What I found out
This is a great Lineage rom for this old phone. Yes, the phone is capable for everyday tasks, it’s fast and reliable. One of the highlights is definitely stock camera app, so you can get the most from camera.
There are some limitations:
- Usb debugging have to be turned off, otherwise you my face with heavy battery drain.
- eSpeak TTS is useless! Honestly, it's unusable TTS synthesizes speech mechanism. You really cannot understand English and German generated voices. If you need this feature, you have to replace it with some other TTS speech synthesizer.
There are TTS engine available: RHVoice (open source), Google TTS speech services, or some other even better and payable.
- There is obviously location deviation for about 15 – 20 m from accurate location! You can navigate with Here wego or Sygic (and other navigations too), but this location deviation can affect navigation, where two roads are near by.
In case you replace microG with genue Google services this deviation disappears on the same device!
- Google maps doesn’t work! This has deeper impact. Many apps use this framework for it’s own operation. There are apps like: store my car park location and navigate you back, then your bank app can’t show you their offices on map. The most widely used are weather apps, which cann’t obtain changing location.
What you can do is to enable Mozilla Location backend in microG setting. So you get location from cell tower and this is good enough for weather apps purpose only!
- Use some other translator than google’s because it doesn’t work.
- You can't buy new apps in Aurora store. If you bot it before, you can install it, otherwise not. (Sure, you have to log in with your google account in Aurora store.)
- In app purchases are not possible.
- Some special apps like one for banking (NLB Klikin) want to be installed from google Play store only.
Luckily you can do a workaround and temporally change setting in Aurora store. Go to settings/Instalation/Instalation method then choose Native installer.
- In some applications build in feature sync/backup to gdrive doesn’t work.
- Google contacts don’t sync. With some work, you can get it working.
GoogleContactsSyncAdapter
You can install
GoogleContactsSyncAdapter.apk in case you miss only this feature and leave the rom as is. So you get the best possible performance.
First of all, download right gapps package (arm64, android 9), I suggest smallest openGapps or MindTheGapps and extract file from it. Just unzip and search in the subfolders.
Callender sync works with microG, but you can install
GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter.apk as well.
Copy folder GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter and GoogleContactsSyncAdapter together with adapter app in them to SD card.
Fresh install
At fresh install of this custom rom, flash the rom image and TWRP recovery for android 8 in same session.
TWRP for Oreo P9-EVA-8.0.0-TWRP-v4.img:
https://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=1322778262903998750 (you used it when you rebrand and get phone on EMUI 8 firmware (
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/rebrand-update-tool-hwota7-p9-eva.3820849/#post-77161313))
Get device into fastboot mode.
Code:
fastboot flash system <name of the rom img file>.img
fastboot flash recovery_ramdisk P9-EVA-8.0.0-TWRP-v4.img
boot to TWRP with power + volume up.
Go to Mount and mount /system partition and /external sd card. Then go to Advanced/File manager. Copy folder with contact sync adapter to place, if you wish you may copy calendar sync adapter too.
Code:
/system/app/GoogleContactsSyncAdapter/GoogleContactsSyncAdapter.apk
/system/app/GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter/GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter.apk
Get device into fastboot mode and flash stock recovery back. Download from here:
https://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=1395089523397898706
Code:
fastboot flash recovery_ramdisk EVA-b540-EMUI-RECOVERY_RAMDIS.img
Get into stock recovery by press and hold Power+Vol.Up where you do the factory reset. Then boot to the system for first time.
Update procedure
Whenever you flash new build of this rom, it is necessary to copy the adapter(s) again. Repeat the steps above. Omit factory reset at the end.
Be careful that you boot to twrp!
Do not boot into the system without adapters because most likely won’t work and then another (unwanted) factory reset will be neccessary to solve the problem.
If boot go wrong, just keep holding power button until reboot. Now try again with power + vol.up
Alternative way
Alternatively, you can copy adapters in working system, enable root in developer options and use some root file manager. You can use abd as well. But as described, it won’t work until factory reset!
<p>When it comes to setting up contacts and calendar sync on your No GApps device, there are a few different ways you can go about it. Here are the methods I have found. </p>
web.archive.org
This thread is dedicated to provide Lineage-OS 16.0 builds with microG included for the HUAWEI P9 with current security patches. It is a treble build, therefore it could also work on other devices, but I haven't tested. And yes, the camera...
forum.xda-developers.com
For those who are familiar with adb. Maybe this can avoid factory reset. I didn’t test myself because I can’t with adb.
https://gist.github.com/dreamwhite/934e7d2bb9e1f2a89c5307485a5c3fb3
Some related things:
Most likely not, but sometimes things can go wrong. Since you are switching between TWRP and stock EMUI recovery, it is possible that you
end up in boot loop. Backup your data!
Just flash back stock recovery, do factory reset and working system is back.
