HTC One M7 - How to update firmware

Seve OB

My 8 year old is doing Coderdojo app development and needs an android phone for it. I gave her my old one, a HTC One m7, wiped it clean and thought that would be fine. Turns out you need a gmail account for this app development but I can't set her up one as she is to young so I just used my own account. Obviously I would rather not do this as the phone gets hit with all my emails etc. Anyway I just figured out that I can actually set her up a gmail on a thing called Google family link. I think I actually did get her set up, but I hit a brick wall as the device is not compatible.

So apparently it needs to be Nougat 7.0 or Marshmallow 6.0

I think my HTC one M7 is 5.0 (or close enough) but it says no updates available. I initially got my phone through Three, so maybe no updates available because it is old and Three aren't bothered anymore.

The device is unlocked, but still carries Three branding when I turn it on.

So my question is how can I get rid of the Three branding and bring it back to a standard HTC branded phone so that I can update it?



Of course I think I made a balls on gmail and got mixed up with my 2 kids and put a mix of their dates of birth in!!!!! I can't even log into it anywhere to see if I did or if I can change it, seems this family link is only for android devices

Hope someone can help, I've googled, but I'm a bit of a dinosaur at this kind of thing. Having said that, I used to be a whizz at getting branding off the old nokia phones back in the day so am at least a bit confident I can do it

Skerries

you may need to root the phone and put a new rom on it which is very involved
I'm not sure what the M7 is like but getting one on my old M8 was a pig compared to my previous Samsung

Seve OB

Skerries wrote: »

you may need to root the phone and put a new rom on it which is very involved
I'm not sure what the M7 is like but getting one on my old M8 was a pig compared to my previous Samsung

any tips on where i might find info on how to do this?

maki

The last official Android release for the M7 was 5.0 Jellybean, so you'll have to go the custom ROM route if you want to get up to Marshmallow or higher.

There aren't many ROMs that go that high, but there are a handful on XDA here.

In order to prep for custom ROM installation, you'll need to unlock your bootloader, root, flash a custom recovery, and grant S-OFF. Thankfully there's a tool which will do pretty much all of that for you here.

It's not exactly a simple process, so you'll need to do a bit of reading on those forums to get your head around it all.

Digital Solitude

The Toolkit linked above seems to do everything you need pretty easily.

Bootloader is a lock to stop people installing roms, as that can potentially brick your phone if you dont know what you're doing. Unlocking the bootloader removes the restriction.

ROMs are versions of Android, like Samsungs TouchWiz or HTCs Sense, they come in different flavours and styles as well as versions of android.

Recovery is what you boot into when you've screwed up, it allows you to backup or restore your ROM, or install a new one, update google apps and more. TWRP and CWM are the two most common, with TWRP being the most useful imo.

Can't remember what S-OFF means its HTC only crap.

For pretty much any android the 3 steps are Unlock Bootloader, then install TWRP, then install a new ROM, google is your best friend for each, most phones have tutorials for doing or installing each step.

For the HTC One ROMs in the link above, I'd recommend the ViperOS one. Currently using a version of ViperOS for my phone and it's pretty fast, quite customizable and is light on resources.

Should be enough info to get you started there.

Seve OB

thanks Digital.

Think I'll take a little time an do a good bit of reading before I attack this and hopefully I can learn something.

Seve OB

Seve OB wrote: »

thanks Digital.

Think I'll take a little time an do a good bit of reading before I attack this and hopefully I can learn something.

Just for my own personal interest, how did you get on? I have loads of experience rooting and modding HTCs for years and years, but always move on to the next one after a year.

I also do android development, so am interested to know what your child would be doing that wouldn't run fine on lollipop. I wish I had got into it at such a young age!

Seve OB

Basil3 wrote: »

Just for my own personal interest, how did you get on? I have loads of experience rooting and modding HTCs for years and years, but always move on to the next one after a year.

I also do android development, so am interested to know what your child would be doing that wouldn't run fine on lollipop. I wish I had got into it at such a young age!

so far what she is doing works fine on the phone
but the phone is logged in on my gmail id and password.

ive figured out there is a thing called google family link where you can set up an account for kid. i set it up on my own phone, then you link it to your kids phone. but the kids phone has to have a later version to run

Seve OB

Seve OB wrote: »

so far what she is doing works fine on the phone
but the phone is logged in on my gmail id and password.

ive figured out there is a thing called google family link where you can set up an account for kid. i set it up on my own phone, then you link it to your kids phone. but the kids phone has to have a later version to run

You can't just create a throw-away Google account for that device? My eldest had his account created before age seemed to matter. Can't remember what I did for my youngest kids account.