Motorola Moto E 2015 (motorola-surnia)

Features
Flashing	Works
USB Networking	Works
Internal storage	Works
SD card	Works
Battery	Partial
Screen	Partial
Touchscreen	Works
Multimedia
3D Acceleration	Works
Audio	Works
Camera	Broken
Connectivity
WiFi	Works
Bluetooth	Works
GPS
Modem
Calls	Partial
SMS	Partial
Mobile data	Partial
Miscellaneous
FDE
USB OTG	Partial
Sensors
Accelerometer	Broken
Ambient Light	Broken
Proximity	Broken
Haptics	Works
Power Sensor	Broken

Motorola Moto E (2nd Gen)
	; Motorola Moto E (2nd Gen)
Manufacturer	Motorola
Name	Moto E (2nd Gen)
Codename	motorola-surnia
Released	2015
Type	handset
Hardware
Chipset	Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 (MSM8916)
CPU	Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53
GPU	Adreno 306
Display	540x960 IPS LCD
Storage	8 GB Flash
Memory	1 GB
Architecture	aarch64
Software
Original software	Android
Original version	5.0.2
postmarketOS
Category	testing
Pre-built images	no
Mainline	yes
postmarketOS kernel	3.10.49
Optional Generic Port	Generic MSM8916 (qcom-msm8916)

This page is about the dedicated port of this device. There is also an optional generic port available for this device - see Generic MSM8916 (qcom-msm8916).

Contributors

Users owning this device

BogdanTheGeek (Notes: Running android for now)
Chipmunk (Notes: XT1526; unlocked bootloader, runs LineageOS 17.1)
Frbrr02 (Notes: Model: XT1524)
Icenowy
Illen (Notes: Dying battery, runs mainline.)
Pangelo (Notes: cracked screen but works fine)
Proycon
Rsquared (Notes: msm8916 - working inx panel!)
Techwizz (Notes: Mainline testing)
Thenightterrorx (Notes: boots fine off sd card)
UnDevDeCatOS (Notes: is currently being lend to someone else)
Unrznbl (Notes: 2023-12-01 mainline, gestures fixed in shelli-ui last year)
Wiktorek140
Xonney1 (Notes: Cracked screen, functional)
Yeswap (Notes: currently running DivestOS)

Unlocking the bootloader

Please visit the Motorola website for instructions. You will need a email address for only receiving email (disposable email is enough) and working fastboot (driver installation needed for Windows and macOS, works out of the box on Linux).

How to enter flash mode

Hold down Power + Volume Down while booting to enter Flash Mode.

Installation

First, flash lk2nd-msm8916.img to the boot partition.

Boot that, press volume down during that booting to get to the lk2nd boot menu.

See Usage for lk2nd.

After that, use the normal Installation_guide

Installation to directly to device and sdcard have both been tested to work.

Note: A recent (edge, alpine-release 3.19_alpha20230901, kernel 6.5.2) attempt to install using a recovery zip image on an SD card fails (#1877, not specific to surnia, but rather to MSM8916). The end of pmos.log file shows:

+ chroot /tmp/postmarketos/chroot /bin/busybox --install /bin
chroot: can't execute '/bin/busybox': No such file or directory

Display

The display panel works fine, but backlight control doesn't due to missing driver for BD65B60 IC.

Battery

Battery fuel gauge is supported, but fan54046 charging chip isn't. It does still charge but it doesn't indicate that it is charging.

USB OTG

Device cannot supply its own power, so you must use a powered otg adapter for usb otg to work.

Firmware {Wifi/Modem}

The firmware is now properly packaged since pmaports!1947

Modem

Modem may not work on some variants due to lack of support for compressed firmware images in rmtfs. This will also break sound on affected devices. To get sound working, you can choose the no-modem remote processor provider in pmbootstrap init. Alternatively you can apply this workaround to get modem working.

Hardware / sensors detail

For reference, sensor information from sensorsandbox (f-droid) on xt1526; note that in addition to hardware-based sensors, it presumably includes software-based / derived sensors:

sensor details (sensorssandbox)

name	vendor	version	type
3-axis accelerometer	Kionix	1	1
Ambient light sensor	TAOS	1	5
Proximity sensor	TAOS	1	8
Display rotation sensor	Motorola	1	65536
Flat up
Flat down
Stowed
Camera activation sensor

Sensors appear to be handled by Motorola Sensorhub