Thursday, September 23, 2010

Perils And Joys Of Flashing Droid X, To Leaked Android 2,2, Back To ? Android 2.1 And Onwards to Official Motorolla Android 2.2

Droid X and Firmware Hacking http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Engadget's Nilay Patel took me on a nice trip of Droid X hacking, giving me a heads up on the dark side of Android hacking.
He managed to flash his Droid X with Android 2.1, without backing up the firmware image, to a leaked Android 2.2 build. The process went fine and he was in business with Android 2.2 leaked.
Then came the official Motorola Android 2.2 for Droid X and Mr. Patel was wondering what to do as Motorola does not allow to upgrad/switch from Leaked Android 2.2 to Official Android 2.2 for Droid X. Only way was to down grade to Android 2.1! Alas since he did not have a backup, he checked at Google, Motorola and even with Verizon, alas, no Android 2.1 image for Droid X.
So he did the next best thing, roamed the net searching for a Android 2,1 image for Droid X, and he did find something called "the_gift.sbf." With some a bit of alcohol, (I assume) bravado, he went ahead and flashed the Droid X with the questionable image.
Looks like Gods were not on his side, His battery decided to go south during the flashing process. When he was about to give up, he found a another forum which guided him how to fool Droid to think It had a charged battery by the battery was charged by splicing the power leads from a USB cable to the power terminals in other words, Hotwire the Droid X.
Once that was done he was able to flash the Droid with unknown Droid X 2.1 image. From there he continued to Flash the phone with Official Droid X 2.2 firmware from Motorola and he then went to write the good article and shake his fists at Google's openness.
So go ahead and read his article but if you are doing any of these hacking! make sure, you have a backup of running rom, double check the battery level as Driod X doesn't charge when it's in bootloader mode.
After that if you have time go scold Google as well.
Entertain yourselves at Engadget above image is also from engadget.

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