Manual Firmware Update on the Galaxy Nexus

Samsung seems to have failed, rushing to put out an update to the “Volume-“-bug in their Galaxy Nexus. They provided a wrong-signed Google+ and Google Maps app. They failed to update (“Wrong package signature”, see here).

To find out if your device has this broken firmware, check the build number: ITL41F.I9250XWKK8 instead of just ITL41F (or ITL41D) is the broken one.

To flash the official firmware, do as follows:

1. if you already set up everything on your device, you can make a backup:
   1. backup the internal settings using adb backup -all -system -shared -apk (enable USB Debugging first, under Windows you may have to install some drivers)
      • this will create a file backup.ab with your data
      • ⚠️ There was a bug in 4.0.1 which didn’t backup /mnt/sdcard using adb. To fix this, manually backup the contents of /mnt/sdcard using a tool like FTPServer, WebSharing or similar
2. download the official firmware from http://code.google.com/android/nexus/images.html#yakju (European devices are yakju, Verizon is mysid)
3. download fastboot for Windows from http://code.google.com/p/android-roms/downloads/detail?name=fastboot-win32.zip&can=2&q=, for Linux try to find a binary package
4. boot the phone into the bootloader (hold both volume keys and then hold the power key)
5. use fastboot to flash the bootloader
6. fastboot reload-bootloader
7. use fastboot to flash the radio firmware
8. fastboot reload-bootloader
9. use fastboot to flash the main firmware (that ZIP file)
10. if you really need an unlocked bootloader to easily update in the future, do it now: (it will be locked after update)
    1. boot into the bootloader
    2. fastboot oem unlock
    3. reboot
11. to restore your backed up settings, do this:
    1. set up all previous Google- and eMail-accounts
    2. enable USB Debugging
    3. restore all internal data using adb restore backup.ab
    4. maybe: use FTPServer, WebSharing or similar to restore /mnt/sdcard