[HowTo] Update baseband & other firmware

Aloys · 1 Nov 2018, 22:03

Hi,
After the upgrade from 15.04 to 16.04 (OTA 5 on FP2), great improvement!
With 15.04, I had many reboot with the browser, this was almost unusable.
After around 3 weeks of use with the 16.04, I did not have any reboot when using the morph browser and the battery consumption is far better when mobile data is enabled (it seems similar to consumption with mobile data off).
I do not known if this improvement is due to 16.04 or to the FP2 firmware upgrade (or both).
I am very happy to use the 16.04, Thanks to all the UBports team !

tera · 2 Nov 2018, 07:43

@stefano On Pro5, all drivers seems/are stored in the Android Container File System whereas the FP2 and N5 have some dedicated partitions for drivers.
That might explain why an Ubuntu reboot during a call on FP2 do not close the call (modem running on its own or something in that direction!).

Luksus · 3 Jan 2019, 09:09

Just want to leave two possibly useful links here:

Firmwarefiles of current FP2 OS release:
https://github.com/WeAreFairphone/modem_zip_generator/releases
Explanation:
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp2-modem-firmware/35374

But I am not sure, if the firmware did really change from one release to another...

Ingo · 3 Jan 2019, 12:35

The most recent real change was included in the April 2018 update.

One of the next updates will likely include a change to fix a bug about not being able to turn the phone on while charging.

tommiedom · 11 Jan 2019, 09:33

@flohack nice work! I got the OTA-7 update now. Again a more stable and faster FP2!

Is a firmware update included in this and/or previous OTA updates, or is it still worth it to flash new firmware manually and follow this howto?

flohack · 11 Jan 2019, 20:27

@tommiedom No, I think the firmware update was still held back due to concerns about stability. We cannot risk flashing devices to their digital death

tommiedom · 14 Jan 2019, 10:50

@flohack thnks
[edit] Update worked flawlessly. I had to change usb-port, because fastboot gave a message: waiting for any device... Changing usb-port worked.

My experience so far: no significant improvement. phone still reboots

if typing a text takes a while (half an hour) in browser, signal, sms, etc.
after a while if to many apps are used simultaneously.
Also, sometimes (a couple of times in a month) I find my phone rebooted in the morning.

Don't know if this is FP2-behaviour.

Now, I used the update package as given by @flohack. @Ingo said above that "The most recent real change was included in the April 2018 update." So I expect no improvement from using another more current update package.

RedXXIII · 29 Jan 2020, 15:40

I flashed my FP2 from Android to UT in January 2019. Do I still need to do this manual firmware update?

flohack · 29 Jan 2020, 19:25

@RedXXIII Well if you had a recent Android version with all updates then probably not.

Fla · 8 Feb 2021, 14:26

There is a new firmware at https://github.com/WeAreFairphone/modem_zip_generator/releases since February 2020, did anyone flash it? How did it go?

A Former User · 8 Feb 2021, 15:02

@fla I did it. It works well ! In fact I flashed the entire FP Open OS image before installing Ubuntu Touch, because with Lineage OS making calls was becoming trickier and trickier and I suspect the gap between the firmware and the image is the culprit.

But yes, it works well : I can call reliably, the battery life is longer (but I'm not a heavy user, so does it really count ?), and random reboots are really rare (like, once in six months or so). By the way do you have any news on Android 9 for FP2 ?

Fla · 8 Feb 2021, 15:45

@luna are the instructions in the first post still up-to-date?

Ingo · 2 Aug 2021, 17:35

The download URL in the first post is definitely outdated.

Edit: taking the archive from https://github.com/WeAreFairphone/modem_zip_generator/releases/tag/19.11.2 contains the corresponding images. The naming is slightly different as the image files are called like the partion they're supposed to be flashed to.

A Former User · 8 Feb 2021, 18:31

@fla yes they are. But as previously said, I don't know how those firware images are linked with the Android kernel. You can flash them with the kernel you currently have, but maybe they won't work as reliably as with the kernel in the zip folder... that is what I tend to think. I hope that I'm wrong and it's just my FP2's top module that shows its age, but maybe you're safer with the full image and a clean reinstall of UT.

That implies a backup of your data - a backup of /home/phablet is sufficient for me.

Emphrath · 8 Feb 2021, 20:08

@luna great ! i'll do that as soon as I can. Thanks for the update

A Former User · 9 Feb 2021, 19:13

@emphrath you're welcome

flohack · 10 Feb 2021, 08:10

If someone of you would write me a text to replace my initial post with the new instructions feel free ^^

flohack · 21 May 2021, 16:22

Hi, I have moveds that article to the FP2 subforum now, pinned it and updated the link: Now it points to 2 optins, either use the 7.1 or the 9.0 firmware, I maybe recommend to start with 7.1 - Can anyone tell me if the downloads maybe contain the same images, so we can point only to one?

As of today there will be no more firmware releases for the FP2, so its safe to assume that will be the last update of this article

tommiedom · 22 May 2021, 09:59

Where can i find the current firmware? Cos i already did an update in the past..

s3r0 · 22 May 2021, 10:39

@tommiedom
https://github.com/WeAreFairphone/modem_zip_generator/releases
19.11.2 released on Feb 11, 2020

@Flohack

6.5. sudo fastboot flash dbi sdi.mbn

ls fp2-gms-19.11.2-manual-v2/images
boot.img           MD5SUMS       recovery.img  sbl1.mbn    splash.img  tz.mbn
emmc_appsboot.mbn  NON-HLOS.bin  rpm.mbn       SHA256SUMS  system.img

There is no sdi.mbn file.
Can I flash it anyway?