 on the eSolutionsShop as the vendor has stopped production of the device. We will continue support for existing users.

Message being shared on the request of our vendor partners

• Vendors whose phones we sell on our eSolutions Store do not directly sell /e/OS flashed devices.
• The vendors only sell their devices with their own stock ROM.
• To get pre flashed /e/OS phones, you have to purchase them from the eSolutions Shop.

/e/OS Pre flashed device sales

• We sell directly in EU, US, Canada.
• Find details of what devices are available in which countries here eSolutions Shop.
• In Australia we do not sell directly. You can purchase preflashed /e/OS devices from this site

Murena One released
A phone from Murena with /e/OS installed has been launched and is available for purchase. Check the device specs here

Expect more device releases from Murena in future

Murena is the brand name and /e/OS is the Operating system.

/e/OS Links

Support

• Facing issues with devices you purchased from us ? Send a mail with details to helpdesk@e.email

Websites

• Murena
• /e/OS website
• Documentation
• Report issues
  • Learn how to report issues

Telegram Channel

• Announcements
• Community Support…English
• Turkish
• Russian
• German
• Italian
• French public channel
• Community Support,French

Social Media

• On XDA
• Twitter
• Mastodon
• LinkedIn
• Medium

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services

[lapor]

@Manoj

Android 12 or S porting to /e/OS… in final stages. Hope to have some positive news around this soon.

Uou, nice to read this

[zhihuiyuze]

Hello, after my OnePlus 8T mobile phone was updated to 1.0, the fingerprint has expired, and the display fingerprint hardware is not available.

[obacht]

@Manoj
Thank you for the update.
Not sure if I read this correct.
Can you confirm that the mobile data issue of S7 with v1.0 is also adressed?
(It’s not explicitely mentioned but part of a linked thread…)

[Manoj]

I am assuming you are referring to this issue. This has been shared with the build team. Will update on the response.

[Manoj]

There is a report of this issue here Pl add your issue details to the same bug. That way the developers can check on it and get back to you for clarifications.

For help with raising issues, check the /e/OS links section above

[ntp]

@Manoj

FP3

• ETA not available

This is rather unfortunate, seeing that support for Pie has ended.

[quinbus51]

App Lounge has been acting strangely: Continues show an update for NextCloud and after downloading it, trys to install it and reports the need to retry. This just keeps cycling. Tried to force stop App Lounge and now it won’t successfully open, even after poweroff and power back on.

Is this the place to report this?

Thanks,

Q!

[timothys_monster]

Actually I haven’t been able to open Applounge at all in the last couple of days, although it had been working fine befor. It just keeps stopping. Samsung Galaxy S7 with /e/OS1.0-Q

[PraksuQ]

@quinbus51

Tried to force stop App Lounge and now it won’t successfully open, even after poweroff and power back on.

App Lounge crashes upon startup
Workaround: “Clearing cache and all app’s data”

[Libre]

@Manoj

FP3

• ETA not available

It’s good to see that the FP3 appears at least somehow regarding the OTA upgrade schedules. But Android 9 EOL’d on january 2022.

The unknown ETA is not a good sign for me when seeing the dropped support for Android 9. Guess I’ll be stuck on Android 9 until somewhere in 2023?

[AnotherElk]

@Libre

Guess I’ll be stuck on Android 9 until somewhere in 2023?

If you want to wait for the OTA upgrade that seems like a plausible guess.

But Android 10 and 11 beta as well the Easy Installer are available for the Fairphone 3/3+. That’s a situation not every /e/OS device is in.

[ntp]

@AnotherElk

But Android 10 and 11 beta as well the Easy Installer are available for the Fairphone 3/3+. That’s a situation not every /e/OS device is in.

Seeing that an upgrade requires wiping the phone: Is there any viable (non-root) solution for backing up the device data?

[timothys_monster]

Thanks, that solved the problem for me, too

[AnotherElk]

@ntp

Is there any viable (non-root) solution for backing up the device data?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. There are different possibilities and approaches which can be considered for different user needs and situations.

It starts with copying the Internal Storage to a computer via USB.

Then there are tools like MyPhoneExplorer, adding connections other than USB as well as handling of contacts, messages and more.

It gets tricky when it comes to Apps and their data. Here’s something recent …

[HOWTO] Backup and Restore Data on Android Devices

I am in the process of moving my devices away from /e/OS to LineageOS for microG. As part of this process I did quite a lot of work backing up my user-installed apps and my setting, then restoring / migrating them to new ROMs and to different devices. In fact, I didn’t need the backups: once I had the new ROMs built correctly, I was able to successfully ‘dirty flash’ them over my existing custom /e/OS builds. But I tried anyway, to get some up-to-date experience of which solutions work best. R…

… but TWRP needs an unlocked bootloader on the Fairphone 3/3+, Seedvault isn’t available in Android 9 I think, and ABRT needs Rooted debugging which is currently not available in stable /e/OS builds, only in dev.

Thanks to Android’s basic negligence in this field, backup is a vast and at times depressing topic … https://community.e.foundation/search?q=backup

[quinbus51]

That works! I tried this before I commented the first time, but it didn’t work. Doing it just now did work. So, things are spinning back in their groove!

Q!

[petefoth]

@AnotherElk

Thanks to Android’s basic negligence in this field, backup is a vast and at times depressing topic

The only “foolproof” solution I have found is - sadly - Google’s own Backup functionality, which backs up apps and data to a user’s Google account, and allows it to be restored during first-time stetup of a new device or new software. That has seen my wife’s phone - running LineageOS with GApps - through regular updates, and OTA upgrade from LOS17 / Q to LOS18 / R

[ntp]

@AnotherElk

Then there are tools like MyPhoneExplorer , adding connections other than USB as well as handling of contacts, messages and more.

Thanks for your thorough reply! MyPhoneExplorer is unfortunately only available for Windows and I’m running Linux, so that’s a non-starter, I’m afraid. Is there any way to leverage adb on Linux to make full backups?

[AnotherElk]

@ntp

MyPhoneExplorer is unfortunately only available for Windows and I’m running Linux, so that’s a non-starter, I’m afraid.

I think I’ve seen mentions of it working on Linux via Wine, but then only with WiFi connection to the phone, not USB.
Else you could have a look at what KDE Connect can perhaps do for you, it sounds like it could be something similar on Linux, but I didn’t look into it myself … https://kdeconnect.kde.org.

@ntp

Is there any way to leverage adb on Linux to make full backups?

If Settings - About phone - Android version (tap on it) - /e/ version says you run a dev build, you could activate Developer options if not done already to enable Rooted debugging there to then have a look at ABRT mentioned in the post I linked to.

Beware that the tempting adb backup command is deprecated and restore doesn’t work reliably for everybody.

[PraksuQ]

@ntp

Is there any way to leverage adb on Linux to make full backups?

I use two ways.

1. Backup with tar:
This is for extract different files from data.tar later.

PARTITION="data"
adb shell tar c -C /$PARTITION --exclude=lost+found . > ${PARTITION}.tar

2. Backup with partition-Image:
This is for full-restore.
For this take the Phone to Recovery-mode with activated adb.

IMG=data.img
BLOCK=/dev/block/sda18     # for Samsung S7 edge
adb pull $BLOCK $IMG

I do backupimages from data, system and external_sd.

It is better to create your own thread for further exchange on this.