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Revert to KitKat on your

Nexus 7

Not enjoying Lollipoponyour

Nexus 7? You can go b

W

hile Android KitKat is the newest release

of the operating system, not all apps

work on it today. On older dev ices, such as

the 2012 Nexus 7, some users are reporting a

noticeable drop in performance. In addition, some

ver y nice hacks such as the incredibly versatile

Xposed framework are currently not compatible.

Updating to Lollipop isn’t irreversi

you can fl ash back to KitKat, but

unfortunately you will have to wip

your phone or tablet in the process

can then choose whether you want

update again manually at a later da

when the system is more mature.

While ROM version upgrades are designe

to be completed without wiping your data, the

same doesn’t apply when going back the other

way – changes in database formats can lead to

crashes when you roll back to an older release.

For this reason, you will need to wipe your data

via the fl ash script.

Prepare to wipe your data

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After you’ve rolled back to the older

Android release, your device will still try and update

to the current version. Obviously you want to stop

this happening or you’ve wasted your time! You

can do this manually or you can rename ‘/system/

etc/security/otacerts.zip’.

Prevent OTA updates

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As Nexus devices are primarily intended to be

developer tools, it’s useful to be able to fl ash back

to old software versions for compatibility testing

reasons. Google makes this possible via the factory

images. Exactly how far you can go back in time will

depend how old your device is!

Download a factory

image from old versions

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Flash the image

As we are wiping, the flash script can be

used in its entirety. Extract the tar.gz file and you

will find a flash-all script that you need to run from

the command line, with the device in bootloader

mode. Enter bootloader using your device’s key

combinationoratoolsuchasQuickBoot.

(^3) If you do accidentally apply an over the air
update, don’t be tempted to interrupt the fl ash
process. If you stop the update at a critical time,
you could end up bricking your device. If the device
doesn’t autoreboot, you may be able to fl ash the
old images again.
lly applying OTA
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