How to reinstall a broken OS on Pinephone's internal storage?
#1
Hi, I've been Pinephoning since November and things got a bit wonky recently. I kept getting annoying on-screen phone shell alerts, and noticed that connectivity seemed to be dropping out when the phone went to sleep, and I was also concerned that I may have missed calls.

More recently I discovered that the phone could no longer retrieve and install updates, which left me wondering how to overwrite the internally stored OS from scratch.

So I went to Manjaro and downloaded the ARM Beta 5 Phosh version, flashed a microSD and booted my Pinephone from that.

I had hoped that it would present me with an option to install the OS to the internal storage, but keep my phone contacts in the process. It didn't, and I can't find a prompt anywhere to achieve that.

Could someone point me in the right direction please? Big Grin

Thanks in advance.
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#2
So I've had a bit of a dig on the forums here, and found some excellent advice from member SwordfishII.

He/she suggests the following steps for flashing an OS image to your phone's internal storage. For this you need Jumpdrive and balena Etcher or a similar image-flashing program. Jumpdrive allows your PC to write to the internal phone memory, which appears as a mass storage device when connected via USB cable.

SOFTWARE
-----------------------------------------------
Download Jumpdrive from GitHub: https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Ju...e/releases
For flashing, use balena Etcher: https://www.balena.io/etcher/

STEPS
---------
1) Download Jumpdrive from Github and flash it onto a microSD card
2) Insert the new Jumpdrive microSD card in your phone and reboot it
3) Plug your phone into your computer using a USB cable
4) Flash your operating system image of choice directly onto your phone's internal storage
For byte-sized tech and software tips check out my Danimations Digital Media tips channel on Youtube Big Grin
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