Volla Phone 22 replacing a broken display

[Dave]

I managed to break the display on my Volla Phone 22. Now there are replacement screens, but the repair shop advised me that I need at least Android 12 for the new screen to be supported.

Here in the ubports forums, there was this related discussion, about new replacement screens requiring Halium 12:

https://forums.ubports.com/topic/9149/screen-replacement-on-volla-phone-22

At that time (July 2023) the latest ubports firmware was still based on Halium 11 so the replacement screens would not work.

Has this changed in the mean time? I.e. is the latest ubports firmware (20.04 OTA-4) already based on Halium 12?

thanks for any info,

cheers,

Dave

[magnargj]

Thanks for this! I also sent an e-mail to Volla support half a week ago, but they haven't gotten back to me yet.

I noticed that the Ubports-installer has two options for Volla 22, one just "Volla 22" and one "Volla 22 with new screen". This makes me believe/hope that the firmware problem has been solved.

[sven]

@magnargj said in Volla Phone 22 replacing a broken display:

I noticed that the Ubports-installer has two options for Volla 22, one just "Volla 22" and one "Volla 22 with new screen".

Interesting. Which version of UBports-installer is this?

[Dave]

@sven for me the latest ubports-installer_0.10.0_linux_amd64.deb when selecting "Select device manually" at startup, has an entry "Volla Phone 22 with new display" in the "Device" drop-down list.

[Dave]

Now I flashed the Volla Phone 22 with new display (mimameid_h12) firmware version (I guess the one based on Halium-12) on my Volla22, before replacing the screen.

now that firmware does not appear to boot, or at least with the old screen it does not show anything (as far as I can tell on the cracked screen).

Everything is back to normal when flashing the Volla Phone 22 (mimameid) version.

Is this an expected outcome? I.e. does the "mimaid_h12" firmware not support the legacy Volla22 screen? I would really like to bring my Volla phone to a firmware version that is known to work on the new screens, so that the phone repair shop can verify whether the new screen does actually work.

[arubislander]

@Dave your experience is the expected result. If the new option worked with the old screen there would be no need to keep the old option around.

[Dave]

@arubislander said in Volla Phone 22 replacing a broken display:

@Dave your experience is the expected result. If the new option worked with the old screen there would be no need to keep the old option around.

Thanks for that clarification.

Then I'll keep that non-working firmware on the phone and give it to Phone Service Berlin for a repair attempt. Will update this thread with the result, hopefully before next monday.

[Dave]

The Phone Service Berlin shop today replaced the display of my Volla22 phone. The display appears to work, as far as can be judged by looking at the fastboot screen or recovery image screen, or the installation screen ("installing system image").

However, the installed Volla Phone 22 with new display (mimameid_h12) firmware does not boot. After installation, and whenever I switch on the phone, the phone is stuck in the bootup greeting screen showing volla~~~ in white letters on black screen.

In that stuck state, a short press on the power button just switches off the phone. Is this the Volla phone's boot loader?

Note that this problem cannot be explained by phone damage. Before the screen was replaced, the phone did boot and work "normally" with the standard Volla firmware image. And the same "stuck at boot" problem already happened when installing the "Volla Phone 22 with new display" firmware on the not yet repaired phone. Just at that time I attributed the failing boot to the firmware not being compatible with the old display (see post above).

edit: the phone now booted, after installing the "devel" channel of the Volla Phone 22 with new display (mimameid_h12) firmware.

I also created a dedicated topic for the problems concerning the Volla Phone 22 with new display (mimameid_h12) firmware image:

https://forums.ubports.com/topic/10395/ubports-firmware-for-device-volla-phone-22-with-new-display-mimameid_h12-does-not-boot