I bought a Fairphone 6 with e/OS some months ago, however I’ve discovered about IodeOS, which I would like to install on the phone.
I can manage to do it manually, but having the graphical installer would be obviously a lot better.
With this said, can anyone tell me if FP6 support for the installer is coming anytime soon? If it’s not planned for the next few months, I think I’ll just manually install, but first I wanted to check if I could install it more easily.
Thanks in advance.
But be carefull about bootloader relocking. Vendor Patchlevel of iode is still Dez 2025. (Arian pushed newer versions last week, so hopefully this will trickle down to iode now…)
Thank you. One last question, it may be stupid but I want to be sure about it. Could you tell me what’s the problem with bootloader relocking and old vendor patches?
Anyways I checked my vendor level patches, and I also have the 5 december ones, so there shouldn’t be any problems, right?
You should be clear to re-lock then. IF an install downgrades the vendor security patch level AND you re-lock the bootloader, then you would be left with an unbootable phone (“soft brick”) since you would trip the ARB (“Anti RollBack”) Prevention mechanism. If you also did not have your “Allow OEM Unlocking” enabled, then you would have a hard brick as you could not unlock it again to attempt to re-flash. Unbootable + Locked + Unlockable would mean send it to Fairphone to re-image.
I always thought the bricking risk was related to the android security patch level, not the vendor patch level… Can you confirm only the vendor patch level matters?
Well our Android security update date (via LineageOS) get updated with each of our releses to the most current available from them (and they release monthly), since these are not device dependent. But the “vendor security patch level” is what needs to be incorporated custom for each individual device (this is also done at the LineageOS level, but it may be a bit behind if there were any issues with it or if the maintainer for that device was delayed, so isn’t necessarily guaranteed to be in applied in the LineageOS release the month immediately following its release from the vendor).
So while this doesn’t directly answer your question, I would say it is safe to assume that you should always see an Android security update date equal or newer than from the vendor, but that it is possible the newest vendor security patch level could be slightly behind, so this is the most common way that a “rollback protection” soft brick would occur.
In the meantime, I am asking our lead developer to clarify.
Thanks, that is indeed an important aspect to clarify. I’m currently running e/OS on my FP6 but when I switched from the stock OS, there were many reports of soft bricks due to people flashing e/OS with an older android security patch compared to the stock OS, even if both had the same vendor patch date AFAIK. The android security patch was dated on the 5th of a month while that of e/OS was dated on the 1st of that same month but it was enough to trigger the Anti rollback protection when attempting to relock the bootloader. So it seems to me this affects the android SPL.
@rik Last time, you explained me it’s triggered by vendor patch level… 
I’m a bit in a hurry atm, but what I found so far is a little bit more complicate.
For the RBP in the boot loop, as pictured here:
It’s about the Rollback indexes.
Here is how the indexes are generated, and it’s a sum of different indexes:
For the FP6, these values come from: https://gitlab.iode.tech/os/public/devices/fairphone/device_fairphone_FP6/-/blob/v7-staging/BoardConfig.mk
BOARD_AVB_VBMETA_SYSTEM_ROLLBACK_INDEX := $(STOCK_SECURITY_PATCH_TIMESTAMP)
BOARD_AVB_BOOT_ROLLBACK_INDEX := $(STOCK_SECURITY_PATCH_TIMESTAMP)
BOARD_AVB_INIT_BOOT_ROLLBACK_INDEX := $(STOCK_SECURITY_PATCH_TIMESTAMP)
And the value of STOCK_SECURITY_PATCH_TIMESTAMP is updated with the vendor patch levels, i.e. like this: FP6: Update to FP6.QREL.16.69.0 · ArianK16a/android_device_fairphone_FP6@abb8286 · GitHub
Yes, it has been confirmed by Vincent that it is only the “Vendor Security Patch Level”, or “SPL” that will trigger “Anti-RollBack Protection” or “ARB”. Thanks for the insights, @vanMacG your information also confirms this. “Android Security Update” date does not come into play with triggered an ARB “soft brick”. Note it is not listed as a “Level” it is jut the date of the most recent OS / system device independent update.
To @kilou indicating people on /e/OS triggered ARB with a “few days older Android security update date”, we think this must not be fully accurate: what could have happened was the FPOS update date 4 days newer than the /e/OS update date could have also incorporated a newer Fairphone Vendor Security Patch Level, but it is a bit of speculation. But to our knowledge only Vendor Security Patch Level is considered in determining if ARB is triggered or not.
Thanks for the feedback! Really appreciate that.
And as if that weren’t complicated enough, there are other mechanisms as well, i.e. Version Binding
This is based on the Android security patchlevels (ASB-patches) and doesn’t “brick” your device like RBP. Instead, it can prevent booting the system with userdata, but a factory reset will work and you can start from scratch. @kilou Maybe that’s what you read about soft bricks.
/edit:
To summarize, this is how I understand it:
If you have a (already re)locked bootloader and hit “real RBP” because of vendor patch level, you have a hard brick. (Unless you can unlock the bootloader, see next point.)
If you have an unlocked bootloader, you can reflash anything you want.
If you “only” hit Version Binding because of ASB-patchlevel, you have a soft brick. With a factory reset, you are good to go.