IP Goes Moto...Again? Moto G5S Plus

Yeah, supposedly the Oreo 8.1 update for the Moto G5S Plus is now hitting the US, but after reading about all the problems on the Moto forums that the Indian and Brazilian users had, I don't think I'll be updating anytime soon (or probably ever).

 

Well, I bit the bullet. With polar vortex resulting in an impomptu 4-day weekend where I could do without a phone for while if necessary, I decided it was time to see about returning my Moto G5S Plus to stock in hopes of grabbing a few OTA updates. As I mentioned in Hook's recent thread, Sprint negated pretty much my last reason for "needing" to root a phone by giving the whole family free 50GB/month wifi hotspots on each of our phones. Even so, I was going to proceed with this process with the idea of re-rooting afterwards because I highly suspected the Google Camera app wouldn't work well after unrooting and flashing back to stock because the camera 2 API wouldn't be activated in the build.prop anymore.

So, I downloaded the June 2018 7.1.1. firmware, ADB fastbooted it line by line over my rooted 7.1.1, and everything went without a hitch. Because I was running modified rooted stock already, I didn't have to erase the data partition (which would've required reinstalling/reconfiguring everything without the benefit of Titanium Backup (since no root). I was running unrooted stock for no more than a couple of minutes when the OTA update popped up for Oreo 8.1. That update also went without a hitch, as did the no less than four security updates that immediately followed.

Just as I was thinking I would then have to root again to have a working Google Camera (at least in order to have a working HDR+), I tried the Google Camera and it worked! I don't know if that additional line in my build.prop just stuck through all those updates or if the Oreo 8.1 build.prop includes it, or what, but it obviously (still) has the Camera 2 API activated. So, I no longer feel the need to root. This is actually a very good thing, too, because in my experience, Magisk just isn't SuperSU. I had problems with Magisk messing up 7.1.1, and I've read of problems with it on 8.1, specifically problems with messing up the boot.img, bootloader, and/or kernel, putting the phone into a bootloop that's difficult to resolve. Man, do I miss the simplicity of Chainfire's SuperSU. Oh, well. It looks like rooting is now officially a thing of the past for me, and I finally have a phone with the latest security updates, and with nothing preventing me from receiving future security updates should the come

 

Well, I figured out how to edit my build.prop without rooting. I just used ADB to fastboot boot (rather than flash) TWRP, and when TWRP loaded I mounted system partition which gave me read and write access. I then used ADB to pull a copy of build.prop to my PC, edited it with the hotspot hack and activated the Camera2 API, and then pushed it back via ADB and used the ADB shell to chmod the permissions correctly. I then rebooted the phone with the modified build.prop.

The hotspot hack still doesn't work, but I think that's because I'm already subscribed to their legit hotspot feature. I'm okay with that. The Google Camera still works the same, so I don't think this really changed anything, but I did install the Camera2 API Probe app from the Play Store and it says that the Camera2 API is activated and working on the phone.