SailfishOS on Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite Wi-Fi (gta4xlwifi)

Installation Instructions

Make sure to follow all steps carefully. Do NOT omit ANY steps!

  1. Make sure your device model is gta4xlwifi (SM-P610) - exact match is required. LTE version will NOT work.
  2. Install the Stock ROM for Android 10 from the firmware downloader of your choice. It might not boot, don’t worry about it
  3. Install LineageOS Recovery 17.1 from lineageos20210217 directory listing with heimdall
  4. Install LineageOS system 17.1 from https://archive.org/download/lineageos20210217/roms/gta4xlwifi/20210217/
  5. Check that LineageOS boots
  6. Boot into recovery and format userdata
  7. Flash Sailfish ZIP (Releases · sailfish-on-gta4xlwifi/docs · GitHub)

See GitHub for what works/what doesn’t for now.

Disclaimer

Your warranty is now void.
We are not responsible for bricked devices, dead SD cards,
thermonuclear war, or you getting fired because the alarm app failed. Please
do some research if you have any concerns about features included in this ROM
before flashing it! YOU are choosing to make these modifications, and if
you point the finger at us for messing up your device, we will laugh at you.
19 Likes

Great work Heng Ye. What are the prospects for audio soon?

YAGP: yet another great port. Thank you. I did the install on my gta4xlwifi (SM-P610).

The most difficult (for me, no windows user) and important part is installing the stock AD10 (No. 2. above). Thats why I write down, what I did. I could not find a linux way to flash the stock version.

  • Start a windows and download the samsung usb driver from samsung.
  • Install the driver.
  • Download the odin flash tool from odinflash and unzip it.
  • Download version 10 of stock for the SM-P610 for your country from sammobile (more than 4gb) and unzip.
  • Put the s6 lite into download mode, press vol-dn and vol-up and insert the original usb cable while connected to the windows. Select continue.
  • Start odin. It should connect.
  • select BL (filename starts BL), AD (filename starts AD) and CSC (filename starts HOME_CSC)
  • Press start.
  • After success the device is on stock AD10. Go on with step 3. on a nice linux system. :wink:

I hope that helps someone else.

BTW: bluetooth audio is working, connect a bt speaker as work around to have sound.

The audio driver exists on lineage-18 branch of the kernel so I need to backport it.

2 Likes

Oh wow, this is great news! And the best part? You can still go and buy this tablet!

@jolladiho Can you share some more experiences with the device? If the port is usable, I’m considering purchasing one. I read on the Github page that sound doesn’t yet work, but Bluetooth does, so I guess e.g. JBL attached to it would do the trick :smiley:

4 Likes

Promising Project!

I´m also looking for a Sailfish OS-Tablet.

@direc85 I would say: the S6lite wifi is an ideal device for the Sailfishos. Looks and feels good at my short testing. But it cannot deep sleep and waydroid has an issue with binder.
I documented issues on github.
These issues would have to be solved for my use case.

It still shows way too many partitions under Settings->Storage, which is just a blemish as long as no one gets the idea to format. :wink:

Hi, I have a question: is this tablet ready for daily driving? (I only need a webbrowser and E-Mail)
Because I’m looking for a privacy-friendly tablet but there aren’t many out there…

I tried to install Sailfish OS to my tablet two times now, but I can’t get it to even flash properly. I think I trigger some safety mechanism that prevents certain partition flashing or something like that…

Updated instructions would be appreciated.

Hrmm…lineage os flashes fine?

Probably, if you can bear with only using bluetooth speakers and having to charge every day

I ended up flashing it back to Android (which won’t receive OTA upgrades because the bootloader has been unlocked).

IIRC I couldn’t boot into the custom recovery no matter what I tried, it got always overwritten by the stock ROM… Any tips for that?

Is the stock ROM Android 11? I don’t know if this is related, but I have heard and experienced myself that there are sometimes problems with custom recoverys on Android 11-based devices

Are you on android 10 or 11

Nice work - I’ve been wanting a tablet type device for some time, but the lack of a FOSS OS option has held me back. Thanks for opening this possibility! Perhaps this is something Jolla should pick up on, similar to how they do with the Xperia phones. I would happily pay for an officially supported port of SailfishOS!

5 Likes

When will the audio issue get fixed ?

This isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I did the port based on the Android 10 lineageos, but that doesn’t have the audio drivers required. It would be necessary to either redo the port with android 11 or to backport the audio driver from android 11.

Someone who attempted to port UT to the same device had the same problem. It could be a Samsung Issue, but the problem differs for each device.

1 Like

Is this port still under development? is there a solution to the audio problem and will this port get Sailfish 4.5 update?

6 Likes

Good:
Do you have the right device? SM-P610 (chipset: Exynos 9611)

Bad:
Samsung sells a S6 lite wifi since March 2022, SM-613 (chipset: Qualcomm SM7125 Snapdragon).

It looks like the device from 2020! Be careful. Check the model number SM-P610 first.

1 Like