Finally fixed my phone
Earlier this year in February, I broke my Nexus 5 screen and opted to buy a new Moto X (2nd gen., XT1095) since I was going to be leaving the country for six months soon, and wasn’t sure if I’d have time to repair it. Since I had to transfer everything to a new phone, I rooted the Android 5.0 installation right away so I could use Titanium Backup, which would supposedly let me do a full backup and transfer in the future without much hassle.
I was especially happy I did this after I had to manually save, transfer and import a ZIP file for every single one of the hundreds of conversations I had in the popular-in-Japan chat app, LINE.
Anyway, months later, Android 5.1 was released, and I tried to update. The update failed, I realized probably because I rooted the phone. I had been too busy to deal with this, but could not ignore it because Android forces me schedule the reminder for sometime in the next 24 hours, every single day. Even that interaction was way more clicks than it should have been. So, it’s been on my mind to fix the problem, and today I finally did it.
I wanted to do it yesterday, but Motorola keeps the phone image I needed to flash in a locked Google Drive, and I had to request access and wait for someone to grant it. Pretty silly.
So I prepared to wipe my phone, backing up everything I could, making use of FileManager HD’s ZIP feature because I can never seem to transfer more than a few files to my Mac using Android File Transfer without it freezing, disconnecting or otherwise failing. Then I followed the steps on Motorola’s download page, and after 20 or so minutes, I was delighted to see my phone now had Android 5.1. And since I didn’t understand I apparently could install a new image without deleting all my data, I was further surprised to see all my stuff still there. I was skeptical I could accomplish this without a factory reset, but a further Android update was downloaded and installed with no errors. So it looks like I am all good now. Though I was kind of looking forward to a reset since a bunch of crap (CallApp, Grindr, etc.) has been making my phone freeze or otherwise ruining my experience.
For the record, below is the command log:
➜ ~ cd Desktop/TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US ls
Darwin fastboot
LEGAL_AGREEMENT_AND_WARNING.txt fsg.mbn
Linux gpt.bin
NON-HLOS.bin logo.bin
README.txt motoboot.img
Windows recovery.img
boot.img system.img
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot flash partition gpt.bin
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'partition' (32 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.003s]
writing 'partition'...
(bootloader) This may take a few seconds, if a
(bootloader) different partition table is being
(bootloader) flashed since we need to backup
(bootloader) and restore a few partitions
(bootloader) Flashing primary GPT image...
(bootloader) Flashing backup GPT image...
OKAY [ 0.123s]
finished. total time: 0.126s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot flash motoboot motoboot.img
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'motoboot' (2022 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.076s]
writing 'motoboot'...
(bootloader) flashing sbl1 ...
(bootloader) flashing aboot ...
(bootloader) flashing tz ...
(bootloader) flashing sdi ...
(bootloader) flashing rpm ...
OKAY [ 0.413s]
finished. total time: 0.489s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot reboot-bootloader
rebooting into bootloader...
OKAY [ 0.001s]
finished. total time: 0.001s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot flash logo logo.bin
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'logo' (467 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.016s]
writing 'logo'...
OKAY [ 0.063s]
finished. total time: 0.079s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot flash boot boot.img
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'boot' (10200 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.354s]
writing 'boot'...
OKAY [ 0.419s]
finished. total time: 0.772s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'recovery' (10280 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.370s]
writing 'recovery'...
OKAY [ 0.395s]
finished. total time: 0.765s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot flash system system.img
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending sparse 'system' (512557 KB)...
OKAY [ 18.560s]
writing 'system'...
OKAY [ 9.278s]
sending sparse 'system' (513184 KB)...
OKAY [ 18.850s]
writing 'system'...
OKAY [ 7.514s]
sending sparse 'system' (512597 KB)...
OKAY [ 18.781s]
writing 'system'...
OKAY [ 8.478s]
sending sparse 'system' (510774 KB)...
OKAY [ 18.623s]
writing 'system'...
OKAY [ 7.347s]
finished. total time: 107.430s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot flash modem NON-HLOS.bin
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'modem' (62564 KB)...
OKAY [ 2.002s]
writing 'modem'...
OKAY [ 0.897s]
finished. total time: 2.900s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot erase modemst1
erasing 'modemst1'...
OKAY [ 0.051s]
finished. total time: 0.051s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot erase modemst2
erasing 'modemst2'...
OKAY [ 0.051s]
finished. total time: 0.051s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot flash fsg fsg.mbn
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'fsg' (699 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.023s]
writing 'fsg'...
OKAY [ 0.067s]
finished. total time: 0.091s
➜ TMO_5.1_LPE23.32-21.3_5_23.16.3.victara_tmo.tmo.en.US fastboot reboot
rebooting...
finished. total time: 0.001s
