FlashFire is the spiritual successor to
Mobile ODIN.
It's long overdue for release, but some i's still need to be dotted and some t's crossed. That being said, most of the functionality actually works well already, and it's pretty darned powerful. I have used it to update various Samsung devices from 4.x to 5.x, done (block-level!) OTAs on Nexus devices, etc.
If you're fairly tech-savvy and/or used to
Mobile ODIN I suspect you won't have much trouble getting around with this app. Updates and the manual (which would be bloody useful, wouldn't it?) are coming over the next few days and weeks.
Notes and hints to help you use it:
- No kernels or recoveries are flashed for FlashFire to run, Android is torn down and restarted in a minimalist manner for the flashing part of the app to run. I'm sure this will completely fail on some devices.
- A lot(!) of memory is used, likely the entire operation will fail on low-memory devices. I strongly suggest you make an 'ID' backup as the very first test and see if that works at all.
- Technically it should be compatible with 4.2, but note virtually all of the testing so far has been done on 4.4 and 5.0 firmwares.
- While development has focused so far on Samsung and Nexus compatibility and features, it should be able to function on many devices. Specific support for some other manufacturers is coming via updates soon.
- Individual files need to be named correctly (after their partitions) to be flashable or be contained in archives. Archive-wise, TAR and ZIP are supported. Compression-wise, ZIP, GZIP and BZIP2 are supported. These can be embedded inside each-other, so yes, you can directly flash the standard ZIP-inside-TGZ Nexus firmwares, as well as TAR-inside-ZIP Samsung firmwares. More formats are to come.
- Backups are always to internal storage, and there is no 'enough space available' check yet (yarly!)
- Backups are standard TGZ's for file-based, and plain GZIP'd for raw partitions
- For block-level OTAs, flash a stock system partition or restore a (raw!) system (and vendor) backup before applying the OTA. After the OTA action, create a (raw!) backup of system (and vendor). The latter will be restorable to apply the next OTA.
- The embedded SuperSU version installed by EverRoot is v2.46.
- Pro version is unlocked if you have
Mobile ODIN Pro installed, but you still see an upgrade option. This is a (much cheaper) In-App Purchase you can optionally do, so you don't need to keep
MOP installed.
- Pro version actually does nothing different at the moment.
If you are reading to start messing around with it, this is how you get the BETA:
- Join the G+ community using the same Google account as you're using for Play on your phone/tablet here:
https://plus.google.com/communities/116661625291346007584
- Sign up to receive the BETA versions from Play here:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/eu.chainfire.flash
- Use the link provided after sign-up to download the app
If you have no idea what any of the above means, you might want to wait with playing with this until proper instructions are available, and more people have tested it.
