Iodé (7.7) - Problem with useless "Updater app" / "System Updater" - Workaround

System and Apps Reference Wiki
1

Hello,

I run into a perplexing problem.

My device is a Fairphone 5.

First, after a successful update from 7.6 to 7.7, I did not check the “Update App” immediately.
I waited for it to open for 5 minutes. But of course, the changelog made me interested in to the new look and so I was looking forward to the “System updater”.
But whatever I did, opening the app directly, going over the “News app,” or going over the “System Updates” in the system settings, it always opened the old “Updater app.”

So I did an uninstalling, restart, and reinstalling. However, now I was locked in with another problem: I had neither the old updater app, nor I had the new “System Updater”.

While I was considering today opening a thread for retrieving help, I found the following workaround for me:

  1. Uninstall the updater app from the preinstalled apps settings.
  2. Restart.
  3. Download the Updater-v6-to-v7.apk from the Projekt-Gitlab and install it manually.[1]
  4. Restart again.
  5. Now go to the preinstalled apps settings and install the updater from here
  6. Restart again.
  7. Go to the Apps overview in settings, not the preinstalled apps!
  8. Search for the “Updater” and uninstall it.
  9. Restart again.
  10. “System Updater” can be called from “System Settings” and should work.

During these steps I checked for the “Updater App” and for “System Updater” in the “System Settings,” but only after I did it like I listed, I had an operational “System Updater.”

Currently, I am genuinely interested in knowing if this helps others or to understand why I had to do it this way to resolve my problem.

In the moment I am downloading 7.8, but I won’t install the update for Sunday.

Links in this post:

Updater-v6-to-v7.apk from the Projekt-Gitlab

APK Explorer & Editor in the F-Droid Repo

//Edit:

@EthGahus Worked out a problem with “ioDroid” after the system update; maybe an equal problem was set in motion with the “Updater APP” / “System Updater”, that the “hidden flag” was still set, and removing has to be “triggered”.

  1. Footnotes I used the “APK Explorer & Editor” from the F-Droid Repo for the manuall installation ↩︎

iodéOS 7.7 - "F-Droid" -> "ioDroid"
2

Thanks for your work @N0P3

I am facing the same issue. I uninstalled the Updater app and I am not able to get it back. I will try your workaround and come back.

It looks like it is the same type of issue which was preventing to reinstall ioDroid and Aurora.

There is really something to fix for pre-installed app on Fairphone 5.

Actually, with ioDroid now released, what is the interest to use Pre-install app feature? Why not managing these apps through ioDroid?

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September update not available yet?
3

There are some pre-installed apps that are not available for general use on ioDroid, e.g. for the Brax3 phone there is a preinstalled FMRadio app which works on this chipset, and maybe not on other hardware, so it isn’t on ioDroid. There are probably similar examples for other handsets.

1 Like
4

Same, Moto G52

5

Some might still need the pre-installed feature but many of them (browser, aurora, thunderbird,…) are on ioDroid. So, what’s the point to keep them at 2 locations?

That being said, the key thing is to get these apps and updates reliable. I can help to debug on FP5. Just let me know what is needed.

6

The point seems to be that when you “uninstall” a pre-installed app it is uninstalled from the operating system, but the compressed copy remains in the rom. So when you want to re-install it there is no download (even tho’ it shows as a download icon).

Yeah, this can cause confusion when the version on F-/ioDroid gets out of step with the version in rom. But as Sammo Hung once said, “Computing isn’t hard. life is hard.”

1 Like