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bedHedd's Jelly Star LineageOS + Rooting adventure

introduction I got this unihertz jelly star as a low stakes test bench to learn how to root android phones. The following is my experience and a aggregate of multiple guides for getting my computer setup to root my phone. If you want to read more about the process of writing the guide, stick around for the post-mortem writeup “guide/walk through” I…

post-mortem

preamble

I wanted to include this in the introduction of the guide, but I figured that people looking for guides, wouldn’t care about the preamble
I saw this phone posted here

Jelly Star - The World's Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

If you are interested in small/niche mobile phones, then you should do yourself a favour and check out what Unihertz has to offer. Their most recent Kickstarter for the Jelly Star (a 3" phone with a 48MP main camera) was fully funded in 5 minutes. It was their 9th successful Kickstarter. [Jelly Star - The World's Smallest Android 13 Smar…

and saw it got a teardown guide

Jelly Star - The World's Smallest Android 13 Smartphone

Looks cool. I like that they have official repair guides I don’t see one for the jelly star, but they’ll probably add more

So I pulled the trigger and got this phone to learn the process of rooting it, as I had reservations with rooting my daily driver phone. My past experiences with rooting lead to two bricked tablets. The phone arrived in May

I made some initial attempts to root it, but didn’t get any progress. While working on it intermittently, I forgot the previous steps I performed. I started the first draft of the guide June 1st first as a personal message.

When I had spare mental bandwidth, I document my process and any guides I found/tried.

notes about the section “getting my computer and phone setup” + " help my device does not show up in fastboot"

These are notes for the following sections of the guide

@bedHedd

getting my computer and phone setup

Fedora does not natively have adb installed, we’ll need to install adb and enable fastboot.
These guides were helpful in writing this section

Guide: use adb & fastboot on Fedora for installing custom Android OS - Fedora Discussion GitHub - M0Rf30/android-udev-rules: Android udev rules list aimed to be the most comprehensive on the net

1. install android tools

dnf install android-tools

2. download the android-udev-rules from this repository. follow the instructions

https://github.com/M0Rf30/android-udev-rules?tab=readme-ov-file#other-distros

2. enable fastboot

* * ```
 groupadd adbusers and sudo usermod -a -G adbusers $(whoami)

• enable developer mode, usb debugging, and allow the computer usb debugging permissions on the phone
• Enabling USB Debugging on an Android Device I reposted it here

Enabling USB Debugging on an Android Device

The steps to enable USB debugging depend on the version of Android running on the target device, as indicated in the following table:

• |Android Device|Instructions|
  | — | — |
  |Android 4.0 and newer (Jelly Bean)|Enable the USB Debugging option under Settings > Developer options.For Android 4.2 and newer, Developer options is hidden by default; use the following steps:1. On the device, go to Settings > About .2. Tap the Build number seven times to make Settings > Developer options available.3. Then enable the USB Debugging option. Tip: You might also want to enable the Stay awake option, to prevent your Android device from sleeping while plugged into the USB port. For more information, see Unlocking Jelly Bean and Higher Devices|
  |Kindle Fire devices|Select Settings > Security and set Enable ADB to On.For more information, see the Amazon documentation.|

If you are running Android 4.2.2 or later, you may see the following dialog when you connect your device to your PC running RAD Studio:

Click OK to allow USB debugging on your PC. If you accidentally click Cancel, disconnect your device from your PC and connect it back to make the dialog show up again on your device.

• plug in your phone and verify that the device shows up when adb devices is run

adb devices
List of devices attached
JELLYS0000010000 device

3. remove your sd card if one is installed
4. install magisk from the official github page onto your phone

https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/releases

@bedHedd

help my device does not show up in fastboot

use this section if you get a empty output from fastboot devices or fastboot -l devices.

1. start by getting lsusb. I have stripped out the usb to the relevant device

lsusb
…
Bus 001 Device 015: ID 0e8d:201d MediaTek Inc. Jelly Star
…

  * note down the id in my case it is `0e8d`
* add a entry to udev
* * ```
sh -c "echo '# MediaTek Inc. Jelly Star' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules"
sh -c "echo 'SUBSYSTEM==\"usb\", ATTR{idVendor}==\"0e8d\", MODE=\"0666\", GROUP=\"plugdev\"' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules"

• reload udev

udevadm control --reload-rules
udevadm trigger

The first documentation was for how to get my fedora desktop to talk with adb. Previously I had been calling a adb folder. The guide gave me a package I can install so that I wouldn’t have to call a script for adb
It took a couple attempts before I got it properly working. This initially helped me figure out why the fastboot devices command didn’t work

After I got a image flashed, I couldn’t figure out why adb couldn’t detect the flashed image

The findings there got updated with the section. The additional instructions for fastboot were as a result of getting errors while flashing lineage os

Once again, having chatgpt help me get the correct terminal commands to debug my issue.

notes about the section “rooting the phone” + " help I’m stuck in orange state"

@bedHedd

rooting the phone

this section will help root the phone and prepare the images. Instructions adapted from the reddit post linked above

1. start by build version using adb

adb shell “‘getprop’ | grep -e ‘ro.build.flavor’”
[ro.build.flavor]: [sys_mssi_g58v89c2k_dfl_tee-user]

* note the version: in my case it is `g58v89c2k_dfl_tee`
* find the version on [unihertz google drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1feYyrSFOPcpJUOp4BdQBHjPFZVXQ9Ubx) and download it. For my phone, it is within the `None_EEA` folder. I searched for `g58v89c2k` on the drive page
* ![image](upload://itsga28m2TkAXJAocGT87QruKXz)
* extract the zip and copy the following files (or note the file paths to the files):
* `boot.img`
* `vbmeta.img`
* copy `boot.img` to your phone
* open magisk on your phone, navigate to the install portion, insert the file, and patch the boot.img
* ![image](upload://kGHjEfLVndLx0VgkoHOhe2wFb1R)

* insert select and patch file
* copy the patched file from your phone to the pc in a location that you can access. The filename will have a structure of `magisk_patched*.img`. I personally put it in my `stock_root_images` folder with the `boot.img`, `vbmeta` and other img files
* with the phone plugged in, run the `adb devices` command and verify that the device shows up. Sample output below
* * ```
adb devices
List of devices attached
JELLYS0000010000	device

• reboot to the bootloader using adb reboot bootloader
• the unihertz logo should be pop up and stay frozen on the phone
• confirm the phone shows up in when fastboot devices shows up

@bedHedd

help I’m stuck in orange state (come back)

No worries my friend, stay calm, you can still recover from this

1. power down your phone. If you are stuck in a boot loop follow these instructions to enter recovery mode, which includes options you can use to power down the device I’ve copied the instructions here in case the post gets deleted

Just tried this myself, u/picklift, and I think it can more simply be stated as:

1. Hold Power (P) & Volume-Up (V+) until initial boot screen (“logo”) appears.
2. Release P button while still holding V+ until “No command” screen shows.
3. Press V+ and P buttons simultaneously to enter the Recovery Menu (you may need to do this multiple times - it often doesn’t seem ready to accept it right away, dunno why/what it’s doing behind the scenes).

NOTES:

1. You technically don’t have to hold V+ when first powering on, just within the first second or two of the initial boot screen appearing - you can press it any time up until then. You also can release the P button after a second or two and just hold the V+ until the “No Command” screen. It’s just easier to tell people to hold them both initially to ensure the timing requirements are met.
2. The “No command” screen should appear within a few seconds of the screen dimming slightly from the initial full brightness - any longer and you’ll know that it’s instead booting normally. If you want to try to get to the Recovery Menu again, then you don’t have to wait until it finishes booting - just hold the P button for several seconds until the screen goes blank as it reboots from scratch (rather than waiting until it fully boots just so you can shut it down again). Then proceed with step #2 above.
3. if you don’t do step #3 above within a minute of the “No command” screen appearing, then the device will reboot itself.

EDITS: Minor revisions & additions resulting from further playing around with it.

2. Download and install SP Flash Tool V6, the instructions have been adapted from this reddit guide also linked above Jelly Star Rooted link Using the instructions from reddit

Recover / unbrick / unroot

If you mess up it might result in a bootloop, just like what happened to me several times… The phone will reboot twice and then show a warning something is wrong and you get the options to try again or do a factory reset. Both options won’t fix anything. Luckily it’s quite easy to completely revert to factory settings, you can also use this method to easily unroot again.
3.Note again that this will fully wipe the phone*

For the factory reset you can follow the same steps as for the Jelly 2, which you can find it here. I used “SP Flash Tool V6.2316” which worked great with the Jelly Star
4.Install the drivers and follow the steps under “Flashing the Stock Rom”* NEVER EVER CHOOSE “FORMAT ALL” IN SP FLASH TOOL, as this will wipe your IMEI number and Google Key

​

Let me know if you have any questions or certain steps are unclear!

5. Launch SP Flash Tool V6. Instructions adapted from the flashing stock rom section of How to use the SP Flash Tool for MTK based devices.

1. Start flash_tool.exe.
2. Choose the scatter file from the directory you extracted the stock ROM into.
3. Select Firmware Upgrade from the dropdown menu.
4. Hit Download.
5. Power down your phone.
6. Connect your phone to your PC.
7. Turn on your phone.
8. The flashing should begin right away.

These steps were a result of me flashing the incorrect image. I didn’t realize that the guide Jelly Star - Rooted! I referenced was written for the European version. Since I had worked on this intermittently, I couldn’t traceback to the guide of getting the correct factory version.

During the making of this guide there was only one firmware available for EU > 2023072513_g58v89c2k_dfl_eea.zip

When I flashed the european version, I got the boot loader stuck in the orange state. This was a massive setback and demotivated me as I thought I had bricked the phone. It wasn’t until I had a upcoming trip where I needed the phone when I found the motivation to continue debugging. One factory reset later using SP Flash Tool got me back to stock where I looked up how to get the build and firmware version