XA2 pioneer takes 3 OTA system updates in a row

/e/OS Devices Sony
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I’m happy to report that my XA2 is now completely up to date and running the latest 25 June dev build. I’ve spent a lot of time on this over the last couple of days and it has been worth it.

Prior to this, after lots of mishaps and disasters detailed in an earlier post, the device was on 30 April build and I was scared to update in case it broke the phone again.

Now I’m confident when the next OTA arrives it will update itself easily and with no problems. Also I have a slightly improved understanding of the A/B slots; but there are still lots of questions. Actually it could be a slightly improved misunderstanding of the A/B slots; I don’t know!

Anyway I thought I’d share the steps that worked for me and I’ll try to be concise; something that doesn’t come naturally I have to say.

When I sat down to try and sort out this update dilemma I had a written plan. Needless to say things went wrong straight away: errors, failed etc, so it was back to the forum and internet searches to try and find something else to do. Actually, one thing did work and that was to check which slot the device was currently on. It was on Slot A.

  • Device running 30 April dev build. Put in fastboot, twrp temporarily booted, currently on Slot A

  • Following the LineageOS pre-install instructions copy the contents of the good Slot A to Slot B and reboot in Slot A

  • Now I decided to take a punt on updating OTA the previously troublesome 202005145422 dev version which was sitting safely downloaded in the system updater, pressed the buttons, tried to ignore the rising stress levels, and watched it successfully follow through to a restart and a nice new version with all my stuff still there. Nice.

  • Next morning fastboot twrp again and check current slot, it’s B. Yesterday I applied the OTA knowing it was in Slot A and the OTA had successfully rebooted in Slot B. So change slots and reboot in Slot A to see what’s there.

  • Sure enough Slot A reboots to 30 April version. And I know 14 May version is on slot B

  • I had the latest 25 June OTA sitting in the system updater so I pressed the buttons and watched it do its magic; restarting the device successfully, nothing lost. Notice the new icons in the system settings; very swish. All working well and I hope it stays that way!

  • Booted twrp again to doublecheck. This latest 25 June version was sent to Slot B

Epilogue :wink:

This does get confusing, but in essence it appears to be quite simple. So far I had been carrying out the OTA’s from Slot A because it was convenient somehow and also I felt a bit more confident with it that way. The updated versions were ending up on Slot B. What happens if I take an OTA now whilst on Slot B with the latest version? My guess is that next time I will update from Slot B and the newer version will be installed into Slot A.

But another question: why did the “troublesome” 14 May update apparently screw up my phone? I have just seen that there is actually nothing wrong with the update itself; I had it working on the phone yesterday, so it must be something else. I have an idea what that may be but it needs someone with more knowledge to answer this with any clarity. When I started this latest saga the device was on the 30 April version, Slot A.

When I reinstalled /e/ as described in my last post it was a real car crash of an install that finally somehow worked and it was the earlier 16 April /e/ ROM. From this I was able to take an OTA update successfully to the 30 April version which landed on Slot A, as described above.

Assuming an OTA updates the system into the other slot and leaves the old version behind could it be that in my previous attempts after updating OTA once after car crash install into another slot with a good working version; a further update attempt in the current slot would send the updated version back to the wreckage of the car crash. And hence the broken phone? Seems kind of logical to me but it would be nice to hear other’s thoughts on this particular point!

If you got this far, thanks for listening!!

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Many thanks for your update.

I also have an XA2, and thought I might try re-flashing it, following my initial working attempt back in March. But, Windows was so finicky that I couldn’t get the drivers to re-install again, despite a fair bit of mucking around. Hence, I’ve not had a chance to practice re-flashing my XA2, and have been relying on the OTA updates to work. It means I can’t remove modules at flash time, but … such is life.

At some stage, all of these user experiences could usefully be compiled into a “How to really install /e/ on a Sony Xperia XA2” :wink:

1 Like
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Couldn’t agree more!! Thanks for your reply.
So your device has taken succesive OTA’s since March? You must have done something different at installation time to get such a good result, I think. You installed with Windows, me with ubuntu; could that make a difference at all? I don’t know enough about it, it’s all guesswork and trying to understand what’s going on!

No idea what this means :sweat_smile:

I hope to get a better understanding of all this. I haven’t tried looking for who is responsible for the initial port to this device yet. Surely he or she would have some useful tips that might help, you would think.

It’s still possible to buy a brand new XA2 in the uk(mine is 4 months old) it deserves a bit more work to try and establish failsafe step-by-step install instructions.

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During initial set-up, I seem to recall it was possible to exclude certain apps/modules from the flashing process. If I had it over again, I’d have left out the weather app and a few others. Since I can’t rely on the whole re-flashing process to work again, I cannot exclude those apps/modules in a re-flash.