Indeed, Android 12 v2a binaries are the last version that’s fully working for me. I’ve tried the recently released Android 13 based v4a binaries but I couldn’t enable WLAN on them, so I didn’t even bother to try if everything else works.
You only flash the binaries to oem_a, not to b.
From my experience, it is SOLELY the underlying Android OS (version 12 and up) that makes the echo and display tint/banding issues go away. Binaries don’t seem to have any connection with it. No matter what version of binaries one uses, if the base Android OS is version 11 recommended by Jolla, echo and tint/banding still appear. Flashing Android 12 or 13, even with the old Android 11 v9a binaries, makes those issues disappear. So the fix must be in the base OS, not in the binary blobs.
Yes, sure, we both keep on saying the same with slightly different words. Technically I assume we both expect some firmware partition being updated to make the difference: Consequently there might be other ways to achieve that, if one successfully identifies this firmware partition and copies over its updated content from another Xperia 10 III. This is the approach @thigg was once aiming at, which may even be achievable under a running SailfishOS installation, though I would still prefer to do that when having a SailfishOS recovery image booted.
Hence my slightly softer language, because I have learnt to “never say never” rsp. not to say “this is the only way”.
That’s right. And it seems to be one of the partitions that gets its contents when the base Android OS is flashed, and which then doesn’t get altered, neither by flashing SFOS nor Sony binaries.
Which on the 10 III rules out boot_a, boot_b, userdata, dtbo_a, dtbo_b and oem_a.
But the whole rest remains…
Just going to ask this… Cleary this is a very complicated process. Has anyone made a video of the process for people to follow.
Reading thru the directions leave a lot of unanswered questions with very little explanation.
A video of someone doing this process and explaining what and why they are doing it would amazing and very helpful.
Hi Thigg… Can you tell my why you did the backup as I am a PC user as well.
You wrote that you flashed the android 13, Can you share with me what they means and why you did that. Just trying to get some clarity on this very frightening process.
I mean to be clear I know why we make back ups… I guess what I am asking is more about the process.
Based on my reading we have to do this flash thing…
Let me ask what happens if you don’t flash?
Can Sailfish be install with out emma ?
Or Can I make a back up of the phone as is and if something goes wrong can I return the phone to its original android state??? Thanks for any insight.
Flashing is the process of transferring what you downloaded (the “Sailfishos image”, and the “Sony binaries”) to the memory of your device.
Think of it as installing the OS.
After flashing you have installed SailfishOS and can use it on your device.
And yes, if you mess up you can use the Emma tool to restore Android on the device. (Which is also flashing, but a different “image”).
Thank you ok… The part that was throwing me for the loop was the android part. Can I back up the phone in the phone in its current state with Emma. The reason I have so many questions is that I see all these post with command line information and people saying they first backed up sailfish then android the order is really not clear… But this is making sense they way you explained it.
Thank you again.
You don’t need to backup anything if you have no content on the phone you care about, like pictures or other documents.
Those will be gone after flashing.
If you do have something like that, copy it somehere, like your PC, or a cloud storage or similar.
Ahhh okay… the directions made it seem like this was something that had to be done. This is a fresh phone out of the box.
If something goes wrong is there a way with out a backup to restore the phone back or once the process happens its all but broken?
Have a look here:
I flashed my phone 4 times until it run SF. I used Emma in a VBox to flash Android again after a failed flash. That worked flawless and easy.
The reason why it failed was obviously, that the SW binaries were too large, to flash them at once so I limited the package size with the Option -S 256M and flashed the binaries separately. (maybe that’s due to my fastboot version, but I don’t really know),
The procedure itself is very simple and there shouldn’t be too much that can go wrong. I have flashed so many phones and never bricked one of them. Even when there were sometimes smaller problems a reflash was always possible.
Where to get latest SFOS for Xperia 10 mark III? sailfish-os-torrents/4.5.0.19 at main · black-sheep-dev/sailfish-os-torrents · GitHub torrent seeds is inactive
Really useful 
I wanted to recover to my local disk rather than the SD card so:
ssh root@10.42.66.66 dd if=/dev/sda79 bs=4M | pv -rab > sfos_backup_sda79.img
Worked for me and got 35MiB/s
Note that you need to set the root passwd in a plain shell before starting sshd as that’s not actually set to ‘recovery’
OK so I cannot get mobile data on a 10iii with Vodaphone in the UK 
My device was upgraded to 13 62.2.A.0.533 and when flashed it worked just fine with everything except mobile data.
I tried the SW 11_4.19_v9a and 12_4.19_v2a and both worked to the same degree (v3a doesn’t even give wifi - olf you have a PR for the docs with the right link now 
)
I used Emma to get to 62.0.A.3.109 (that would not OTA though) and again tried both SW variants - nope.
I used the Xperia Companion to get to 62.1.A.0.675 and both SW variants… nothing.
So if anyone has any ideas I’d like to avoid having to buy an Xperia 10ii
Oh, sorry, I will gladly revise my documentation to improve it. Unfortunately I see no PR yet, but maybe I am looking at the wrong place.
BTW, @wetab73 documented that using the SW_binaries_for_Xperia_Android_12_4.19_v3a_lena.zip (or later releases of Sony’s software binaries for AOSP for the Xperia 10 III) with an SailfishOS flashed on an Android 12 or 13 base results in no working WiFi and mobile data.
P.S.: As many have their Xperia 10 III’s running acceptably (at least WiFi), one may consider other reasons.
@olf : Fix link to lena v2 binaries (!3) · Merge requests · olf (Olf0) (Olf0) / SailfishX on Xperias · GitLab
Yes, I saw that post - the link seemed to go to the v3a in my case - hence the MR.
Sadly neither the v2a version nor the earlier v9a give me mobile data
Thank you very much: Merged.
I wonder why I missed that, both the PR and the incorrect link in the first place when I searched for it, which (without a version identifier) pointed to the SONY binaries for lena Android 12 “latest” (which still is v3a).
So would it be correct to reiterate for anybody who’s gonna start doing this from scratch, that it seems that the right combination is the following?
Android 13
SW_binaries_for_Xperia_Android_11_4.19_v9a_lena.img