Force update your Motorola Droid to Android 2.1

Yesterday we told you that the Android 2.1 update is being rolled out to the Motorola Droid, but only to about 10,000 people it’s first day. As the roll out continues, those of you who can’t bare waiting any longer now have another way of getting some 2.1 love. As done before, we knew it wouldn’t be too long before someone would grab the OTA update and repackage it into a zip file for your manual installing pleasure.

Note: if you have rooted your Droid, know that you will lose root after manually updating. Currently, this is no way to get back root. You have been warned.

1. Download the official update from AllDroid, here.  ( do not download the file in Safari, as it will just unpack it)
2. Rename the file to update.zip  (Note: it should already be in zip format, so it shouldn’t look like update.zip.zip. If you can’t see the .zip, you have file extensions hidden, in that case, just rename the file to ‘update’)
3. Put the file into the root of your SD card (root meaning, inside no folders)
4. With the Droid off, power it on by holding the X button on the keyboard and holding down the Power button.
   • A screen with an exclamation point within a triangle is what you want to be seeing at this point.
5. Hold down the volume up button, and the camera button simultaneously (at the same time).
   • The bootloader looks like black triangle/exclamation point screen with the addition of blue text showing your boot options.
   • If it doesn’t work, keep trying! This can be tricky, but once you have it, you will be in the bootloader.
6. Using the D-Pad, go down to the update.zip file, and initialize the update. (If it doesn’t work, or says that it’s not found, you may have renamed you file incorrectly). Wait until the install is complete.
7. Reboot your device, and have fun with Android 2.1!

Enjoy Android 2.1′s live wallpapers and speech-to-text features!

[Via: AndroidCommunity]