How to upgrade Fairphone 2 to LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11)

Last updated: Aug 30, 2021

I bought a Fairphone 2 few years ago, and directly installed Fairphone Open. The main reason is I didn't want to be polluted by the Google echosystem. I know that Fairphone Open is based on Android but it does not have Google services pre-installed and it is full open source.

Years has passed and it seems that Fairphone doesn't really support it anymore. Updates comes to be more than rare (stuck with Android 7), another sign is that it's not even available on Fairphone 3 phones... So as I didn't have the intention to replace it I decided to install LineageOS in order to be up to date. (security and applications compatibility).

We will see how to process.

Backup your data

First you have to know that every datas will be erased so it's a good thing to make a backup.

I've used this two softwares to backup my datas.

SMS Backup & Restore

To save SMS and MMS

Super Backup

To save sms, softwares, contacts, calendars, call logs.

Manual Backup

Off course I've manually saved my own pictures and videos.

Download Tools

Android Debug Bridge (adb) are needed for the upgrade

Download adb tools, to your Download folder, unzip and open a Windows Command Prompt. Go inside the unzipped folder.

C:\>cd %HOMEPATH%\Downloads\platform-tools_r30.0.3-windows\platform-tools

Windows command prompt with the cd command

For GNU/Linux, here with Debian :

user@host:~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

Enable USB debugging

From your Fairphone 2 go to Settings > About and tap on Built Number 7 times till the message you are a developer now appears.

Then go to Settings > System > Developer options and enable USB debugging.

From the Windows Command Prompt check that the devices is correctly detected

C:\Users\std\Downloads\platform-tools_r30.0.3-windows\platform-tools>adb devices
* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
List of devices attached
f9f7d41f        device

Windows command prompt with the adb devices command

Download and Install TWRP (Custom Recovery)

In order to install LineageOS we need to replace the default recovery by TWRP.

Download latest TWRP for fairphone 2

Reboot to bootloader

adb reboot bootloader

Check device connectivity

fastboot devices

Install TWRP

fastboot flash recovery twrp-x.x.x-x-FP2.img

Reboot

fastboot reboot

Download and Install LineageOS (Android 11)

Download latest build for FP2 here: https://download.lineageos.org/FP2.

Alternative : you can download LineageOS for microG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroG) image here: https://download.lineage.microg.org/.

Optionally, if needed (I personnaly don't), you can download Google apps here: https://wiki.lineageos.org/gapps.html.

adb reboot recovery

Swipe to Allow Modifications

tap Wipe

tap Format Data ( ⚠️ This will erase all files stored in the internal storage).

go back and tap Advanced Wipe

Select System and Cache, then Swipe to Wipe

go back and tap Advanced

tap ADB Sideload

Swipe to Start Sideload

From Windows Command Prompt

adb sideload lineage-18.1-xxxxxxxx-nightly-FP2-signed.zip

Only if you want Google Apps on the device :

adb sideload open_gapps-arm64-10.0-xxxx-xxxxxxxx.zip

Reboot

adb reboot

References

twrp : https://twrp.me

lineageos : https://wiki.lineageos.org/

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