Android Devs

Like many of the people who rushed to order a Nexus One in January, I recently had to call HTC support and request a return/replacement. My original unit is suffering from a malfunctioning power button (not the button you want to go haywire, to be sure). HTC has graciously obliged my request, and did not, in the course of the phone support call, ask if my bootloader was unlocked. I believe they are now on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, whereby they will agree to service hardware malfunctions if you do not have any obviously software-related problems with the phone (e.g. a “bricked” or “non-bootable” phone) or where your hardware is not working because of the software you’re running (e.g. Camera Flash wasn’t working for quite a while in MoDaCo’s Desire ROM port for the Nexus….Bluetooth still isn’t).

That’s totally fair, and totally kind of them. They put a $530 hold on my credit card (to be removed when they receive my broken unit), and sent me a replacement via Next Day FedEx (I called on Sunday, FedEx delivered on Tuesday — phenomenal).

But, if you’re like me, you don’t want to tempt fate. You want to return the most vanilla phone possible to remove any doubt about whether the problem you experienced was purely hardware related.

Now. The speed with which they accepted my “the power button has stopped working, and here’s how” story suggests to me that this is one of their “known issues”, and that they might therefore be more ready to accept it, so I must say this loud and clear:

Your Mileage May Vary

That said, here is the complete guide for how to return your Nexus One to completely stock settings, including the original, stock/shipping bootloader, system image (ERD79), and recovery console. (Courtesy of seraph at xda-devs). The only edit I’ve made is to include a link to the ZIP file you’ll need hosted on android-devs.com. Also, take note that you will need to use WinRAR, 7Zip, or PeaZip to extract this zip file. Windows Extractor WILL NOT WORK!!

You will also need to have installed and updated the Android SDK, which includes a USB driver for Windows for the Nexus One. Once installed, make your life easier by adding folder path for the ADB utility to your System Environment Variables “path” variable.

This is a tutorial to restore the Nexus One ROM to Original Shipping Image [updated Jan 12, 2010 @ 23:57 CST]

I am assuming you know how to use ADB and Fastboot as well as some basic OS knowledge be it DOS, OSX, or Linux.

This will do the followings to your Nexus One:
1. Reset your system files to the original system files.
2. Reset your kernel/boot image to the original shipping boot image.
3. Reset your recovery to original recovery (if you wish).

This will not relock your Nexus One. Once you unlock your phone, you are stuck for now.

This is for those of you who decided to flash a few different ROMs and want to restart from scratch.

You may get the Original Shipping Image from HERE or thru Modaco HERE or from Android-Devs.com, HERE. [22607 build]
MD5sum for the images is: bef86698cafc88ca03fff5758571d9d6 (per DroidDrop)

As before, if you mess up your phone or your computer, you are on your own. I take no responsibility on what you do with your phone or your computer.

Brendenk posted a nandroid back of his fresh image here If you don’t want to do an actual factory restore, try this first. If you really really want to do it your way then…

Step 1. Disable backup my settings under privacy settings.

Step 2. unzip the original shipping ROM and put it somewhere you can find.

Step 3. Plug in Nexus One with USB to computer (enable usb and debug modes)

Step 4. adb reboot bootloader (which will boot into the bootloader)

Step 5. Confirm fastboot connection fastboot devices

Step 6*. fastboot erase userdata

Step 7*. fastboot erase cache

*If step 6 and 7 does not work, and if you have Amon_RA’s recovery installed, you can do a factory data wipe from there.
Alternately, you can also do a factory data wipe within Android. Settings => Privacy Settings => Factory Data Reset.
Thanks to Brian and setzer715.

Step 8. Go to the directory that you stored your unzipped files.

Step 9. fastboot flash userdata userdata.img

Step 10. fastboot flash boot boot.img

Step 11. fastboot flash system system.img

Step 12. Skip to step 13 if you want to keep recovery (assuming you have a modified recovery such as Amon_RA’s recovery). If not fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

Step 13. fastboot reboot

Step 14. After the system boots up and while setting up skip setting up with the google account and you can setup accounts later. This will prevent the phone from pulling down the previous settings (downloaded apps, wallpaper etc) from google.

Step 15. You are done. Enjoy.

Source: Modaco for the ROM Image and HTC for the Instructions.

That’s all there is to it. Pretty simple and painless.

Here’s a quick checklist of things to do before returning the phone to HTC (they will tell you this over the phone, but it never hurts to repeat it):

1. Remove the battery and battery cover. Keep these. They will not send you a replacement when your replacement Nexus One ships to you.
2. Keep your SIM card (for obvious reasons), and your SD card (again, fairly obvious).
3. Make sure that you’ve done a full data wipe as listed in the steps above.

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