Hi there, I wanted to try iode on my FP5 but having done the install I found that although it looks like it could be a super ROM it misses some features.
I therefore wanted to go back to stock rom and maybe try something else in the future.
My question is therefore about returning to stock, If I use the standard Fairphone system I get the messages
INFO: One Fairphone 5 in fastboot mode found (serial number: xxxxxxx).
ERROR: The critical partitions are not unlocked.
Please refer to our support articles for help.
Now since your instructions specifically said “Do not unlock critical” I am wondering what to do, I have seen suggestions to simply comment out this check in the Fairphone restore script, to do each bit by hand or to unlock the critical partitions.
Unlocking the critical partions is my least favourite option even though I have no idea what is in them and since they have remained locked I assume they haven’t changed since I had the stock ROM.
I am trying to go back to the same stock ROM level as I had originally (FP5-UT2M-factory.zip) so hopefully there would be no lower level issues.
How do you recommend going back when required?
Have you asked Fairphone support? They would be the preferred point of contact, as it’s their phone. That said, and as a Fairphone 4 user, I had success following their articles for restoring in the past.
No, I didn’t ask there yet, I did want to spam the world and figured there would be people that installed iode who would have gone through this testing.
I’ve seen the link above, sadly it is very basic and just assumes it is going to work. My question really relates, I suppose, to the unlocking (or not) of the critical partitions.
My feeling is that since I didn’t unlock them (iode install instructions) they should not have changed from factory but the iode install seemed to be modifying lots of file system sizes and I am not sure if flashing back would restore what was there. I’ll leave this a few days before I try the fairphone people.
Another resource you could look at is e/os articles for flashing and restoring the device. While I’m not a fan of e/os, I found their articles worked perfectly for my device. It was 100% accurate step by step.
So, my personal experience went kind of like this, and I’m not one who flashes phones all the time:
I have a Murina Fairphone 4, that was running e/os. After I heard of iode, and checked out the site, I decided to try it.
- I used the FP article above to return my Murina to a stock PF4. It was about as easy as it sounds, TBH.
- I then flashed iode, using iode docs (at that time is was 5.2, and A14). There was one or two tiny issues, but worked for most part.
- I then flashed my FP4 back to stock Fairphone OS, just to make sure it worked the same way again, again with the link above.
- Then I flashed iode again, and have kept that.
Before the above, I flashed back and forth between FP and e/os just to ensure I could transition OK, and understood what was to happen.
The part you referenced, “don’t unlock…” I think that was in the iode docs, and what you don’t do when flashing iode.
Hi, slightly off topic so please ignore if you like but you say :
it misses some features
As a FP5 user running E/OS and tempted by Iodé, would you mind expanding on what those features might be?
Thanks