Install /e/ on a Fairphone FP3/3+ - “FP3”

Requirements

• If required take a backup of all important data from your phone on an external storage device before proceeding.
• Do not take a backup on the same device as some of these actions will format the device and delete the backup.
• Ensure your phone is charged more than 50%
• Check that adb and fastboot are enabled on your PC. If not you can find the setup instructions here
• Download all the files and images mentioned in the download section below before starting the installation

• Make sure you have a working data cable to connect your device to the PC. There are cables which are only for charging and do not transfer data.

• Your device requires a code to unlock the bootloader. Get the code here before proceeding with the next steps

• Enable USB debugging on your device. You can find the instructions here

Downloads for the FP3

Try the /e/ Recovery (limited functionality)

• /e/ Recovery for dev build

• /e/ Recovery for stable build

• /e/OS build : R dev

• /e/OS build : Q stable

To understand the difference between /e/OS builds check this guide

Unlock the bootloader

• Allow the bootloader unlocking by following the official FP3 unlock documentation
• Reboot the device on fastboot mode by running adb reboot bootloader (or press Power + Volume - if your device is off)
• Once on fastboot mode, unlock the device by running fastboot flashing unlock

  On previous versions of fastboot, the command is fastboot oem unlock

• The device will ask you to confirm the unlocking. Confirm by selecting UNLOCK THE BOOTLOADER and confirm with Power
• The device reboot automatically. It will show a warning. Press Volume + or Volume - to display boot options, select fastboot and confirm with Power to reboot on fastboot

Installing /e/ from the bootloader

1. Unzip the archive

    unzip fileyoudownloaded
   

   Replace fileyoudownloaded with the name of the archive file you downloaded . You can unzip the files into the folder where you copied the fastboot files.

   Alternately you can create a folder and unzip the archive there.

   In the second case the below commands will need the path to the folder where you unzipped the archive.

2. Install /e/ using the following commands (from fastboot mode)

    fastboot -w
    fastboot flash system_a system.img -S 522239K
    fastboot flash boot_a boot.img
    fastboot flash vendor_a vendor.img -S 522239K
    fastboot flash dtbo_a dtbo.img
    fastboot flash vbmeta_a vbmeta.img
   
    fastboot flash system_b system.img -S 522239K
    fastboot flash boot_b boot.img
    fastboot flash vendor_b vendor.img -S 522239K
    fastboot flash dtbo_b dtbo.img
    fastboot flash vbmeta_b vbmeta.img
   
    fastboot flashing lock
   

   • The last command will ask you to confirm on the device to lock the bootloader.

   • Select LOCK THE BOOTLOADER with Volume + and valid with Power.

   • On previous version of fastboot, the last command is fastboot oem lock

3. Enjoy! The device will now reboot automatically on /e/.

Getting a fastboot error ?

• On some versions of fastboot you may get an error while running the Fastboot flash boot boot.img command

• The below error may show up on the console

    fastboot error: couldn’t parse partition size ‘0x’
  

• A workaround for this error is as under. Run this command on the console:

    fastboot getvar current-slot
  

• This would show the current active slot. For e.g. if it shows a , run the below command

    fastboot --set-active=b
    fastboot flash boot_b boot.img
  

Still need help to complete the installation ?

Check out this document: An [install Guide]([HOW-TO] Flash /e/-OS on Fairphone 3 using Debian based GNU/Linux) for the FP3