From Lollipop To Kitkat

03 September 2015

Android system update is like pushed notifications where you cannot opt out. Rooted device actually can but I'm not rooting my device again since I had a bad experience with it. I kept ignoring this update but I woke up one morning in Android 5.0.2. This update is not compatible with my device as this drives it to the bend hence the reason I want to downgrade.

Download Android debug bridge

$ apt-cache search android-tools
android-tools-fsutils - Android ext4 utilities with sparse support
android-tools-adb - Android Debug Bridge CLI tool
android-tools-adbd - Android Debug Bridge Phone Daemon
android-tools-fastboot - Android Fastboot protocol CLI tool

You can only install android-tools-adb for this purpose.

Download Android 4.4.4

You can get the flash image you want from Google Developers. After downloading just extract it to make flash-all.sh available.

$ ll nakasi-ktu84p
total 377240
drwxr-x--- 2 drmanalo drmanalo      4096 Jun 13  2014 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 drmanalo drmanalo      4096 May 10 17:28 ../
-rw-r----- 1 drmanalo drmanalo   2150992 Apr  1 18:46 bootloader-grouper-4.23.img
-rw-r----- 1 drmanalo drmanalo       984 Jun 13  2014 flash-all.bat
-rwxr-x--- 1 drmanalo drmanalo       872 Jun 13  2014 flash-all.sh*
-rwxr-x--- 1 drmanalo drmanalo       698 Jun 13  2014 flash-base.sh*
-rw-r----- 1 drmanalo drmanalo 384115329 Jun 13  2014 image-nakasi-ktu84p.zip

Check your device

You should find your attached device. If not, chances are your android is not on USB debugging mode.

$ adb devices
List of devices attached
015d456d39380a04        device

Unlock your fastloader

You should see Andriod chilling down showing its keypad.

$ adb reboot bootloader

$ fastboot oem unlock
< waiting for device >
...
(bootloader) erasing userdata...
(bootloader) erasing userdata done
(bootloader) erasing cache...
(bootloader) erasing cache done
(bootloader) unlocking...
(bootloader) Bootloader is unlocked now.
OKAY [ 26.159s]
finished. total time: 26.159s

Flash Kitkat to your device

You will need to run this to the folder where you unzipped the flash image.

$ ./flash-all.sh
...
(bootloader) Bootloader is already unlocked
OKAY [  0.025s]
finished. total time: 0.033s
erasing 'boot'...
OKAY [  1.154s]
finished. total time: 1.159s
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'cache'...
OKAY [  1.030s]
finished. total time: 1.033s
erasing 'recovery'...
OKAY [  0.363s]
finished. total time: 0.365s
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'system'...
OKAY [  0.820s]
finished. total time: 0.823s
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'userdata'...
OKAY [  4.545s]
finished. total time: 4.550s
sending 'bootloader' (2100 KB)...
OKAY [  0.275s]
writing 'bootloader'...
OKAY [  9.427s]
finished. total time: 9.710s
rebooting into bootloader...
OKAY [  0.020s]
finished. total time: 0.023s
archive does not contain 'boot.sig'
archive does not contain 'recovery.sig'
archive does not contain 'system.sig'
archive does not contain 'vendor.img'
Creating filesystem with parameters:
    Size: 30734811136
    Block size: 4096
    Blocks per group: 32768
    Inodes per group: 8192
    Inode size: 256
    Journal blocks: 32768
    Label:
    Blocks: 7503616
    Block groups: 229
    Reserved block group size: 1024
Created filesystem with 11/1875968 inodes and 161774/7503616 blocks
Creating filesystem with parameters:
    Size: 464519168
    Block size: 4096
    Blocks per group: 32768
    Inodes per group: 7088
    Inode size: 256
    Journal blocks: 1772
    Label:
    Blocks: 113408
    Block groups: 4
    Reserved block group size: 31
Created filesystem with 11/28352 inodes and 3654/113408 blocks
--------------------------------------------
Bootloader Version...: 4.23
Baseband Version.....: N/A
Serial Number........: 015d456d39380a04
--------------------------------------------
checking product...
OKAY [  0.040s]
checking version-bootloader...
OKAY [  0.023s]
sending 'boot' (4994 KB)...
OKAY [  0.640s]
writing 'boot'...
OKAY [  0.995s]
sending 'recovery' (5534 KB)...
OKAY [  0.705s]
writing 'recovery'...
OKAY [  0.958s]
erasing 'system'...
OKAY [  0.880s]
sending 'system' (644062 KB)...
OKAY [ 79.820s]
writing 'system'...
OKAY [ 37.576s]
erasing 'userdata'...
OKAY [  4.584s]
sending 'userdata' (139197 KB)...
OKAY [ 17.308s]
writing 'userdata'...
OKAY [ 13.077s]
erasing 'cache'...
OKAY [  0.673s]
sending 'cache' (9052 KB)...
OKAY [  1.145s]
writing 'cache'...
OKAY [  1.851s]
rebooting...

finished. total time: 160.447s
Press any key to exit...

Lock your fastloader

$ fastboot oem lock
...
(bootloader) Bootloader is locked now.
OKAY [  8.913s]
finished. total time: 8.913s

dhon.manalo