[Sony Xperia XZ2 ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other] cesar65:
Advice for Stock upgrade vom Oreo to Pie

Hi Martin and others,

I own a X2C Dual Sim since end of last year and first thing I did was unlocking bootloader, installing your twrp

and rooting with Magisk. I also installed Xperifix and so far it works great with the phone camera.

Current status of the phone:

Oreo firmware version 51.1.A.11.51

Recovery installed

Phone rooted with Magisk 19.3 installed (no problems so far, even Magisk hide works perfectly)

Xperifix installed and working fine

I was scared from the Magisk 19.1 onwards boot loop issue, so I haven't upgraded yet.

Now I don't want to wait any longer, but finally upgrade to the July Pie stock firmware. Yesterday I took quite some time researching the thread for a good description of the sequence of steps that I need to take. Now I am a bit confused. I must admit that I have only a limited understanding of the meaning of the particular steps (guess I am not alone with that), hence I am hesitant to perform the steps right away. After all, I need my phone to be working.

What I have done so far:

Downloaded July stock firmware with Xperifirm

deleted userdata*.sin from the folder to keep my data

downloaded newflasher files and put then into the firmware folder

downloaded the proper twrp (X2C, July) and friends from your server

adb, fastboot working on my pc (adb devices finds my phone)

I found TPlatt's description and cyberwitch's description but there are differences and some steps are not clearly described (due to better knowledge of those people probably). Of course there is also your description in the first post.

Questions that I have:

Stockkernel flashing should only apply to customer firmwares, not for stock, so I can skip that step, right? So it looks like cyberwitch's description is just a variant of your description.

Would I have to follow your description right after having installed the new firmware with newflasher?

SELinux permissive should not be required, since Xperifix does not work in Pie anyway. Or is there another reason to set SELinux to permissive?

I have the camera working on Oreo already. Would I still have to apply your camera fix after the upgrade to avoid a black camera? (Btw, I expect to lose the DRM protected functionality of the camera anyway, since Xperifix does not work for Pie)

In your description in post #1, the command "fastboot boot twrp.img" would result in booting of the phone into twrp, right?

For your step #2, the twrp image should previously have been stored on the phone as was described by cyberwitch in his post mentioned above, right?

After having installed Magisk 18.1 (and booted the phone into system, rooted it and so on, can I then upgrade to 19.3 without problems (e.g. boot loops)?

So that's my extensive list of questions. I very much hope to get some help here.

Just for the record, I very much appreciate your work, Martin, and I very much hope that you continue support for our phone(s), especially for the XZ2 of course.

To prove that this is not lip service only, I just sent you a donation (transaction #3ES018347W390830R).

Regards and thanks in advance

Cesar