RUBIK Pi 3 Android 13/15 Boot Failures Reproduced on Two Boards

Other OS Support
1

Dear RUBIK Pi Support Team,

I am experiencing boot failures when installing the official Android images on RUBIK Pi 3 boards originally running Ubuntu. I tested both Android 13 and Android 15, and each version’s failure was reproduced on two separate boards .

The board serial numbers reported in the boot logs are:

  • 0x719c900e
  • 0x08dd6af0

1. Android 13 — UEFI failure before the kernel starts

Image: FlatBuild_RUBIKPi-3_xx.xx_LA3.0.R.userdebug.FC.r000001

Both boards stop at the UEFI stage with the following messages:

Failed to detect external I2C PMIC with return value : 22.
PMIC is left at default state
ERROR: C90000002:V03000007 I0 5776232E-082D-4B75-9A0E-FE1D13F7A5D9
ASSERT DebugLib.c +78: Format != ((void *) 0)

The UEFI version is:

6.0.241217.BOOT.MXF.1.0-00988-LAHAINA-1

No Linux kernel startup is shown after this error.

2. Android 15 — Reboot following metadata-related errors

Image: FlatBuild_RUBIKPi-3_xx.xx_LA5.0.R.userdebug.Pre-ES.r000001

The kernel starts, but both boards encounter the following errors and reboot approximately 25 seconds after kernel startup:

EXT4-fs (sda11): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
vold: Failed to create /metadata/vold: Read-only file system
vold: read_key failed in mountFstab
apexd: Failed to stat /metadata/apex/sessions: No such file or directory
reboot: Restarting system with command 'apexd-failed'

The bootloader then starts again, resulting in a boot loop.

3. Flashing procedure and observations

I used QDL 2.8 on Windows with the supplied Firehose loader, rawprogram XML files, and patch XML files. QDL initially blocked programming of the secdata partition, so I added --allow-fusing to proceed. The Android 15 flashing log reported completion of programming and patching, but the system subsequently failed to boot as described above.

I have not performed the separate UFS provisioning procedure or manually modified the supplied images or XML files.

For Android 15, I also observed that:

  • The rawprogram XML specifies an empty filename for the metadata partition.
  • The image’s fstab includes formattable for /metadata .
  • Despite this, the boot logs show the filesystem and directory creation failures listed above.

Could you please confirm:

  1. Whether these exact images support the hardware revision of the boards I am using, and how I should identify the revision for you.
  2. Whether switching from the factory Ubuntu installation to Android requires UFS provisioning or any additional initialization steps.
  3. The required corrective procedure for each failure, including any precautions regarding the board serial number and Ethernet MAC address.
  4. Whether --allow-fusing is required and supported for these image packages when using QDL 2.8.
  5. Whether you can provide an Android image verified to boot on these boards, together with the corresponding Windows flashing instructions.

I would prefer to use Android 15 if a validated image is available. I can provide the complete boot logs and flashing logs for further investigation.

Thank you for your assistance.