Sunday, December 25, 2011

Downgrade Nexus S from 4.0.3 To 2.3.6

It took me 2.5 hours to find all the information to downgrade my wife's Nexus S to 2.3.6.

Note: This method requires to unlock phone's bootloader to flash custom recovery
  1. Backup your sd-card (I also backed up my call logs, sms, mms and bookmarks.)
  2. Download 2.3.X version that you want flash using this link
  3. Prepare your computer for fastboot command using this link, If you have any driver issue for fastboot use this link.
  4. Unloack boot-loader using this link, follow the Unlock boot-loader section.
  5. Now reboot your phone and copy 2.3.X zip on your sd-card.
  6. We need to flash custom recovery, so follow the Installing the ClockworkMod Recovery Image sections from this link.
  7. Select Recovery from fastboot
  8. Select Wipe data.
  9. Select Install zip from sd-card.
  10. Select Reboot system now.
  11. Restore sd-card from backup (be carefull I didn't not restore those .android-XXXX folders, you might get weird errors).
  12. Now you have Gingerbread running on your Nexus S, if you care you can lock the bootloader again by turning your phone into fastboot and typing following command. Locking won't wipe out your sd-card so don't worry.
                     fastboot oem lock
       
Update: I Tried this on I9020T. I flashed 2.3.4 first because that's the first signed zip and then updated to 2.3.6.
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14 comments:

  1. Gettons12/25/2011 8:37 PM

    Hi there,

    this is very interesting. I need to do the same as you did but unfortunately my phone is not booting now and I cannot copy the contents onto the sdcard. ( nexus s has an integrated one so I cannot even copy off my pc into there). I had icecream and I tried to do fastboot flash against the .img of GR78 and GR78C but I get errors while flashing boot and system. My phone now won't boot and I have no idea how to recover it.

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maleny12/25/2011 9:47 PM

    Can you please make all of these steps into a video???? i would really appreciate you showing us step by step. thanks

    ReplyDelete
  3. beerbarfly12/26/2011 11:30 PM

    Kishan,
    Thanks for posting he above and all the important links. However, I dont' think the procedure listed above works. I spent couple of hours yesterday in following link mentioned in above post.

    Some of the information provided in above links does not work for Nexus S.

    For example,
    1) You would also need to install fastboot mode USB drivers. In my case step# 4 failed to install fastboot mode USB driver. I took help from below mentioned link to overcome the driver issue.
    http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1006350

    2) Link in step#5 talk about ClockworkMod Recovery 5.0.2.0 to be flashed on the device. However, after rebooting into recovery using 5.0.2.0 locks my Nexus S. Instead I followed the steps mentioned in this link, http://jaxov.com/2011/02/how-to-root-android-2-3-3-gingerbread-on-nexus-s/

    3) Finally, after rebooting in recovery, when I attempted to installed 2.3.6 FULL ROM on the device, it failed. Hence the whole exercise seemes futile to me. :(

    Can you, as requested by others, post a video of the same? or point out the mistake...
    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. beerbarfly12/27/2011 12:18 AM

    For those who would like to give it a try,

    Instead of following links from here and there, you can instead follow the very defined procedure given in link below. This procedure, for Nexus S, talks about installing MIUI Custom ROM. Assuming you want to install official 2.3.x build from google(and not MIUI), the only difference would be to download and copy 2.3.x build whereever this link talks about MIUI ROM.

    The procedure has pictures and all the tools needed for Unlocking and Flashing Recovery.

    http://en.miui.com/a-45.html

    Thanks,

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kishan12/30/2011 11:54 AM

    Sorry to here folks that it is not working. I put together this after I was done downgrading it.

    I updated the steps above, see if that's make any difference. As far as you get custom recovery it should work. Stock recovery looks at this build.prop file or something and won't let you flash anything other then official OTA.

    Make sure you wipe data before flashing, don't worry about singing into Google account either after boot until everything is done.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Kishan12/30/2011 11:56 AM

    You can follow step at miui.com too like BeerBarFly mentioned, It is not the same but they have nice documentation there.

    ReplyDelete
  7. beerbarfly1/03/2012 1:32 AM

    I could perform the downgrade last nite:

    Here is the link explaning step by step approach:

    http://beerbarfly.blogspot.com/2012/01/roolback-ics-403-on-nexus-s-to-stable.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. none3/01/2012 2:36 PM

    my offical nexus s with official isc 4.0.3 (manually installed without unlocking) wont go to the recovery mode. it reboot it self insted showing "wipe" step :(

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hizin3/05/2012 4:35 AM

    Thanks for this one.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous5/03/2012 8:37 PM

    Good guide, should tell people to do a backup in ClockworkMod Recovery before trying to install the ROM though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kishan6/26/2012 1:22 AM

      If you unlock boot loader it wipes everything so there is nothing to backup.

      Delete
  11. Radu5/09/2012 8:06 AM

    Nice one, worked perfectly. Downgraded from ICS back to 2.3.6 for programming purposes.
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Kishan6/26/2012 1:25 AM

    My son installed ICS again on my wife's phone and I had to follow this instructions again.

    Sorry Maleny, it is hard to do video but I can help if you guys have any trouble downgrading.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous10/17/2012 4:22 PM

    Can someone dumb this down for me

    ReplyDelete

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