@crab_aesthetics SUCCESS!

There was a little manual work that needed to be done to get it working.

For anyone's reference having difficulty flashing the image using either the UBports installer or manually flashing the vbmeta, dtbo, and boot.img files (available here), it is necessary to use --disable-verity and --disable-verification for each of these.

So the manual process looks like:

• Flash stock android 9, specifically build PQ3B.190801.002
• Power off phone
• Using Power + vol down, boot phone into Fastboot Mode
• Run these commands

fastboot flash --disable-verity --disable-verification dtbo dtbo.img
fastboot flash --disable-verity --disable-verification vbmeta vbmeta.img
fastboot flash --disable-verity --disable-verification boot boot.img

• Run the UBports installer
• When prompted, check the check mark for erase user data and un-check the check mark for format system data
• The installer will prompt you to boot into Recovery. Use the volume button to select the option to Boot to Recovery
• If everything went correctly, you should now boot into the Recovery and be able to click the Continue button on the UBports installer, and the installation should complete and after a couple automatic reboots, you get to the Language Selection screen.

Now I just need to get cellular data working...
And figure out if it's possible to switch to a dvorak keyboard layout...

@trwidick I think we can add US Cellular to the list of 'not working'

Activated brand new SIM on the Pixel 3a a few days ago at the store
Installed UT today, wifi works, the SIM is detected, if you go to System Settings -> Cellular -> Carrier and APN carrier selected shows up as 'none' but when you go into 'Carrier' it's set to 'Automatically'. The little wheel spins for a while and then it doesn't do anything. It lists US Cellular (along with Extended and some random numbers) but even if you click on Extended it doesn't ever connect. Manually entering the APN does not seem to work either.

@unrealb2 First impressions:

Performance is very nice, it's responsive and looks really good.

The edge swiping is a little irritating, you do need to adjust the pixel width that the edge swiping activates at for it to be reasonably usable.

Changing the keyboard layout to dvorak did not actually change the keyboard layout to dvorak. Not a show stopper, but wish it would have.

The main issue for me was that it would not connect to my cell network. I couldn't make or receive calls or get any data. I'm on US Cellular.

I tried going in and manually choosing the carrier, this did not work.

I tried going in and changing the APN settings to the APN settings I found online for US Cellular, including using my MIN@uscc.net and MIN for password and this did not work.

I took it in to US Cellular to see if one of them could help me try to set the APN settings but the guy I happened to get there was pretty useless, looked at it for about 30 seconds and told me I was on my own, didn't even try to set the APN settings.

I'm flashing LineageOS on it now because I do actually need the phone to work, but I'll try again in another few months to see if there's been any progress.

For what it's worth, the US Cellular guy said that there's nothing on their end that would be blocking the phone from connecting to the network, like no OS check or verification, so it would appear that there is some software issue causing the phone to not connect to this network.

@crab_aesthetics SUCCESS!

There was a little manual work that needed to be done to get it working.

For anyone's reference having difficulty flashing the image using either the UBports installer or manually flashing the vbmeta, dtbo, and boot.img files (available here), it is necessary to use --disable-verity and --disable-verification for each of these.

So the manual process looks like:

• Flash stock android 9, specifically build PQ3B.190801.002
• Power off phone
• Using Power + vol down, boot phone into Fastboot Mode
• Run these commands

fastboot flash --disable-verity --disable-verification dtbo dtbo.img
fastboot flash --disable-verity --disable-verification vbmeta vbmeta.img
fastboot flash --disable-verity --disable-verification boot boot.img

• Run the UBports installer
• When prompted, check the check mark for erase user data and un-check the check mark for format system data
• The installer will prompt you to boot into Recovery. Use the volume button to select the option to Boot to Recovery
• If everything went correctly, you should now boot into the Recovery and be able to click the Continue button on the UBports installer, and the installation should complete and after a couple automatic reboots, you get to the Language Selection screen.

Now I just need to get cellular data working...
And figure out if it's possible to switch to a dvorak keyboard layout...

@trwidick I'm on linux and installed the android development tools before doing anything to the phone.

I was able to get Android 9 back on there and working, I need to use the phone while running some errands tonight so I will be able to try later this evening when I get back.

@lakotaubp No success today, now the phone is stuck in fastboot mode. I can flash stuff to it from a terminal but I can't get flash.android.com to flash the original android 9 image on it any more, it connects to it but then when I try to flash the image it fails and says

"Flash Failed
Your device stopped responding. You may have to select restart in the bootloader menu in order for it to be recognized again.

Try using a different USB cable and/or port."

I had been switching to new USB ports but I ran out of ports, and it seems like for whatever reason it will only flash Android 9 on each port once, after that it gives this error message. Persists through a reboot, which is very strange. And I don't have any other USB cables to try, it seems kind of dumb to go to the store to get a new one when I just got a new cable yesterday.

@lakotaubp yah I've had a real beast of a time flashing custom ROMs on different android devices. The Galaxy S3 was the easiest one, someone had made a 1-click thing that rooted it and flashed Cyanogenmod. After that nothing was easy. The S7 was impossible, I tried numerous times over the years and never did get a custom ROM installed. I ended up using adb to remove all the bloatware on that one. Galaxy Tab S2 was somewhat easier, I did end up getting Lineage OS working on that one.

Going to try UT again in a little while.

@crab_aesthetics Success! Kind of!

I changed it to a different USB port and now it's recognized, I'm flashing 9.0 again.

@lakotaubp

>>> adb reboot-bootloader 
error: no devices/emulators found
>>> adb kill-server
>>> adb start-server
* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
>>> adb devices
List of devices attached

>>> fastboot reboot recovery
< waiting for any device >

I don't know for sure what happened, but it seems like there is no OS to boot into and the recovery seems non-functional or non-existent. It's as if the device is not in USB-debug mode which would explain why it's not showing up as a device, but there's no OS to boot into to turn on USB debugging...

@keneda I'm doing the installation on linux so I don't think it is a driver issue. Still stuck in Fastboot Mode, if I choose Recovery Mode I see the Google warning about 'the bootloader is unlocked and the software cannot be verified', then that message goes away and it just goes back to Fastboot Mode, like the recovery doesn't exist or something. Not really sure how to fix this :^(

Nothing shows up for command 'adb devices'.

@trwidick Yes the installer seemed to be going well, then it got to the point where it said to choose to boot into Recovery, then nothing worked. I will try more tomorrow.