ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Sebastian Hiller <sebastian.hiller@xxxxxxxx>]

Hello there,
i was semi-successful. I did manage to get Flyme working however there are major drawbacks which i haven't found a fix for yet (will test over the weekend when i have more spare time)First things first i've tested the I and A versions of Flyme (which should definitely work since it is the MX4 M461 Model = international model, please check the model on your battery. If it is M460 it is the chinese version with locked bootloader and it wont work at all), so versions 4.0.4I, 4.2.8.2I and 4.5.3.1A

Now the way this works is:   
   - You need adb and fastboot on your machine (tested on OS X, Win 10 and 15.04) As far as i can tell OS doesn't matter, there might be a driver problem and your MX4 wont be recognized. If that happens check google for the MX4 Windows drivers. Also use USB 2.0 Ports, on all of my USB 3.0 Ports the Meizu wasn't recognized at all. You'll also need a recovery.img for flyme. Any version of that works it is just used to get in the default flyme recovery menu (can even be chinese. find it through google or create your own if you have a spare Meizuphone lying around)   

   - Now to the fun part: Boot your MX4 into fastboot (Vol down + power)
   - Connect to PC
   - Fire up Terminal, CMD or whatever command line you are using.
   - fastboot -w (this clears the cache and user partitions on your MX4)
   - fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
   - shut down your mx4 and boot it in recovery mode (Vol up + power)
   - Your device should now mount as "recovery" (size around 1GB)
   - Move update.zip (the flyme update) to the recovery partition
   - On your phone make sure the first box is checked ("firmware update", might also be in chinese so you won't be able to read it, but it is always the first one) and hit the blue continue button
   - Your device will update (even replace the correct recovery partition, that is why the first one doesn't matter) and boot into flyme
But then things get strange:
   
   - 4.0.4I will fully work and boot normally (it may take some minutes the first time). However graphics are bugged. Colors are missing saturation and it appears that the graphics driver or chip is not working with this version (laggy like hell, colors seem rendered by cpu) This will also carry on to ubuntu if you flash it back. You first have to update to one of the following versions and then got to ubuntu if you want correct color replication
   - 4.2.8.2I will be stuck at boot / flyme logo. The device turns hot after a few minutes so there must be something wrong with the version (oddly enough colors appear fixed) This happens for OTA update as well as native update through recovery. Clearing cache and user data doesn't fix that one either
   - 4.5.3.1A i've managed to get this to work. It might need a few reboots (it is stuck at flyme logo too) But there are bugs with the native browser, therefore signing in to google play services with 2factor auth. is not working as the browser crashes every time. You can chose chrome as a default, but for critical tasks it will always use the one that is bundled with flyme so you cannot use it as your main phone (at least i can't, might be ok for you)

As you can see it isn't fully working but better than nothing. I think there are just some minor corrections needed or maybe i'm missing something.
Good thing is, the device partitions wont be screwed up (at least if you do it this way, if you use flash tools be VERY careful what you do or you screw up you whole device) Therefore you can flash ubuntu back at any time. Just get the ubuntu recovery.img flash it through fastboot and then plug it in to flash ubuntu in the usual manner through terminal (i'm back on rc-proposed but the rc one should be ok too)


Regards,Sebastian





 


     Manfred <manfred.haas@xxxxxx> schrieb am 11:01 Freitag, 10.Juli 2015:
   

 Did you succeed flashing flyme on your MX4?

Manfred
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