Have you installed the Android P Developer Preview and find it too unstable for your liking? Well, good news because you can go back to Oreo. Unfortunately, though, it will require you wiping your…
Have you installed the Android P Developer Preview and find it too unstable for your liking? Well, good news because you can go back to Oreo. Unfortunately, though, it will require you wiping your device. Here’s how.
We also recommend you download and install the Universal ADB Drivers from ClockWorkMod if you’re on Windows. This just makes it much easier than trying to rely on the drivers already on your computer.
This step may or may not be required for you. If you manually flashed the Developer Preview onto your device, there’s a good chance that you’ve already unlocked your bootloader and never re-locked it. If this is the case, you can skip to the next section. If you installed Android P via the Beta program, you probably don’t have an unlocked bootloader. You’ll have to follow these steps as it’s required for flashing firmware on a Pixel device.
Bootloader unlocking is a security feature that requires that your device is completely wiped when going from a “locked” state to an “unlocked” state. For this reason, there’s no way to keep your data if your bootloader is locked. As this rollback process is going to wipe your device anyway, this shouldn’t be much of a problem. Just remember that you can do a full backup of your handset if you want to save anything on your phone.
If you haven’t already, grab the latest Android Oreo build for your device from Google’s factory image page. Once you’ve downloaded the compressed file, extract it.
Inside the extracted compress file there will be a .zip file titled something like “taimen-opm4.171019.021.e1.zip” (Pixel 2 XL), and after you extract that file, you’ll find the bootloader, OS image, vendor image, and a radio image.
Now point your command line to the file directory with the flash-all script. (Ex: cd /Users/ /Downloads/taimen-opm4.171019.021.e). For more help on using the Terminal or Command Prompt, see this cheat sheet.
Once you’ve pointed to the correct directory, run your script.
Now you should see the script running on-screen. It can take up to a little over five minutes for the image to install. Once the image is installed, the script will automatically reboot your phone. The first boot usually takes a while so you might have to wait about 10 minutes before assuming you’ve entered a bootloop.
Some users have had issues with the flash-all script not working on some devices. If that’s the case for you, you’re going to need to flash all of the images manually. It’s not a laborious process, though, and only requires a few extra steps. Make sure your device is in the proper bootloader state, and then follow these instructions:
fastboot reboot-bootloader
fastboot reboot
After the device boots, you should be back on Android Oreo.
Note: After flashing the stable Oreo build, you will once again start receiving OTA updates when they become available.
If you have any questions, make sure to leave them in the comment section below or hit me up on Twitter .
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