[Asus Zenfone Go Guides, News, & Discussion] aurismat:
Hello people of XDA,

as I promised here, here's a tutorial for getting Android Oreo 8.1 up and running to your device.

NOTE: I DID NOT MAKE THIS TUTORIAL! This is a translated guide from 4PDA by nik-kst. I've also rehosted some of the files on Google Drive so you won't have to register on 4PDA(hopefully).

[B]Your warranty is now void. [/B]
I am not responsible for bricked devices, dead SD cards, thermonuclear war, or you getting fired because the alarm app failed. Please do some research if you have any concerns about features included in this ROM before flashing it! YOU are choosing to make these modifications, and if you point the finger at me for messing up your device, I will laugh at you.

Now that the disclaimer is dealt with, let's get on with this tutorial shall we?

First things first, we need to grab a bunch of things:

SP Flash Tool;

MediaTek VCOM Drivers;

The Stock Kernel(it will make sense to you soon!);

Scatter file for repartitioning, drop it inside the stock kernel folder(credit to fca.sjc);

ADB and Fastboot of your choice;

New recovery;

Oreo's Backup, drop it inside a MicroSD card or drop it once you have re-partitioned the device successfully;

Once you have everything setup and extracted, you're ready to go!

First, we gotta go ahead and install VCOM drivers - we won't be able to do anything to our phone without them.

If you're running Windows 8/10, make sure to disable Driver Signature Verification.

Go to Device Manager, click Action at the top and click Add legacy hardware. A new wizard window will appear.

Choose Install the hardware that I manually select from a list(Advanced);

In the next window, choose Show all devices and click Next, then click Have disk...

Then you will be prompted to direct to the driver install info, so click Browse...

Now go to the folder of drivers and select the Setup Information file that's fitting for your computer, x86 for 32-bit and x64 for 64-bit.

You should now find 5 new devices in the list, add them one by one by repeating steps 2 to 6 until you have all of them installed.

Windows might complain about unsigned drivers, just allow their installation and proceed.

If your ports list looks similar to the picture below, then you're set for the next step!

Next, we'll want to back up the NVRAM partition, because AFAIK, it keeps important unique data about your device such as WiFi, IMEI etc. data.

Note: You may want to take out your MicroSD card and SIM cards prior to this just in case. Also, might be the possible fix if readback for NVRAM fails(needs confirmation).

First, open up Flashtool.exe as admin and go to Readback tab;

Click on Add, a new item in the list will appear. You want to double-click on it, so that a Save File window would appear.

Save that file anywhere you want, name it whatever you like, for convenience I've named mine ROM_NVRAM.

Now, you'll want to find the address in the memory for NVRAM partition. To do this, open up the stock firmware(credit to fca.sjc) scatter file in a text editor(like Notepad++), and find line partition_name: nvram

In that paragraph, find two values: linear_start_addr and partition_size they should be 0x380000 and 0x500000 respectively.

Punch in those values into the Readback block start address window, so it should look something like this:

Now, click Read Back, it should gray out along with Add and Remove.

Now, turn off your device, pull out the battery for about 30 seconds, reinsert it and DO NOT TURN IT ON YET! With the Volume Down "-" button pressed, plug in your device into the USB port.

The NVRAM partition should've been read and you'll get a giant green tick sign when it's done.

Now that that's done, we can start repartitioning our device.

Make sure your SP FlashTool is running as admin, otherwise restart it as admin.

Open up the Download tab and in the line Scatter-loading File click Choose and navigate to the 8.1 scatter file, it should be named MT6580_Android_scatter_8.1.txt.

From the dropdown list, select Format All + Download.

Again, take out the battery for 30 seconds and put it back in WITHOUT turning it back on.

Now click Download, and with the Volume down "-" button held down, plug the device into your PC. There should be a bunch of colored progress bars at the bottom of the window.

Once it's done, you should get the giant tick pop-up, after which you can disconnect the device, and start it normally.

NOTE: it takes a while for the first launch, so give it some time!

Once it starts up into the first launch wizard, we can now restore the NVRAM.

In order to activate the memory writing function of SP FlashTool, re-start it with admin and press Ctrl + Alt + V, the window header should have (Advanced mode) now.

From the Window drop-down, select Write Memory, it should redirect you to a new tab named accordingly.

In the File Path field, browse to the ROM_NVRAM backup that you made earlier.

In the Begin Address (HEX) field, copy the linear_start_addr value off the scatter file.

The region should be left at EMMC_USER.

Now, click the Write memory button, turn off the device, re-insert the battery just like before, and connect the device with the Volume Down "-" button pressed.

It should begin the writing of the NVRAM and once it's done a giant tick pop-up will appear.

Now after that is done, boot into the OS, check that everything works, including IMEI and WiFi.

Also, during the setup wizard or later in the settings setup a screen lock with a pattern or a PIN or a password(credit to fca.sjc), because the partitions may remain encrypted and show 0mb(needs confirmation)

Now you'll want to unlock the bootloader and flash the TWRP recovery.

Now this is a standard recovery flash, but for a quick summary:

Enable Developer options;

Enable OEM unlocking;

Reboot into bootloader mode(I like to use ADB for adb reboot-bootloader);

Make sure your device is detected via fastboot devices, if not, google some drivers for ADB;

Unlock the bootloader via fastboot oem unlock, and press the Volume up button to confirm the bootloader unlocking.

Now, reboot the phone, it will take a while to reboot, DO NOT PANIC AND WAIT.

Now that we have bootloader unlocked, we can flash the TWRP:

Go into bootloader mode;

Confirm you are being detected again by fastboot devices;

Flash the recovery with fastboot flash recovery [twrp recovery name].img;

now, WITHOUT booting into system we boot into recovery and confirm it works.

Now that you've done all this, you propably want to run Oreo now, eh? Well, here's what we do now:

Note: make sure you have the Oreo's backup zip extracted at it's own folder inside your MicroSD card or inside the phone's internal storage by now(thanks [MENTION=5769285]ZappaDong[/MENTION] for letting me know)

From recovery, select Wipe > Advanced Wipe and select system and vendor, and wipe them. Logs may complain about not seeing vendor, ignore that message.

Then, we restore everything from the Oreo backup;

Finally, do a factory reset(aka wipe Data, Dalvik and cache);

And reboot!

Now, fingers crossed, you should be booting into a fully functional 8.1 Oreo! if you did, congratulations!

Please let me know if I've made any mistakes and/or this has worked for you.

All credits go to the awesome people at 4PDA, especially nik-kst(if you're reading this, you the real MVP!), below I've linked the sources I've written this guide from.

Nik-kst's guide to repartitioning the device for Oreo;

Nik-kst's post about the Stable Oreo ROM.