Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro (samsung-j7y17lte)

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


Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro
J7 Pro running on XFCE4 desktop environment.
J7 Pro running on XFCE4 desktop environment.
Manufacturer Samsung
Name Galaxy J7 Pro
Codename samsung-j7y17lte
Released 2017
Category testing
Pre-built images no
Original software Android
Original version 7.0
Extended version 9.0
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
Type handset
Features
USB Networking
Works
Flashing
Partial
Touchscreen
Works
Display
Works
WiFi
Works
FDE
Mainline
Broken
Battery
Works
3D Acceleration
Broken
Audio
Partial
Bluetooth
Broken
Camera
Broken
GPS
Broken
Mobile data
Works
Internal storage
SMS
Works
Calls
Works
USB OTG
Works
NFC
Broken
Sensors
Accelerometer
Ambient Light
Broken
Proximity
Broken
Hall Effect
Misc
Built-in DVB
Camera Flash
Broken
Memory Card
Haptics


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


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.


Notice 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.

Icon 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

See also

pmaports!4502 Initial merge request

Device package

Kernel package