Updating Firefox OS

I updated a Geeksphone Peak from Firefox OS 1.1 to Firefox OS 2.1 and it was not that easy.

The process is explained on the Mozilla developper website:

1. first backup everything (AFAIK, this is mostly useful if you want to restore your original OS);

2. flash the device with the suitable image.

Issue

What was not so clear (and I found this out after flashing the device) is that if you try to restore your /data partition in order to get your data data, it won't work very well 😞. You obtain a weird/broken mix between the original version of the OS and the new one:

• the installed applications were restored;

• the core applications (phone, messages) were nowhere to be found (so you get a phone which cannot make phone calls);

• the contacts and messages were empty;

• the photos and videos were not still available (in fact, there is no need to restore the /data partition in order to get them as they are stored in a separate partition).

I get the same kind of behaviour when updating to either v1.4, v2.1, v2.2 beta.

If your restore the original version of the OS, you get your data back (so the backup is not completely useless).

Partial solution

At this point is seems that restoring the /data partition on the new version of the OS is quite pointless. So this is what I did:

• Do not restore the /data;

• Photos and videos: nothing to do;

• Application: write a list of the installed applications and install them again on the new OS. You will lose the data associated with the application. I guess it must be possible to restore the data of specific applications with suitable adb push but I didn't try to do that.

• Contact: export the contacts with Contacts2XML in the original version of the OS and import them with XML2Contacts in the new version of the OS;

• Messages: I didn't find a solution to import/export them so they are lost (they are still somewhere in the backup but not usable);

• Configuration: the configuration is lost and must be redone (mail servers, CalDAV configuration, etc.).

Update 2015-04-28: with the updated OS, the phone was having a lot of graphic glitches (for example, some parts of the windows would not render at all) and crashes. I managed to fix this by unchecking most of the options in the Developer menu. I don't know which options were responsible for the bugs. Currently, the only enabled options are:

• Async. Pan/Zoom in Graphics;

• App transition in Window Management.

Conclusion

I am not sure if doing all of this was necessary because v1.1 was a very old version or if this will be necessary for a future update.

Now the geolocation works. 😊

References

• Flashing a stock Android image without wiping user data