Every noob to Android has tried to stay away from ADB (or Terminal on Mac) for as long as possible. Yes, it sounds too techy at times and in order to reach it, there are preliminary steps which make us tense of reaching it in the first place. But trust me, once you are there, rest is a piece of cake. And as long as you are avoiding it, you are losing out on way too much. Go through this post, it should introduce you to the process, if not convince you to start altogether.
The ADB mode lets you do a lot of stuff which can help you get the most out of your Android device. Of course, a toolkit (like Wugfresh or HTC RUU) is much easier but chances are, you may not always find a toolkit for your device, so it pays to know this.
What you need:
You need to do two things to get you started.
- On your device: Tap ‘Build number’ 7 times to enable Developer options, in ‘Developer Options’ enable ‘USB debugging’ (or Android debugging)
- On your PC: Install the Android SDK / Platform tools. Open the install location, Press right click while holding ‘Shift’ key and choose ‘Open Command window here’.
If you see a black window with DOS format text, you’re there.
ADB and Fastboot Commands:
adb reboot
This command reboots your device in normal mode. You can use it when you’ve flashed something on your device and wish to reboot
adb reboot recovery
If a recovery is already installed on your device, this command will restart the device in recovery mode.
adb reboot bootloader
The bootloader is crucial when unlocking & other tasks. This command restarts your device in bootloader mode.
adb reboot fastboot
Instead of going to bootloader mode and then choosing fastboot, this command takes you directly to the fastboot mode that helps you flash custom recoveries & ROMs on your device.
fastboot oem unlock
When in fastboot, this command unlocks your device (unlocking bootloader is necessary for custom recoveries & ROMs on a stock device)
fastboot reboot bootloader
Rebooting your device from fastboot mode to fastboot mode again in a fresh session (recommended as a fresh when flashing multiple items)
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
Command to flash a custom recovery on your device (make sure the img file of the recovery is renamed ‘recovery.img’ and is present in the platform-tools folder)
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