General Journal: A brand new OPPO Find X3 Pro (UK/EE) - From new to clean de-bloated android (hopefully)

[PaulGWebster]

To start this journal I will begin by stating, I am not actually sure if it will be possible to finish this journal; from what I have read there can be quite a number of obstacles with international versions of the OPPO, some of which can be quite troublesome, but I thought it would be an interesting and hopefully helpful (for my self and anyone else wanting to do the same) way of going through the process with such a modern device.

The device arrives tomorrow, I wanted to get the initial post in without knowing precise details about the device.

I will update this primary post with the journal entries and post into the main thread when I update it going forwards

-- Entry 1 29/01/2022 00:21 (Dellivery today at some point!)

So far I have found out that cpw means car phone warehouse, which used(still is?) a store in the uk, 'EE' a network provider in the UK releases of the Oppo x3 find pro are apparently identical to releases from this store.

I have asked the user who informed me of this if they could possible put any information they are aware of within this thread.

Also, I will be doing the unboxing and initial looking at what it is via youtube I hope this is ok? I could not see a way to embed video onto this platform!

-- Entry 2 29/01/2022 10:53 (Delivery)

This is just a few images of the arrived device, simply unboxed and put on charge nothing has been set on the device what so ever.



Also note that this image showing the build number is by @alvydas it is not from my device yet! just some more information to add to the journal, this is believed to be the same as mine should show later on when I decide to video/start the phone up

Also for note the CPH (Possible related to CarPhoneWarehouse) prefix in the build number)



-- Entry 3 29/01/2022 13:11 (Turning on, Bootloader unlock, USB Debugging enabled)

Youtube video:

- May still be processing the HD version in google HQ!



-- Entry 4 30/01/2022 10:53 (Getting sorted)

Ok so we can't root it and we can't change the boot laoder .... however we can get novo launcher to start by default! The pro version at least!

Not exactly an amazing feat but hey its progress, I also removed the gmail mail application as I preffer outlook (mainly because I have 3 email accounts):



And boy .... you can really remove everything including:

130|OP4F57L1:/ $ pm uninstall --user 0 com.oppo.launcher

The coloros launcher its self X_X, so it seems you cannot get root, but there is no protected package, you can remove ANYTHING.

so this bodes the question .... other than wanting lineage OS of course, how thin can we get it ....

-- Entry 3 10/02/2022 10:53 (Hackery and cleaning)

.... So there is no fastboot on the international model, it is simply not there I even got EE them self to confirm this.

However, I have made some progress in discovering a way to get to the qualcomm flashable download mode, that is it will show up as a:

One of those (if you have the Qualcomm drivers installed), some information I put in the forum about this mode was this:

1) Turn the phone off (shutdown) 2) Hold the power button and the Vol up/down (I Forget which) down all the way through the phone starting, you will feel a little Bzzzzz 3) you will be presented with a menu probably in chinese, this is because you held down the power button and it auto selected the first language (its not a biggie), just press the back touch screen button in the top left <-- 4) Select english (or chinese if you preffer!) 5) you will be presented with a menu that has 3 options, Format, Reboot, .... something else ... 6) Select none of the options! look to the bottom of the screen you will see a version mine was v12 o3 v1.2 - double tap this 7) you will get a warning you are entering 'customer service mode', and wallah .... you will get the device show up in device manager.

I was going to shoot a video of this, I still might! but its rather redundant at this point as I am now at a brick wall, I need to figure out how to deal with this mode, can I flash something to it .... how?

I am scrubbing the phone of all the bloatware I can and to be honest I have it pretty damn clean .... but still the fastmode is elusive and what else could be loaded onto this lovely phone.

 

[PaulGWebster]

Entry 1 added - nothing really important

 

[PaulGWebster]

Entry 2 added, initial unboxing simply for charging, video to come soon: looking for details!

 

[alvydasd2]

The CPW in the build number is more of a guess than anything else we all could be wrong

 

[PaulGWebster]

The CPW in the build number is more of a guess than anything else we all could be wrong

@alvydasd2 Soon see! I hope you do not mind but I included your image in the journal at the top.

 

[alvydasd2]

@alvydasd2 Soon see! I hope you do not mind but I included your image in the journal at the top.

Yh that's fine

 

[PaulGWebster]

Entry 3 uploaded, many thanks @alvydasd2 We do have slightly different builds it seems!

 

[PaulGWebster]

So now next up I believe its rooting the phone should be fun, also I beleive there is a way to root a phone but hide it from applications like paypal ... would love to find more out on this

 

[PaulGWebster]

Also have to figure out if all the fancy camera things will work with a custom rom, such as the microscope mode and all the advanced functionalities

Maybe the best initial tangent is to simply root the phone and remove any bloatware as well as installing novolauncher, followed by re-rooting it

That way I will not lose the ability to use the special camera functions and in turn still receive updates, I believe I can actually freeze certain packages too so they are effectively immutable, so they show up but can never run or be changed ... hmmm

 

[alvydasd2]

So now next up I believe its rooting the phone should be fun, also I beleive there is a way to root a phone but hide it from applications like paypal ... would love to find more out on this

Rooting ain't gonna be easy on this phone that's if you can unlock the bootloader which is pretty much impossible unless you have a Chinese variant of the phone or somehow figure out a way to root it without unlocking the bootloader would be a miracle

 

[PaulGWebster]

Rooting ain't gonna be easy on this phone that's if you can unlock the bootloader which is pretty much impossible unless you have a Chinese variant of the phone or somehow figure out a way to root it without unlocking the bootloader would be a miracle

Check the youtube video, I appear to have lol ... though I did notice that going into the recovery menu is all in chinese ... so I assume its the chinese version:

 

[PaulGWebster]

The only problem being ... I have no idea idea what this menu says -_-

 

[PaulGWebster]

I guess that is tomorrows episode though, connecting it via ADB+TWRP

 

[alvydasd2]

Usually first thing when you open recovery is choosing a language idk why English wasn't there and btw the difference between the builds is you're running lower firmware so if you try to update it you should get the same build number as me and if u had the Chinese version your model would have been PEEM00 or something like that

 

[PaulGWebster]

Usually first thing when you open recovery is choosing a language idk why English wasn't there and btw the difference between the builds is you're running lower firmware so if you try to update it you should get the same build number as me and if u had the Chinese version your model would have been PEEM00 or something like that

ah ha I held the button down to long it auto selected chinese somehow I pressed back and got the recovery options ... not seeing TWRP though ... and when I do a TWP fastboot it does not boot into the bootloader...

The OEM Bootloader though is saying its unlocked in dev options

 

[alvydasd2]

ah ha I held the button down to long it auto selected chinese somehow I pressed back and got the recovery options ... not seeing TWRP though ... and when I do a TWP fastboot it does not boot into the bootloader...

The OEM Bootloader though is saying its unlocked in dev options

Oppo has a weird bootloader cuz it can only be unlocked with an app that only works on Chinese version and to access fastboot u need a unlocked bootloader

 

[PaulGWebster]

just read this .... so there is no way to even fastboot the device https://xdaforums.com/t/decision-by...access-for-oppo-phones-starting-2016.3348114/

 

[PaulGWebster]

I wonder if you could flash on the chinese version of the firmware

 

[PaulGWebster]

it seems that the device is really a 'realme gt 5g' .... trying to verify this

 

[PaulGWebster]

it seems that the device is really a 'realme gt 5g' .... trying to verify this

It's not -_-