How I got my Nexus One Running Froyo (Android 2.2)



Froyo (upcoming release of Android) was one of the highlights of this week's Google I/O conference, but many of us were left wondering... when would we be able to take advantage of its many features and benefits (like getting the up to 5x boost in performance thanks to its JIT compiler). For some strange reason Google did not provide us with an ETA - even for their flagship Nexus One.

Well, all that changed today, merely days after the conference ended, with a semi-official release of Android 2.2 (Build Number FRF50) for Nexus One, straight from Google:

http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-FRF50-from-ERE27.1e519a24.zip

Here's how I got my N1 updated from ERE27 (Android 2.1) to FRF50 (Android 2.2):

  1. I downloaded the 44MB image (from Google).
  2. I connected my phone to my computer via USB and mounted it as external disk.
  3. I then copied the image that I downloaded as update.zip and placed it in root of the mounted SD Card.
  4. I turned off my phone.
  5. Holding down the "volume down" button, I powered the phone back on.
  6. The phone booted into a custom screen that allowed me to scroll down to "recovery" and select it using the "power" button.
  7. When the exclamation-mark image appeared, I pressed the "power" and "volume up" buttons at the same time, which took me to another custom screen.
  8. This time I selected "Apply sdcard:update.zip" from the menu using the track ball.
  9. The phone then verified the image, and went through the installation.
  10. After the final reboot, I was done.


I still cannot figure out how to install apps onto the SD Card, but all other advertised features appear to be there. At least I did not brick my phone :-)

Cool!
Published May 22, 2010