[Motorola Droid 3] ncho2233:
How to install a custom rom (eg. CM9, Ice Cream Sandwich, Liberty, Maverick, SteelDroid) to a Bell XT860 without losing the ability to revert to stock later.

Why this guide?

I noticed over time that my phone has become slower and more frustrating to use. For example, long pauses when trying to open a program - sometimes it takes an easy 10 or more seconds to open the dialer and dial a number.

I wanted to try a custom rom, but was concerned about the ability to get back to stock, if something goes wrong, or to be able to take advantage of a Bell update if they release a new one. Thanks to the hard work of many on this board, I have discovered how to make this possible and wanted to share with others.

Big thanks to DoomLord, HashCode, Enderoid, Rick#2, Dasilva333, Willis111 and others. Please feel free to make corrections to these instructions.

Note: This has been tested with an XT860 on Bell 2.3.6 firmware. This will probably NOT work on v2.3.4 So if you have 2.3.4, upgrade to 2.3.6 and then these instructions should work. When I first got the phone, it was at 2.3.5 and later was updated OTA (Over the air) by Bell to 2.3.6. To check which firmware you have, Home Screen / Settings / About Phone

Needed:

1. Windows pc (someone else more knowledgeable could probably tell you how to make this work on a Mac)

2. USB cable for connecting your phone.

3. Rooting tool, I highly recommend zergRush method by DoomLord found here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1321582

4. Safestrap by hashcode

http://hash-of-codes.blogspot.com/p/android-downloads.html

5. Custom rom of your choice.

Step 1:

Root your phone using the DoomLord tool. I used version 3. It was really easy, just follow the instructions on the link above.

Step 2:

Backup existing user programs that you might want to restore on a new system. I used Titanium Backup Pro but there are others.

Step 3:

Please read this page carefully

http://hash-of-codes.blogspot.com/p/how-to-safestrap.html to download and install safestrap v1.08. Note, you should remove any other type of bootstrap (eg. ClockworkMod, ROM Manager) before installing Safestrap.

Step 4:

Now you should be ready to download and try a custom rom. Make sure to do a backup (“Nandroid” backup) of your working system before you try a custom rom so you have something to fall back on in case something goes wrong or you want to return to stock.

Find a rom, download it and save it to a location on your sdcard or ext-sdcard. There’s lots of good candidates for you to test and a good thread with some reviews here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1384676

To do this, power down your phone after you have run safestrap and clicked to make recovery active. If you did it right, when you turn it on again, you should see a different splash screen that gives you a few seconds to enter the recovery menu by pressing the “menu” button on you device.

You should see “Safestrap Recovery v1.08” and below that “Safe System is: DISABLED”

on a black screen with some green menu choices.

Use the volume keys to scroll up/down and select “backup and restore” by pressing the power button.

The screen should change to show the Nandroid backup menu. You need to make a Nandroid backup of your existing (working) system, which is simply a snapshot of the exact system with all programs, settings, sms’s, call logs, etc. It’s like a snapshot in time in case you need to revert. Select “backup”, then select Internal or External SD Card for the location (I’m not sure it it matters for the location).

Safestrap will backup your system to a Nandroid backup. It takes a few minutes.

After the backup is complete, you can enable the Safe System where you will install custom roms. Scroll down and select “safe boot menu”, then “Toggle Safe System”, then on the next screen confirm your selection. It will backup the original system to a safe area where it can’t be modified (unless you are an advanced user and install a different version of Safestrap but that’s beyond the scope of these instructions).

After Safe System is: ENABLED, scroll down to “Install zip from sdcard”, select your rom, install, reboot and enjoy.

To revert back to your original system, follow these steps:

1. Turn off your phone and reboot into SafeStrap recovery menu.

2. Turn off SafeSystem. (Safe boot menu -> Toggle Safe System)

3. Restore your nandroid backup and reboot.

If you wanted to go further back to stock you could uninstall Safestrap and even unroot using DoomLord’s zergRush tool, which would put you back to stock.

I think that’s it. Hopefully this guide will be helpful to others who want to try a new rom without losing the ability to revert back to stock Bell.