The aging Sprint Galaxy Nexus is finally going to start receiving an Android 4.3 update today and into the coming weeks with a random deployment over the air. If you do not want to wait, you can manually update to 4.3 from the most recent stock version, 4.2.1 (the official GA02 build) by following these steps. These steps assume that you have stock everything on the GA02 build.
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- Download the new 4.3 update direct from Google.
- Download the Android SDK if you do not already have it (you will need ADB for this). Make sure you have the Samsung drivers downloaded as well.
- While those are downloading get back on your phone and go to settings → About Phone and check the Baseband version and Build number – they should both end in L700GA02 (see screenshot).
- Now while you are in the “About Phone” menu tap the build number until it says, “You are now a Developer.”
- Now go to Settings → Developer options and check on “USB debugging” and then plug your phone into your computer (leaving it on).
- On your computer move the update zip file you downloaded (it has a very long name but should end in “GA02_to_GJ04” into the platform tools folder of the Android SDK (or wherever ADB resides on your computer).
- Now go to the “Platform Tools” folder of the Android SDK, press shift + right click and select “Open command window here” – you can also open command prompt and then cd to this folder.
- In command prompt, type:
- adb devices to make sure your phone is recognized by adb (if not check that you have installed the necessary drivers).
- In command prompt, type:
- adb reboot recovery
- Your phone will now reboot into recovery. Press the power button then volume up to get to the recovery menu.
- Once you see the recovery menu pop up, press volume down to select “apply update from ADB” then press the power button to start.
- Now go back to the platform tools folder on your computer and copy the name of the zip file you downloaded that ends in “…update_mysidspr_GA02_to_GJ04”
- In command prompt, type:
- adb sideload [paste filename here].zip replacing [paste filename here] with the actual file name that ends in GJ04 and ADD “.zip” to the end so that it looks like the following screenshot, then press enter.
- adb sideload [paste filename here].zip replacing [paste filename here] with the actual file name that ends in GJ04 and ADD “.zip” to the end so that it looks like the following screenshot, then press enter.
- When it is done installing (it will take a while) your phone will show that the update completed and it will give you the option to reboot by pressing the power button again. Do so, and you are done.
