Overview:
Working on upgrading the OS of my old Nexus 6 phone currently running android 7.1.1
This post will be about unlocking the bootloader.
Steps with references:
Disclaimers:
First, I just followed the steps in this youtube video, so all credit goes to wwjoshdew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEjynlQgJCI
Second, I have been learning to develop android apps recently (without blogging about it … because I use intelliJ for my blog) so I already have the android SDK installed on my machine.
Third, because the youtube video is pretty good quality, I am just going to briefly outline the steps rather than give in-depth descriptions
Steps:
- Backup everything on the device I didn’t want to lose
- Enable developer options by clicking on the “Build number” field multiple times. The path on my pixel xl phone is Settings -> System -> About phone
- Enable OEM unlocking and usb debugging
- Shutoff the device
- Enter the bootloader by pressing the down volume button and the power button
- Connect the phone to a computer with the android SDK on it.
- Navigate to the platform-tools folder (for me “~/Android/Sdk/platform-tools”) in terminal
- Verify device is connected by running “./fastboot devices” in terminal
- Unlock device by running “./fastboot oem unlock” and confirm all of the security questions
- DEBUG! For me, the terminal responded with “Failed() /n Finished. Total time: 76.411s” but the phone was reset and unlocked properly
Conclusion:
I was able to successfully unlock the device and will now be researching how to change out the OS!