If you installed ClockworkMod recovery to your Android device, for example by following my tutorial, you probably now wonder how to update your firmware?
Unfortunately, like most modern software, ClockworkMod is very poorly documented, forcing you to collect information by mining various internet forums for hours. So, first download full firmware update from the manufacturers site. I will show everything on an Asus tablet, but this tutorial should also apply to most other brand Android devices. When download completes, unpack the zip. There should be another zip inside. Do not unpack this second zip, but copy it to a SD card and rename to update.zip for convenience. Plug the memory card to your device. Important note. To keep root, open Google Play Store and download an app called Voodoo OTA Rootkeeper. This is another utility without sane instructions. Your goal is to save your superuser app with it. Now turn off the device, and simultaneously press volume down and power to boot it. A menu pops up, use volume buttons and power button to select RCK, which stands for recovery. You’re now in ClockworkMod Recovery. Here, select Install zip from sdcard, and then Apply /sdcard/update.zip. Confirm everything and wait till the process is completed. In the menu, choose Reboot system now. After reboot Android will start to update its modules, and in the end you get an updated firmware. This will destroy ClockworkMod Recovery, which is indicated by a broken robot if you try booting into recovery again. First, let’s try to restore root using OTA Rootkeeper. Well, no matter how hard I tried it didn’t help. Maybe because it is tailored for superuser and I had superSU, because it was the only option as I already told in one of the previous posts. Luckily not long ago motochopper utility was updated to support not only Motorola, but other devices as well, including Samsung and Asus. Let’s give it a try. Download the archive and unpack it. Then turn on USB-debugging on the device, and connect it to the PC, specifying ADB driver if required. I already showed how to do it, so I won’t repeat myself. After the device is connected, execute run.bat if you’re on Windows and run.sh if you’re on Linux, and follow the on-screen instructions, which require you to press any key from time to time. If everything went fine, the device reboots, and you’ll get root access. No more superSU, install superuser. And oh well yes, lets try again to save root with OTA Rootkeeper, maybe better luck this time. Now we can finally install recovery. Not ClockworkMod this time, let’s try TWRP, and do it in style – with an app that is. The app is called GooManager, which you can download in Play Store. Open GooManager and select Install Openrecovery Script from the menu. Then confirm that the file going to be installed fits your device, and wait till download and installation is completed. After installation the device will reboot, after that installation will continue. When it’s done, you’ll get back to Android. Run GooManager once again and select Reboot Recovery. Congratulations, you now have TWRP. It has no less functions than ClockworkMod has, but with a much improved look and feel. But in general, I’m fucked up with this to the limit. First, you purchase an expensive brand device, and then spend months waiting for a root to come out and hours to install it. Also you spend a lot of time trying to remove the bloatware which is called useful utilities for some reason, but only thing it does is slow down your device and cause numerous glitches. It looks like the bigger the brand, the more bloatware it tries to wham into its products, half of which is not usable at all and in most cases could not be easily uninstalled. So probably my next device will be more developer-friendly, perhaps, a Chinese brand. The quality is comparable, and not only because Chinees manufacturers have dramatically improved it in the recent years, but mostly because well-known brands rush raw, buggy and untested failures to the market. So Chinese brands are not only cheaper as they don’t hire developers to protect the product from its users, they also often come already rooted and boast a clean operating system with close to zero bloatware, which in most cases could be be easily removed.