The T-Mobile Fajita Nightmare (or, why you should NOT get the T-Mobile version of the 6T so far)

TotalRando

TL;DR DO NOT buy the T-Mobile edition of the Fajita unless you have Windows and a lot of free time on your hands.

Well, I've had my beloved Fajita for a week now, and it's still not running Ubuntu Touch. Why, you may ask? Simple. Unlike the regular edition of the 6T, T-Mobile decided to lock the bootloader and put their own version of OxygenOS on their phone.

"But wait! Can't you just get an unlock token from OnePlus?" Yes. Did that. It takes 7 days. And it didn't work, because the instructions are for Windows, even though the unlock .bin file they send you seems to work on Debian. It hung on waiting to connect the phone. So I went to Windows, where it hung on waiting to recognize the phone.

"Did you try OnePlus support?" I did. They referred me to T-Mobile support, who advised me to find the original owner because "something is wrong". (I bought it on eBay.)

"Hey! I just read on Google that you can bypass the T-Mobile garbage and load the original OxygenOS 9 port!" Sure... if it recognizes the Qualcomm drivers so it can download the revert to Android 9, something that apparently my version of Windows 10 seems to not want to help with at all. And they're all .exe files. And hey, it might be the wrong USB port. (Yes this is apparently a thing on Windows 10).

Long story short: if you're going to buy a 6T, don't buy the T-Mobile version unless you are prepared to download gigs worth of updates and fight for drivers. Now, I am, because I am operating on pure spite and WILL turn this phone into my daily driver, I am going to battle on. But if you'd like to avoid this hassle... don't buy the T-Mobile version of the 6T.

TotalSonic

@totalrando - sorry you are dealing with that. I had a similar experience with a Sony Xperia X, that I was wanting to put UT on, that can not be unlocked, that I also purchased off of ebay. As always with second hand stuff - buyer beware.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

AntiDroid

@totalrando Have you tried my instructions for unbricking a 6T? When I was researching it I read that you could use the same technique to flash a t-mobile phone to turn it into a global phone. It may be worth trying. https://forums.ubports.com/topic/5715/restore-bricked-oneplus-6t-on-linux/1

TotalRando

@antidroid Oh, yes. That was (and is) paragraph 4 of my post. To distill why that doesn't work, it's because on my phone at least, the Qualcomm drivers seem to install on the Windows machine, but it still doesn't recognize the drivers when I plug in the phone in bootloader mode. (It recognizes it's a OnePlus in regular mode.) Now, there are still at least a couple of possibilities as to why this is so.

~~Windows 10 is completely useless~~ Windows may not have made the connection between the drivers and the phone
Apparently Win10 treats the OP6T differently on USB 2.0 and 3.0 outlets. I still haven't double checked that.
my cable is too weak for any realistic data transfer on the USB-C standard. It's a possibility. I did buy it at a dollar store.

Now the patch program isn't even trying to look for the phone. So something else has gone wrong. I will find it, but I'm at work. Even if I have to redo this ten times and get more cables, this WILL work.

The sad part is I saw a really great prepaid deal on T-Mobile and had they been of more help I might have switched carriers. Oh well. Bad hardware policy equals lost customers. Stay tuned for chapter 2!

EDIT: I should add, this is a really common problem with the T-Mobile edition, with apparently hundreds of desperatae 6T owners complaining that the T-Mobile fork of OxygenOS is so bad that people with virtually no flashing experience are desperately trying to get the stock ROM. It's an amazing phone. But that's exactly why I refuse to run Android on it and by hook or by crook I will flash this phone to my bidding. insert evil laughter

AntiDroid

@totalrando From my research the driver you speak of is only needed for the MsMdownloadtool and other similar types of flash tools. My restore only uses the command line to send commands via fastboot. The entire reason I made that post was because everything else online I found did not work. My script pushes the files regardless of knowing what the device is. As long as fastboot works the script should work. Now if you can not communicate with fastboot after installing the ADB and Fastboot tools then that is different. So I would try from your Debian machine using ADB and Fastboot to flash the files.

AntiDroid

Oh and I read somewhere the driver issue is often a result of Modem Manager thinking the phone is a modem and locking access to it. If that is the case you need to disable modem manager for a while.

TotalRando

@antidroid Ok this intrigues me because Md tools are .exe files, that basically push the ops file onto the phone, which is exactly where my problem lies. How do I push the ops files from Debian? I have Android studio on it and can do it, but I don't see any instructions that aren't Windows based.

If you have or know of Linux based instructions to roll back the 6T to Android 9 I beg of thee to give them to me. Because Windows and I usually don't get along

TotalRando

@antidroid I don't even know what Modem Manager is (if it's Windows I'm a virtual noob, having basically not used it since Win2000 and rarely on command line), but I will look it up.

AntiDroid

@totalrando For Debian you can check my post, it gives links to the .img files you need and put all of them in a folder called images and put that in another folder with the scripts. Then create text files (scripts) in that folder and paste my scripts contents into them and save them. Then in the file manager right click on the script just created, click properties and set the permissions to allow execution. Once you have downloaded the files and created the scripts just open a terminal in the same folder and run the scripts and follow the instructions.

On windows just download the files I link to for the .img files and use the windows scripts they provide.

AntiDroid

@totalrando said in The T-Mobile Fajita Nightmare (or, why you should NOT get the T-Mobile version of the 6T so far):

If you have or know of Linux based instructions to roll back the 6T to Android 9 I beg of thee to give them to me. Because Windows and I usually don't get along

My instructions are for Linux. I have not had windows since XP. Although I do maintain some virtual machines with Windows.

TotalRando

@antidroid This is good, really good stuff. I will try this after work and let you know the results.

TotalRando

@antidroid I feel stupid now on rereading this, not realizing you had referred to a post here. I saw a blue link and didn't even think it was a new post, but the xda-developers post I've stared at for hundreds of times this week. Shame on me for not paying attention. This is good work, and I am really hopeful I might be able to make this work on my phone soon.

AntiDroid

@totalrando said in The T-Mobile Fajita Nightmare (or, why you should NOT get the T-Mobile version of the 6T so far):

EDIT: I should add, this is a really common problem with the T-Mobile edition, with apparently hundreds of desperatae 6T owners complaining that the T-Mobile fork of OxygenOS is so bad that people with virtually no flashing experience are desperately trying to get the stock ROM. It's an amazing phone. But that's exactly why I refuse to run Android on it and by hook or by crook I will flash this phone to my bidding. insert evil laughter

Please note that flashing the phone with the Global version of the OS will fix the T-mobile issue but currently flashing it with Ubuntu Touch for a daily driver is questionable. I have had to reflash my 6T a few times after instaling things that broke it (not sure which apps i installed that broke it). The symptoms of the bug are well known. The phone will be at full brightness and you can't adjust it and then the screen shuts off and you have to force a reset and in my case reinstall everything again as every time i rebooted it had the same issue. It is still usable but be careful as you may need to reflash and lose stuff.

wgarcia

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wgarcia

This post is deleted!

TotalRando

@antidroid This assessment brought me to the pit of despair, along with the realization that I needed a different SlimPort than my Nexus 4. Luckily my wife came by and woke me with a good slap, so I got back to work and tried your method. I put the phone in bootloader, assembled the directories and got, well, this. I'm no expert but it seems I can't get it to push anything?

At least it's progress of some kind. alt text

AntiDroid

@totalrando It looks like the phone is still locked. Have you run

fastboot oem unlock

since getting the unlock code? If not just run that command while in fastboot and try again. You have to have the unlock option enabled in Androids developer mode before sending that command via fastboot.

TotalRando

@antidroid Well that changed the equation a little. I realized that I had drivers on the device itself, so I went back to Windows and installed them, and after reading your post, tried again in fastboot mode. NOW my device is finally unlocked. So I began running the script again.

$ ./flash-all-partitions.sh
Do you want to wipe all the data ( recommended )[Y/N]?y
[sudo] password for computer: 
Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for computer: 
wiping userdata...
Erase successful, but not automatically formatting.
Can't determine partition type.
FAILED (remote: unknown command)
erasing 'userdata'...
FAILED (remote: Check device console.)
finished. total time: 0.001s
target didn't report max-download-size
sending 'aop_a' (180 KB)...

so I will report back with results as they happen. Not sure why it's taking 5 minutes to do 180KB but hey, I like progress as it comes.

AntiDroid

@totalrando That does seem strange and also not correct. My guess is you will need to try again. Since you now have the bootloader unlocked correctly you could try the way that is recommended rather than mine.

My script is just an automated way of doing the steps provided here plus a second script to flash the critical. You could try following the manual steps to slow it down and not get stuck with the script hanging on failures. (They talk a lot about danger but they are just covering their butts)