Hi all. New to the forum and thought I'd share my experience installing Cyanogen Android Jellybean 4.3.1 on my Droid RAZR MAXX HD XT912 as it was a fun one. Through that process was how I found these forums.
It all started when I saw the graphics and messaging app on my girlfriend's Samsung Galaxy S3 that had just been upgraded to Android Jellybean 4.3.1. My Droid RAZR has Android JB 4.1.2 on it. Through some research, I learned that there would not be any further official releases of Android for the RAZR XT912 from Motorola. I was bummed.
That's when I learned about CyanogenMod. I decided to give it a go. After researching several sites on how to root the phone and install CyanogenMod CM10.2 (I'm very new to flashing custom ROM's on smart phones), it was all looking confusing to me until I found a tutorial geared toward the XT912 and CyanogenMod specifically. This tutorial can be found here -
The prerequisites were to root the phone, install a custom recovery tool/bootloader, then flash the ROM with CM10.2. The TeamAndroid tutorial favored ClockworkMod and ROM Manager for this task. However, I learned that there was not a version of CWMod for the Droid RAZR...or was there? I found yet another site which talked about installing ClockworkMod Touch to an XT912. So I decided to give that a shot.
After using SMS Backup & Restore to back up my SMS/Text messages (Google Gmail already had my contacts and my photos were already on my SD card), I began the process.
So for the first go, I downloaded the Android SDK and installed/configured the Android Debug Bridge (adb), then enabled USB Debugging on the RAZR. I then used RAZR Blade to gain root access to the phone. I then downloaded the CM10.2 zip and the ggapps zip files and copied them to the SD card in zipped state. Once that was accomplished, I then installed CMMod Touch to the phone and rebooted into CMMod Touch. As the tutorial stated, I then did a wipe/factory reset from within CMMod Touch, and continued to follow the tutorial step by step. Once finished, I then proceeded to reboot by selecting "Reboot System Now" within CMMod Touch.
Upon rebooting, the Motorola logo came up, then disappeared. I waited about 15 minutes and nothing. It was as if the phone was powered off as tapping the power/lock button didn't not wake up the screen. Hmm...so I powered on again and the phone did the exact same thing. I thought..."Uh oh", then proceeded to boot into stock recovery by holding down the volume up/down keys and the power key.
I initially tried to do a reset from within there, but this returned no fruitful result. Crap!
Reboot into stock recovery and do some more research. I learned that via RSD Lite and a leaked reflash file I could restore the phone back to factory spec. So I downloaded the latest RSD Lite along with the restore zip file. Boot into stock recovery and select AP Fastboot. Navigate RSD Lite to the xml file and click start, and I get a "Phone Returned FAIL" immediately. OK this is NOT looking good at all.
Then I learned about the Droid RAZR Utility and how people have had success with it restoring their phones after a soft brick. Through this forum I located and downloaded the RAZR Utility. I couldn't find a README in the folder so I wasn't sure how to start the utility. However, I found a copy of RSD Lite and the restore xml and file set to restore the phone to Jellybean 4.1.2. So I thought...ya know, maybe the recovery kit I tried earlier was either the wrong one or corrupt so let's try this one.
Fire up RSD Lite. Navigate it to the XML file in the RAZR Utility directory and click start. OMG wouldn't you know it, the phone actually responded and it started reflashing the ROM!!! YES!!! Crossing my fingers the entire time, I hoped to heaven this would work. The process took about 10 minutes but it appeared to go through successfully.
So afterwards I reboot the phone as instructed. Yep...it booted right into the stock Android Jellybean! Thank goodness!!!
The interesting thing is that after all that muss and fuss, all of my original apps (even ones I downloaded) and texts were all still in place! It was as if I had done nothing...no wipes, resets or ROM flashes. Not understanding how I lucked out on that but it is what it is.
So, recovered from soft brick and phone in working order. I had remembered seeing another bootloader/recovery program called Safestrap. The YouTube tutorial from Rootjunky explained it well and it appeared that you could create multiple ROM partitions, install multiple custom ROMs in each partition (referred to as ROM slots), and decide which one you want to boot to...all while keeping your stock ROM. I really liked that approach and decided to give it a go.
So back to work. I again used RAZR Blade to gain root access to the phone. I then downloaded Safestrap from the Play Store and installed it. Once installed, I rebooted the phone. Upon rebooting, it came up to the Safestrap bootloader/recovery menu and stated I had 10 seconds to boot into Safestrap. Press the menu key and I'm in Safestrap.
Once in Safestrap, I selected "Boot Options", then proceeded to do a full wipe on ROM Slot 1. I then named that slot "CM10.2 Android 4.3" or something like that. Once it was wiped, I then used Safestrap to write the CM10.2 zip and the ggapps zip to ROM slot 1. Once complete, I then activated ROM Slot 1 as the active slot, then back to the Safestrap home screen, selected "Reboot", then "System".
The phone booted up. Once on the Safestrap bootloader screen, I pressed the search key to continue boot and Wala! I got the CM10.2 splash screen! A few minutes of that and I was on the home screen in CM10.2.
My experience so far with CM10.2...not sure if I'm liking it. It gave me a default messaging app that was the same as the boring one in my Cricket phone, which I didn't like. Too plain looking and no way to even set a signature. The one on my girlfriend's Galaxy S3 is more graphic, has an option for bubble style texting and a place to set up a text signature as well. That's what I was hoping to get anyway, along with the weather app/widget on the home screen, which I had to find and install myself and even it doesn't look like hers does, yet we're both running Android 4.3.
Pretty much, CM10.2 doesn't look all that different from the JB 4.1.2 on my Cricket smartphone. Somewhat disappointing. Also, the Wi-Fi appeared not to work as it didn't seem to wanna log onto my wireless network but eventually it did. Then I noticed my 4G LTE wasn't working. A quick look into Settings/Wireless & Networks/More.../Mobile Networks and it seems that my Network Mode was in a CDMA mode that was non-LTE. Enabled CDMA+LTE/EvDo and I got the "LTE" indication next to my signal bars, which I'm assuming that's stating that it is on a 4G LTE network.
While I do love the enhanced configurability of CyanogenMod 10.2 that you will never find on a stock ROM, I'm not yet sure if I like the appearance of it yet. Since Safestrap gave me 4 ROM slots, I just might take advantage of that and find some other Android distros to try. Perhaps I'll give Eclipse a shot.
