Thinking about buying the fairphone 4. Coming from oneplus 8, which is almost unbrickable, thanks to an EDL MSM tool.
Obviously, I’d be careful. But am I likely to brick a fp4 by ROM hopping? Is it dangerous enough that I should not go into buying this phone with the intention of installing a ROM?
Mainly, I want to play with Ubuntu Touch, PostmarketOS, and maybe sailfish. But I figure if those don’t quite work out, I’ll land on Lineage with MicroG or /e/, since that’ll be stock fp4 in the US.
Just be careful if you test several android roms, the phone uses anti rollback (ARB), like pixel phones. In certain circumstances it’s possible to brick the phone, and you’ll have to send it to fairphone.
With android roms that allow relocking the fairphone bootloader (Calyx and Divest for instance), really check if the bootloader can be relocked via fastboot command-line, it will brick if it’s not the case.
I spent some time reading before attempting anything on it and it went rather smoothly, I don’t hop a lot between roms though.
The goal is always not to hop. It just comes down to how long it takes to find a ROM you like.
Anyway, I don’t intend to relock. Not unless someone releases an EDL tool. Then I’ll use Stock Locked probably for a while.
This discussion about bricking the phone after a locking attempt is interesting, also mentioned on the Divest wiki : https://forum.fairphone.com/t/trapped-in-fastboot-mode-with-locked-bootloader-and-corrupted-custom-rom/80985/280
I just used fastboot to get the locking ability, the result was 1 so it could be locked, I did and it went ok. No problem since.
Doesn’t make sense why they would implement arb in this phone.
That’s what some people said online but yes there is ideed arb on it, there are some technical details on the /e/OS FP4 page for instance : https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP4/install.
I was using Calyx and went to Divest with relative ease, atlhough I did pay attention to the security patch level before jumping, having to send the phone to fairphone would be really annoying.
And before locking check if the ROM boots at all! Locking will wipe data anyway, so it’s better safe than sorry as a button to allow unlocking is in the system settings.