[Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE] Aslan_:
Hi xdadevelopers,

I ordered a Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE (xt897c) phone from FreedomPop for $25 and 28 days later it has arrived. My experience with FreedomPop has been decidedly mixed. Lots of hassle from customer service combined with a product that is sometimes very useful and always cheap. (Unless you use over 2GB of data per month) The phone itself seems very adequate for an excellent price. I would like your assistance in putting Cyanogenmod or another appropriate ROM on it.

Here's where I am,

The phone appears to have been rooted out of the box according to "Root Checker Basic" from Google Play

I installed "Superuser" from Google Play and that seems to work correctly

Busybox seems to be present already according to "Online Nandroid" from Google Play

I have created a TWRP Backup using Online Nandroid without modifying the recovery

The phone currently has Android 4.1.2

Where I want to be

I want to install a custom recovery, preferably one I can make backups from

I want to update to a more recent version of Android such as the stable one found here DUCK RULES cyanogenmod bot org /?device=xt897c or another version where everything just works

Notes. I have ADB and Fastboot installed from "Android Studio". I have an appropriate USB cable. I do not have a microsdhc card right now. It appears "Sandisk 64GB Extreme Micro SD (SDXC) Card + Adapter 60MB/s Class 10 U3 UHS-1" at DUCK RULES amazon bot com /gp/product/B00N98QLRQ is a good choice for a good price. I have this on order and should have it within the week.

I understand this phone has a locked bootloader. The "Messaging" app from FreedomPop available in Google Play seems to control messaging and the phone dialer. I went to the official Motorola Bootloader unlock page DUCK RULES motorola-global-portal bot custhelp bot com /cc/cas/sso/redirect/standalone%2Fbootloader%2Funlock-your-device-b I booted into recover with Power and volume up and volume down held, selected fastboot, connected to the computer , ran fastboot, as described, got the code, put the code in the webpage as described, and got a blank page. This happened 2x, with no emails form Motorola. I tried a third time 6 hours later, and it loaded a page with more instructions and I had the bootloader unlock code in my email instantly (There were no preceding messages, they didn't go to spam or somewhere else). I have installed TWRP Manager by Jmz software from Google Play. The standard reboot method doesn't work I changed the settings to "Reboot using an alternate method". I attempted to the TWRP recovery with the "Install TWRP". One must select their device and the closest thing to mine was "Motorola Photon 4G" codename "sunfire". This didn't appear to be it exactly but there wasn't a better choice. The next line down says "custom recovery not installed or detected". Then I selected the recovery version to install "2.6.3.0" "openrecovery-twrp-2.6.3.0-sunfire.img appeared the most recent, then I attempted to "Install Recovery" The phone downloaded the image, and said "Ensure the partition listed below is the correct one for your device..." "/dev/block/mmcblk0p10" how do I know if that's correct or not? I said yes to the question and went ahead, the phone rebooted to an Android on it's side with a yellow triangular sign with an exclamation point above it. Thirty seconds later the phone rebooted normally and everything worked no custom recovery was flashed.

Also thanks to the xdadevelopers community for your past and future efforts. I threw in my lot with Android when the neXus One launched after watching the keynote, buying it full price and paying extra for next day air shipping. I stayed stock despite the cool stuff being done by the development community until Google fell behind in updates. Then I started with CM6 and later went to CM7. That was wonderful software, thanks everyone who was involved in that. Unfortunately way late in the life of my phone I was homeless and got robbed for it. I got a used HTC HD7 Windows Phone for free from a friend. It was great for movies and music with a great screen and touch sensor but it was very early in the life of the new Windows Phone and there wasn't a lot of quality software being developed. That, and it just wasn't Android, and I longed for freedom. The integrated Web browser IE 9 variant sucked, and T-mobile denied me the final Windows Phone 7 update. The phone has gotten less and less useful as time went by though it always sucked for web browsing. This fall I got a One Plus One, it made a wonderful Wifi phablet, but when I tried to use it as a phone I found the radio was severely deficient in range, possibly due to defective manufacture as it got better range in colder weather. I had to initiate a chargeback with my credit card company to get support to talk to me and then ultimately get a refund. That's how I got where I am now and this is the first time I've needed to register for an account here. Thanks again xdadevelopers.

What is the best way to proceed? Semi detailed logical instructions please, as while I am intelligent and not a noob, I have been out of the game since CM7

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