Volla Phone X23 & Plinius

Introduction

Oniro runs natively on two MediaTek-based Volla phones, the Volla Phone X23 and the Volla Phone Plinius. The phone boots straight into Oniro.

Both phones use the same build target, hybris_generic, and share one set of system images. Oniro detects the phone at boot, so there is no build-time switch between devices. Only the kernel and boot images are built per device.

Oniro reuses the phone's existing Android hardware drivers (Halium) through libhybris. That is how the phones get graphics, audio and modem support.

Specification

	Volla Phone X23	Volla Phone Plinius
Codename	vidofnir	ansuz
SoC	MediaTek MT6789 (Helio G99)	MediaTek MT6878 (Dimensity 7300)
Halium / kernel	Halium 12, 5.10 vendor kernel	Halium 14, android14-6.1 GKI kernel
Device name used by the scripts	x23	ansuz

Feature Status

Feature	X23	Plinius
Boot, USB hdc, display, touch, Wi-Fi, audio	Yes	Yes
Hardware keys, sensors, vibrator, camera	Not yet	Yes
Cellular (mobile data, SMS, voice calls)	Not yet	Yes
Bluetooth, NFC, fingerprint	Not yet	Not yet

Most active development happens on the Plinius.

Prerequisites

• A Volla Phone X23 or Plinius with an unlocked bootloader.
• A Linux host with Docker and about 180 GB of free disk space.
• git-lfs and repo installed on the host.
• fastboot, from Android SDK Platform-Tools, on the host that the phone is plugged into.

Warning

Flashing Oniro replaces the operating system that is currently on the phone, such as Ubuntu Touch. Back up any data you want to keep before you start.

Building

The Volla phones need the OpenHarmony-6.1-LTS branch. Some steps run inside the build container (the docker exec commands) and the rest run on the host, from the root of the source tree.

Step 1: Get the Source Code

repo init -u https://github.com/eclipse-oniro4openharmony/manifest.git \
     -b OpenHarmony-6.1-LTS -m oniro.xml --no-repo-verify
repo sync -c
repo forall -c 'git lfs pull'

Step 2: Set Up the Build Container

Oniro provides its own build image. It is the upstream OpenHarmony image plus a few tools that a clean build needs. Build it once, then start a container with the source tree mounted:

sudo docker build -t oniro-oh-standard:3.2 device/board/oniro/docker

sudo docker run -d -it --name oniro-build \
     -w /home/openharmony \
     -v "$PWD":/home/openharmony/workdir \
     -v "$HOME/.ccache":/root/.ccache \
     -v "$(dirname "$PWD")/openharmony_prebuilts":/home/openharmony/openharmony_prebuilts \
     oniro-oh-standard:3.2 /bin/bash

The ccache and prebuilts mounts are optional. They make rebuilds faster and let a new container reuse the toolchains you have already downloaded.

Step 3: Download Prebuilts and Apply Patches

Download the prebuilt toolchains inside the container. Then apply the Oniro patch series on the host:

sudo docker exec -u root -w /home/openharmony/workdir oniro-build \
     ./build/prebuilts_download.sh

bash device/board/oniro/system_patch/do_patch.sh

Note

do_patch.sh applies the patches with git am, so set your git identity first (git config --global user.name and user.email). The patches also register the hybris_generic product. If they are not applied, the build fails with an unknown product error.

Step 4: Build the Oniro System Images

sudo docker exec -u root -w /home/openharmony/workdir oniro-build \
     ./build.sh --product-name hybris_generic --ccache

# The container builds as root. Take back the output folder for the host-side steps.
sudo chown "$USER" out out/hybris_generic

Optional: include the Oniro apps (app store, keyboard)

By default, the image contains the standard OpenHarmony apps. To add the Oniro distribution apps, build them once on the host before Step 4:

bash vendor/oniro/oniro-haps/build-oniro-haps.sh

This step needs network access and the OpenHarmony SDK and command-line tools. See Oniro IDE & App Builder setup to install them with oniro-app sdk install 6.1 and oniro-app cmdtools install.

Then add --gn-args "oniro_install_custom_haps=true" to the build.sh command in Step 4.

Step 5: Build the Device Images

These commands run on the host. They build the kernel and pack the super and boot images for your phone. pull-halium-blobs.sh downloads about 1 GB of Halium files from Volla and UBports. You only need to run it once per source tree, because it keeps the downloads.

Volla Phone X23Volla Phone Plinius

D=device/board/oniro/hybris_generic

bash $D/kernel/x23/build_kernel.sh
bash $D/utils/host/pull-halium-blobs.sh -d x23
bash $D/kernel/x23/build_super_img.sh
bash $D/kernel/x23/build_boot_img_chainload.sh

Output images:

• out/hybris_generic/super.img
• out/hybris_generic/boot-chainload.img
• kernel/linux/volla-vidofnir/out/vendor_boot.img

D=device/board/oniro/hybris_generic

bash $D/kernel/ansuz/build_kernel.sh
bash $D/utils/host/pull-halium-blobs.sh -d ansuz
bash $D/kernel/ansuz/build_super_img.sh
bash $D/kernel/ansuz/build_init_boot_chainload.sh

Output images:

• out/hybris_generic/super.img
• out/hybris_generic/init_boot-chainload.img
• out/hybris_generic/vendor_boot-ohos.img
• kernel/linux/volla-ansuz/out/boot.img

Note

build_kernel.sh builds the latest commit of the android14-6.1-halium kernel branch, so it may print WARN: … pinned <sha>. This is expected. After the build, a check compares the kernel with the stock MediaTek modules and stops if they are no longer compatible.

Flashing

1. Put the phone into fastboot mode. Power it off, then hold Volume Down + Power and select fastboot. If the phone is already running Oniro, you can use this command instead:

   hdc shell "param set ohos.startup.powerctrl reboot,bootloader"
   

2. Connect the phone over USB and flash all the images in one pass:

   Volla Phone X23Volla Phone Plinius

   bash device/board/oniro/hybris_generic/utils/host/flash-native.sh -d x23
   

   bash device/board/oniro/hybris_generic/utils/host/flash-native.sh -d ansuz
   

The script writes every partition to slot _a and reboots the phone. Run it with --help to see more options.

Note

Always flash the kernel together with the vendor_boot image from the same build, which flash-native.sh does for you. If they don't match, the vendor kernel modules fail to load.

Connecting with HDC

About 60–70 seconds after the reboot, the Oniro lock screen appears and the phone shows up over USB:

hdc list targets
hdc shell "uname -a"

Note

hdc is included in the OpenHarmony SDK toolchain. Ensure it is in your PATH.

How It Works

1. The phone's bootloader loads a small chainload image (boot_a on the X23, init_boot_a on the Plinius).
2. Its ramdisk loads the vendor kernel modules, mounts the Oniro and Halium partitions, and then starts Oniro's init as PID 1.
3. Oniro starts androidd, which runs the Android (Halium) hardware services in an isolated namespace.
4. Oniro's graphics and hardware services reach those Android HALs through libhybris, over a binder connection that both sides share.

A single super partition holds both the Oniro partitions (system, vendor, sys_prod, chip_prod) and the Halium ones.

Reference

For more details, see the hybris_generic target in the Oniro Board Support Packages repository.