Do-it-yourself: Update your Nexus One to ver 2.2 aka Froyo

Here’s why you might want to do it yourself instead of waiting for the Google update which could take weeks:

1. You get Flash on your phone – and suddenly the PC web is finally on your phone. iPad/iPhone lovers who still claim that Flash is no big deal can either ignore the reality or face up to the facts.

   Flash games will now finally work on our phones. Porn, which you should not watch, apparently will now work (I didn’t see any since I am like John Marsten, a married man).  My friend Alex who had to use an iPhone with a StarHub line to connect his laptop to the Web to check on his castles in Lord of Ultima needs to know that he can now do it on a smartphone without any laptop.

2. You can use your Nexus One as a mini 3G router (you could do this before but you had to root the phone) – which means your friends on laptops connect to your N1 over Wi-Fi and your N1 connects them to the Net over 3G.
3. You can now install your apps on the micro SD card, finally ending fears that we might run out of space for apps.

There are probably other stuff but I haven’t had time to explore fully yet.

How to get it?
Before you try, please NOTE that IT MIGHT BREAK YOUR PHONE and please note that you totally are doing this at your own risk if you want to try. Here are the steps which I followed from the experts.

It worked for me, but there is no guarantee it works for you. Having said that I know of at least four persons who have successfully done it. Only works on Nexus One. Do not try with other phones.

Step One:
Download to your PC
https://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-FRF50-from-ERE27.1e519a24.zip

Two
Rename the file update.zip.

Three
Connect USB cable between N1 and PC

Four
Copy update.zip into the main directory of the SD card

Five
Shut down the N1

Six
Press Trackball and Power button together

Seven
When it restarts, you will see a DOS-like screen. Use the volume keys to move up and down and power key to select. Choose Bootloader then choose Recovery.

Eight
The phone then reboots until you see the picture of an Android robot with an ! sign. Now press power button and volume up button at the same time. Now use your trackball to scroll down to Apply sdcard:update.zip and select by pressing trackball. Your phone will now restart and some stuff will happen. Just wait and wait until you see your normal screen again.

Here are the official posts:
http://www.gadgetopolis.com/posts/7733
http://www.androidcentral.com/how-manually-update-your-nexus-one

which I learned it from, which I got from my friend Michael Tan who blogs here http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/rehashplus/. The method is similar to the way we upgraded to ver 2.1-update 1 which gave us multi-touch.

Enjoy! By the way, you cannot buy the N1 any more over the web! Have to wait for retail!