Installing Custom Recovery and CyanogenMod 10 (Android 4.1.2)

Click here for video tutorial of this post.

Once you have rebooted the phone turn on the USB connection to Mass Storage as we now want to copy some files onto the phone to be able to install from custom recovery. Once I chose mass storage I had to reboot the phone again for it to stick.

• With mass storage selected copy these files onto the phone’s root directory
  • SndInitDefy.apk
  • Gapps
  • Your preferred custom rom

Copy Files onto Phone

• Before we can install the 2ndInit.apk we have to allow the phone to install from “unknown sources” then we have to install a file manager from the play store

• Settings -> Application -> unknown sources
• Log into the play store and install your favourite file manager
• Open up your file explorer and browse to the root of the phone where the files are stored and install and run the 2ndInit.apk file
• Click allow when It pops up superuser request, you should also see that superuser access has been granted
• Once finished you’ll see success at the bottom of the screen as well as a green light

2ndInit installed success

Now that 2ndInit has been installed successfully we’ll reboot the phone into the custom recovery but to do that there’s a special way to access it.

• Power off the phone
• Power up normally using just the power button BUT here’s the trick as its booting up look at the light in the top left corner you’ll see it turn on then off then when it turns blue we press the down vol button to access the custom recovery. You’ll only have about 2 – 3 seconds to do it. If it doesn’t turn blue at all then the 2ndInist install wasn’t successful. Go back and try to install the 2ndInit again or check that the phone was rooted successfully.

Custom Recovery Blue Light

• If you were successful you should now see a totally different recovery menu to the stock one
• Scroll down to the 4th menu using the vol button then select with the power button
• Then select custom recovery
• We’ll start with wiping the data and factory reset to give it a clean-up before installing our custom rom
  • recovery -> custom recovery -> wipe data/factory reset -> yes

Custom Recovery Access

Once that’s done we’ll go ahead and install our custom rom

• Scroll down to install zip from card
• Choose zip from sdcard
• Scroll down and highlight the rom that you downloaded and then copied onto the sdcard then select it with the power button. This will take a few minutes to install the custom rom.

Install Custom ROM

• Once you see it says Install from sdcard complete it select install again and this time we’ll install Gapps

Installing Gapps

• Now we can reboot the phone so select go back
• Then select reboot system now.
• You should see it boot with CyanogenMod and it will take about 10 mins for the first boot
• NOTE my particular rom rebooted itself once before it will boot all the way through and it only did it on the very first boot.

CyanogenMod Boot

• It should ask you to go through and setup the phone just one more thing to do before you can start using it I the baseband.
  • Settings -> advanced -> baseband selection -> select the baseband of your country
  • it will reboot one final time and you are now ready to go.
  • Congratulations! You should now be running Jelly Bean on your Defy!

Baseband selection

Click here to go back to Unbricking the Defy

Click here to go back to Rooting the Defy