How To Revert Android Phone Back To Stock ROM [Detailed Guide]

Do you want to revert Android phone back to stock ROM just for selling it out or doing a warranty claim?

Besides this, many users want to restore Android phone back to stock ROM for reasons like installing system updates, or bringing their phone back to the normal state because it is installed with so many mods and tweaks, etc.

Well whatever the reason is, the important above all this is to know how to revert any Android back to stock ROM. If you are not having any idea about this, then don’t get tense…!

This post will help you get knowledge of it. So, go through this article to know how to install stock ROM on android.

What Does A Stock ROM Mean?

When you purchase a new phone the OS that runs on it, is the stock ROM. Stock means one which the OEM has preloaded and designed into phones.

Stock ROMs are mainly based on several versions of Android OS. In devices such as Google Pixel, stock ROM completely runs on Vanilla or pure Android.

Why Stock ROM Is Important?

Stock ROM has the biggest advantage over custom ROMs. When a phone is purchased, in the starting period the stock ROM works very smoothly and even if it has some bugs then it can be fixed easily.

On the other hand, for installing the custom ROM your device needs to be rooted. Nor can you use any banking app on your custom ROM device. Other than this, you will encounter issues like bugs and crashes with custom ROMs.

How To Revert Android Device Back To Stock ROM?

Let’s check the requirements which your device must have before starting with the instructions guideline.

Prerequisites:

1. It’s compulsory that your device is installed with TWRP. Users who have flashed the GSI ROM through the fastboot command. At first, they also need to flash the TWRP.
2. On your PC make easy downloading and installation of Android SDK and Platform Tools.

3. After this, on your device download the stock firmware.

4. Keep complete backup of entire Android device data. You can also save entire files in internal storage.

It’s time to follow the below-given steps to revert any Android device back to stock ROM.

1: Restore A Nandroid Backup

Using Nandroid Backup is the easiest way to revert back any Android phone to stock ROM.

Nandroid backup is a complete system backup that gets created within the recovery. It’s important to create one backup copy every time you install any new type of mod or flash a new ROM.

Actually Nandroid backup takes snapshots of the phone such as its data, OS, apps, and everything. So by restoring Nandroid Backup, ROM will also get restored.

Having a backup meanwhile using the stock ROM is all that you need.

Nandroid backup is one short-term option to go back to Stock Android from a Custom ROM. The backup will restore the old data and apps, which means uninstalled apps, will appear again but the text message you have received will disappear.

• First, you need to boot up your device in the TWRP Recovery mode.  For this either you need to make use of hardware key combinations or ADB commands. Before doing this, you need to enable both the Developer Options and the USB Debugging.
• Apart from this, installation of Android SDK & Platform Tools is needed.
• After this, connect the device with your PC through a USB cable. Now move towards the folder of platform tools and then type cmd. After that type the following command for booting up your device into TWRP Recovery mode.

adb reboot recovery

• Now within this TWRP recovery mode, move to wipe >advanced wipe option. After that select data, System, cache, and Dalvik.

• Do a right side swipe to clear all the partitions which were selected.
• After completing all this, move to the TWRP Recovery mode.
• Now you have two options to go with: one is applicable when your Nandroid backup and the other one is when you don’t have such backup.
• If you are having the Nandroid backup then hit the “Restore” option and choose the recent backup. After that make a right side swipe for easy restoration.

• When you don’t have the backup go towards the Reboot screen and choose Bootloader. Doing this will boot up your device in very fastboot mode.
• Once the device gets booted in the Fastboot/Bootloader mode, just connect the device with your PC through USB. After that carefully follow the instructions as per the device for flashing up the stock firmware.
• Wait until the whole process gets over. Once it’s done, you will notice that your device will automatically boot up to the Android OS. If this won’t happen, reboot the device by using the fastboot reboot command or hardware key.

2: Flash a Stock ROM

If in your case, restoring the Nandroid backup is not a valid option then another next solution that you must try to revert Android phone back to Stock ROM is flashing a stock ROM.

But this method has negative points too, that is you need to do factory reset mainly these methods. So it will be better if you keep the proper backup of your Android data.

Well switching from custom ROM to the stock ROM has also some benefits. Like you can easily find a ROM’s pre-rooted version and flashing the ROM also gets too easy to be done.

If you are a user of some less popular android devices then searching for the Stock ROM is quite a trickier task to perform.

If you are a user of a OnePlus device then you can easily download the flashable stock ROM from the OnePlus website.

Steps To Flash A Stock ROM

Follow the below-given steps to flash stock ROM.

• Search the stock ROM for your Android phone. If you have no knowledge about your stock ROM then visit the XDA developers forum. As it is seen that stock ROMs are often present at the top of the development board.
• Download ROM on your phone.
• Back up the entire data.
• Boot up into the recovery mode.
• Choose the Wipe option for factory resetting your phone. To start the wipe process, swipe the bar.

This option is completely optional because if you don’t do it chances are high that you may encounter bugs or be stuck into a bootloop.

• Now from the recovery home screen, go towards your downloaded stock ROM, and then install it.
• Move the bar to start the installation process.
• Swipe the bar to begin the installation. You can reboot your phone when it’s finished.

If you have downloaded some pre-rooted stock ROM then you don’t need to do anything.  But if you are using a non-rooted ROM and willing to revert it back to stock ROM. In that case, you need to re-lock the bootloader. Note: this method will wipe out your android phone data.

3: Flash a Factory Image

Another alternative method to revert Android phone back to stock ROM is by flashing a factory image. This method will take your phone to the state just like the way when you have unboxed it for the first time.

All you have to do is lock the Bootloader and then your device is factory fresh. If you want to completely reset your device then flash factory image is one of the best options to go with.

Steps to Flash a Factory Image

The process of flashing a factory image may vary for different devices. For the pixel you can use these steps:

• Download and install the ADB and Fastboot tools.
• After that from the android website, you have to download the factory image. Now unzip the download over your desktop.
• Using the USB cable connects your Android phone and boots into the Fastboot mode.
• Open the Terminal app or Command Prompt.
• In the opened command prompt window, execute flash-all.sh on macOS or Linux or flash-all.bat on Windows.
• Once the whole process gets over, just reboot your device.

This will take you to the stock, unrooted ROM along with the stock recovery. You need to lock the bootloader, in order to get back to the normal state.

Note: Flashing the factory image may also have a chance to completely wipe out your phone’s data.

4: Stock Firmware Reinstallation

Reverting back to stock firmware adopts a similar type of technique which is used for installing ROMs and mods in 1st place.

After downloading the original software or getting the appropriate backup the whole process will only take a few minutes to get over.

Note: executing stock firmware for the phone is quite different from simply running any stock Android.

Conclusion:

Here I have provided ample information on how to revert any Android phone back to stock ROM.

Now, it’s time to apply the above-given methods. I hope you liked this article and it turns out to be helpful for you in resolving your issue.

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