Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro (samsung-j7y17lte)

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

Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro
	; J7 Pro running on XFCE4 desktop environment.
Manufacturer	Samsung
Name	Galaxy J7 Pro
Codename	samsung-j7y17lte
Released	2017
Type	handset
Hardware
Chipset	Samsung Exynos 7870 Octa
CPU	Octa-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A53
GPU	Mali-T830 MP1
Display	1080 x 1920 Super AMOLED
Storage	16/32/64 GB
Memory	3 GB
Architecture	aarch64
Software
Original software	Android
Original version	7.0
Extended version	9.0
postmarketOS
Category	testing
Pre-built images	no
Mainline	no

WARNING: This port uses proprietary vendor firmware blobs (H-VENDOR.zip). If you wish to not use these, you are free to do so, at the cost of reducing the device functionality.

Finally merged the device packages. You may update your pmbootstrap and directly select it with pmbootstrap init.

Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro, also known as Samsung Galaxy J7 2017, is an Exynos 7870 device released by Samsung in 2017.

Contributors

Buildingat90degreesC (Porting postmarketOS)

Users owning this device

Buildingat90degreesC
System64
Wann (Notes: without screen)

How to enter flash mode

When the phone is powered off, hold the Power, Home and Volume Down buttons to boot into download mode. A turquoise colored screen will appear, asking for confirmation. Press Volume Up to confirm. Your device is ready for flashing via a front-end such as Odin or Heimdall.

To boot into recovery, hold the Power, Home and Volume Down buttons.

Download mode performs some checks with the provided images before flashing it for partitions except BOOT. The images generated by pmbootstrap do not pass those checks, and thus it isn't possible to flash the rootfs using download mode.

Installation

Prerequisites

Make sure your phone:

Has its bootloader unlocked.
Has a custom recovery installed (such as TWRP)
Created the Vendor partition and flashed H-Vendor zip before

Preparation

Download the repartition script here for creating Vendor partition: https://xdaforums.com/t/tool-7870-universal-repartition-script-for-vendor-support.4143541/

Flash the zip file. It will automatically reboot to recovery.

Now in recovery again, Go to Advanced Wipe, wipe system, cache and vendor and format data. (If you can't format any of those partitions tap on the Cache partition only, for example, and go to Repair or Change File System > Change File System > EXT2 and then swipe to change and then go back to Advanced Wipe, Repair or Change File System > Change File System > and then this time EXT4 and swipe to change again. Repeat this step to any partition you haven't been able to format.)

Download the H-Vendor here: https://xdaforums.com/t/treble-10-0-arm64-h-vendor-v1-0.4116271/

This one is important. Flash the zip BEFORE flashing the postmarketOS zip file on TWRP

Choose the following in the pmbootstrap init wizard:

Vendor: samsung
Device codename: j7y17lte
User interface: xfce4

xfce4 is tested and works out of the box. Other UIs are not guaranteed to work.

gnome-mobile comes with wayland as its dependency. Since wayland doesn't run in downstream kernels, xorg needs to be installed.

Extra packages: xorg-server

To proceed with the installation run:

$ pmbootstrap install --android-recovery-zip

After the installation process is completed, get your phone booted into recovery, and enable sideloading via adb. Then run:

$ pmbootstrap flasher --method=adb sideload

Or you can export the zip file and install it directly via TWRP.

$ pmbootstrap export

Then nagivate to /tmp/postmarketOS/ You'll see the recovery zip there. But you need to right click it and open the real location of it because it is just a link.

Transfer the zip file to your phone.

This will begin installing pmbootstrap prepare a recovery zip file. By default, the rootfs is flashed in the SYSTEM partition of the device.

In order to change the default partition (let's say, the USERDATA partition), append --recovery-install-partition=USERDATA to the above command.

The recovery zip gets flashed to your device. Reboot to system when it's done.

WARNING: Do not reboot to system until the TWRP is done processing script files and there's no output coming like "Setting tw_app_prompt to 0". If you do then the the recovery will not write the changes made.

Notes on WiFi

For now the device doesn't connect to the WiFi via Network Manager. You'll need to use wpa_supplicant.

Refer to https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/WiFi#Using_wpa_supplicant

Update: As of November 6 2023, I found out that adding these lines:

[connection]

wifi.cloned-mac-address=preserve

to /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-sxmo.conf (if you're using SXMO) or any conf file in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/ will fix the issue.

Installation on an SDCard

As of my discovery in 2023-10-27, the device is confirmed to boot on an sdcard.

Apply the repartition script and flash vendor. But instead of adb or TWRP flashing, follow the instructions bellow.

Put your SDCard on a usb adapter and plug into your computer.

Enter these commands: pmbootstrap install --sdcard /dev/sdX (X is the number your sdcard is assigned as an usb flash drive.)

If your PC or laptop has an sdcard slot it might be /dev/mmcblkX instead of sdX.

Follow the prompts on screen.

Then do pmbootstrap export. nagivate to /tmp/postmarketOS-export. Find the boot.img . (Not the recovery zip.)

Flash the boot image on either Heimdall or TWRP/Orangefox.

That's it. You may now use postmarketOS as normal.

Audio

Borrowing the Samsung Galaxy A6 2018's ALSA UCM configs from the device package and changing some csets and values according to android alsamixer output made the audio work. Though the speaker doesn't work, the earpiece does output audio.

Thanks for sleirgoevy for maintaining Samsung Galaxy A6 2018 and finding this solution

Calls and SMS

You'll need to install calls and chatty, then enable Modem Manager following the instructions on Xfce4 page on this wiki. Other interfaces are not functioning enough on this phone right now, so they can't be guaranteed to have Calls and SMS working.

Graphical Interfaces

Interface	Info	Working
none	Should work, SSH works. But gets stuck at the loading splash.	P
GNOME 3	Has touchscreen issues.	N
i3wm	Unknown - Not tested
MATE	works fine, suitable for dogfooding	Y
[1]Phosh	Same problem as Sway	N
Plasma-Desktop	Works alright and smooth, but Firefox has a black square and it hangs the system when opened.	P
[2]Plasma Mobile	Same problem as Sway	N
Shelli	Unknown / Not tested.
Sxmo	Works alright, except the touchscreen gestures stops working after the screen goes blank.	P
[3]Sway	Wayland doesn't work on this device.	N
[4]Weston	Unknown / Not tested
[5]Xfce4	Works alright, need to connect via wpa_supplicant or the steps in the Wi-Fi section of this device page.	Y