[XDA-University] demkantor:
Is There Anything Fun I can Do With Fastboot?

You may have noticed none of the above used fastboot... huh, and here this is a fastboot guide! :eek:

Old stuff... in the process of editing to make things more clear....

Come one, like the previous stuff isn't fun! :cool:

Well many aren't aware that they can change the splash screen on their phone or tablet, this is just another partition most often like system, or cache.

Yes some phones will have it built into params or locked elsewhere in the firmware but often fastboot is a simple way of flashing a new splash screen.

To find out a list of your device's partitions i would advise to check you sites development thread here in XDA. But we can quickly do it as well with some simple ADB commands.

This guide does not go over ADB and for a better understanding search out one of many guides in XDA and elsewhere. (I am considering making one here as i have yet to see a comprehensive yet easy to follow guide)

Having said this, here are a few things you need to know. If you followed this guide and have fastboot working, ADB should also work just fine.

Know that fastboot is to be used in bootloader mode and ADB is used when booted into the OS or in most recoveries.

So now boot to your OS, make sure debugging is turned on, android 2.x and older this is found under settings>applications. 4.x and up it will be under developer options in settings.

Now connect your PC and phone via USB (wireless options are also a possibility here) You should notice a symbol in your status bar confirming debugging is on. (unless disabled) open a terminal/CMD and type:

adb devices

If you see your serial number lets proceed, if not post in this thread and i'll help.

adb shell
cat /proc/partitions

This will list all your partitions and their size, but this wont give you what each partition stores. There are different ways to do this for different devices, so you may need to try a few commands

ls -l /dev/block
ls -l /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name

the last command is for a device with a tegra 3 processor, of course will only work if yours has one (you may need to type 'su' to get commands to work)

you can also try:

df
busybox df -hm

Really all this isn't 100% necessary as someone probably found this out for you already. If not we just need to know the location and proper size of the image to flash.

I will help further if requested but as of know I'm going to assume we have this.

Alright lets flash the new splash screen already!

So we have a new image in .img format and it is the proper size. we will name it splash.img And as most phones that allow flashing a new splash we will call the partition its it splash1

**If your phone is different than whats listed here commands may very or not be allowed without changing bootloaders.

Back in fastboot mode, plug in phone... the usual

fastboot flash splash1 splash.img
fastboot reboot

Now that initial boot screen (before animation is replaced!) congrats!

**As you can see this section is poorly written, it is hard to universally apply a command to all phones as this command differs between them.

There are dd commands to flash just about anything, including splash screens, but dd commands can be dangerous and I would not recommend them to anyone who doesn't fully understand what they are doing.

Feel free to post with any questions!