Biggest noob guide of flashing your phone

Monday, June 22, 2009
Since there has been an over abundance of Noobs on XDA I would post a VERY Noob friendly guide on how to flash your phone.
(Since i live in the states, this guide will be for usa users only. this guide will mostly follow this guide, which has support for other locale's)
Users Note: if your phone is already flashed skip down to the advanced part below. (my phone wont have the same look as yours don't worry about that)
Also, If you don't know what "mount" or "unzip" or "format" anything like this don't read on and just give up.

So, starting out what you will need and what will help you out.
Tools:
adb drivers - x86/x64
Updated Drivers - for updated spl
Android SDK - Useful android tools. (i would say this is a must, but its not)
adb noob guide

Needed Files:
DREAMIMG.nbh - rc29 downgrade file
Recovery.img - wipes system installs updates etc.
Hard SPL - pre haykuro spl (works with jf rc30+/adp1.5/ion builds)
Jf rc33 - basic rom
(download all of these)

Let's Get Started
First things first, plug your phone up to the computer using the usb cord, (this is going to be SUPER NOOB FRIENDLY....) mount/connect your sdcard and back up anything you have on it, after you do that , its down to the nitty gritty.

Ready to break your phone? im sure you're not so follow the instructions, you should be good , and i hope you have a full battery. its time to downgrade. since your phone should still be mounted, go ahead and right click on the drive (your mounted sdcard not one of your hardrives) and select format, you will want to format this drive in fat32 once this is done, go ahead and unzip the DREAIMG-RC29.zip and place the dreaimg.nbh on the sdcard. once that is finished go ahead and turn your phone off.

Now hold down your camera button and press the power button, it should promt you through the process. don't turn the phone off unhook the phone, take the battery out ... anything doing so, will of course brick your phone. now when you're finished clap your hands, you're now on rc29, just a few more steps closer to a rooted phone, and on to the bigger and better Roms.

Now go ahead and remount your sdcard, and remove the Dreaimg.nbh and add in the recovery.img, and the hardspl (should be update.zip) to your sdcard. Go to Market download Telnet, after doing that shut the phone off, and then turn it back on DONT DO ANYTHING except flip out your keyboard press enter twice, then type telnetd and then press enter again. (yes this will bring up contacts all is fine)
go ahead and open telnet, and connect to localhost, if done right you should see "#" if not , or can't connect, just reboot and start the process over again, if you do give yourself a pat on the back.

Now type these exactly as it is:
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system (press enter)
cd sdcard (press enter)
flash_image recovery recovery.img (press enter)
cat recovery.img > /system/recovery.img (press enter)

After this is done, shut your phone off, hold the home key and press power, this will put you in recovery mode, from there you will want to press alt+L then alt+S (yes on the phone not your computer)
this will add the new spl, again do not unhook your phone,power it off or anything that will disrupt the phone from its update.

once this is done, your has root hurray! now you will want to download a rom something like:
JFrc33
Google Ion
more roms are listed here (avoid most of haykuro builds , the neeed special spl/radio images, which ill get into shortly)

Now i assume you downloaded the rc33, Go ahead and remount your sdcard, remove all the files you have on it, and put the rc33 file on there, rename it as update.zip and shut your phone off, press the home key + power, then alt+L then Alt+w, then alt+s let this update again the usual don't disrupt the update, once finished press home and back to reboot. you should have some new goodies now you've got a fully flashed phone!

now to get into the more advanced stuff. you'll want to shut your phone off ... yes again, and press the camera + power , you will be in fastboot mode, on the top it should say dreaimg or something related, PVT or DVT or something similar, we want to have pvt, if you dont, im sorry dont flash radio's or spl's there have been many issues regarding haykuro's spl's with DVT based phones, if you have PVT awesome. (keep reading if you want to update your spl and radio for the haykuro roms / hero )

Advanced: - new spl and new radio's (be sure to have a PVT based phone read above) --beware these options have been known to brick phones, i strictly advise you to take great risk in reading posts from xda on flashing to the new spl, before flashing anything new, and i say again, READ ONLINE ABOUT FLASHING TO HAYKURO's NEW SPL. --don't blame me for your incompetence i have warned you.


Downloads:
2.22.19.26I Radio
1.33.2005 spl - Haykuro's spl

go ahead and add these files to the sdcard, first flash the radio, and i will say again RADIO FIRST!... rename the 2.22.19.26I.zip to update.zip, turn the phone off, once off hit home + power , apply the update with Alt+s, once thats done, go ahead and reboot home+back, then go back to the sdcard , remove the update.zip, and rename the spl-signed.zip to update.zip then again shut the phone off, boot into recovery again and do the same thing before , applying the update, if done right your phone will boot up... if it has some issues, cant get back into recovery, cant get your phone on .. cant do anything .... you're bricked...

No issues? good! lets move a bit more forward with getting your phone to its best, lets go ahead and update that recovery.img, cyanogen has modified JF's recovery.img to suit some better needs and less keyboard usage. follow his instructions to update your recovery.img.

once thats done, you've got everything updated, the spl/radio/recovery we're ready to move on to the hero images. or other builds listed here please look around about their info. but moving into the guide ill be using jac's hero-rom.


JACHERO-ROM
Download/thread go ahead and download his latest ROM, save the file to your sdcard renamed as update.zip, turn your phone off, home + power, wipe your data, apply the update, reboot. your phone will take a while to boot, what your phone is doing is adding optimizations, checking the file system, if your phone takes more than 10 mins something is probably wrong, try redownloading the file, and retry the process again. Ive had issues before renaming the file while on the sdcard so try renaming on the computer then move to the sdcard, if that doesn't help post in the DREAM section of xda' not dream and development just DREAM which is located here.

Now if you haven't had any issues, pat yourself on the back. but i will mention like all things most Roms are not completely finished, HERO builds are all moded from Haykuro's ORIGINAL unwatermarked build, which was not finished, it was the first "stable" build that somewhat worked to a usable manner. so most builds/rom's will have issues. "its a feature not a bug" soo.... just wait around soon , there will be a port of a 100% hero... just ... not at this time..
if you have questions or comments please read around on the net before doing anything... and if you don't trust your intellect on flashing your phone or doing anything to your phone. don't.

9 comments:

Aakash Kapoor said...

Hey bro - great guide.

Just had a quick question(s).

I got a G1 that was pre-rooted with JF1.50 (not 1.51).

Now, im wondering what else should I do. I've been trying to read on XDA, but their stuff is too confusing.

I was reading stuff about Rosie, Haykuro, Sapphire, Ion, Apps2SD.

I want to get the most oout of my phone. Any suggestions on what I should do and how I go about doing it?

Thanks

unknown said...

I would love for Hero "Rosie" to be 100% error proof before i tell people to flash to it but since, its still being developed id say wait, for the most, id download Ion. rename the file to update.zip, and as the guide states turn off, hold the home key and hit the power button, this will put you in recovery, and then if it's the old recovery, you'll have to hit alt+l, then alt+w, then alt+s. this will as the guide stated, wipe the phone, then install the new update.

i would also grab the new recovery, in the guide. as for Apps2sd depending on how many apps you need, by default Ion gives you around 60+mbs' which should be enough for anyone with apps. though there are those who like to download as many apps as they can. its all up to you i guess, before you do the whole apps2sd you'll have to format your sdcard, and make a partition for it, ill be making a guide on that later this week , more likely tomorrow.
so first if you think you're ready for a new rom, try ion, you wont have to do any special modifications since your phone's already rooted.

Aakash Kapoor said...

Awesome. Thanks very much.
I will be loading Ion momentarily, but also read about:
Virtudude? Is this any good?

I heard it was taken from Haykuro/Hero's ROM and its such more stable and faster? Any opinions on that?

Also - what exactly is a "radio" and "recovery" I was reading some sig's on XDA and people mentioned all these different "softwares."

Sorry for being such a n00b at this, lol - BUT I do appreciate your help.

Thanks

unknown said...

Actually Virtududes's rom is based on the canadian firmware "rogers" i my self never tried it, i particularly like ion and hero and if i had to choose between the two right now id choose ion since it feels more complete and how small the rom is.

now about the Radio, to my knowledge it's firmware for the phone to handle the hardware? now im sure im not 100% right but im having some time find a 100% answer.

as for the recovery, its a "software" that helps you install update.zip's / format the internal memory of the phone, go to console [terminal], and also back up internal memory (nandroid - though ive never used this) for some people thinking they have bricked their phone cause has a boot loop or shuts off and wont turn on, sometimes you can pull the battery plug it back in and holding the home key as it boots, you can get into the recovery.img to wipe the memory and reinstall an update. basically you wouldnt be able to flash your phone to other rom's if you didnt have recovery installed into the phone.

Eliot said...

Is RSS for your blog disabled?

unknown said...

Apparently they were thanks for pointing that out, they should work now... hopefully. lol. if not just drop me a line.

Anonymous said...

Awesome guide.

Would you have any ideas about those who own ADP's? I havn't ever changed the SPL so it still uses the Engineering SPL. HBoot 0.95.3000. Would I need to flash to HardSPL and then reflash to HaykuroSPL?

unknown said...

since i dont have an ADP phone, i dont think it would be wise to take that risk, though since htc does have the spl's and radio's for their adp phones, you can try as long as you have the new radio, though. i would ask on xda just to make sure before trying it.

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