Nexus One: Gingerbread update
February 28, 2011
Intro
Gingerbread is finally out for Nexus One… And, of course, I could not wait for OTA update… So, after short discussion with myself decision was made to update manually…
Everything is not as easy as it seems…
Unfortunately everything did not go as smoothly as I expected. First of all, trying to update my Nexus One (stock, unrooted and without unlocked boot-loader) running Android 2.2.1 through recovery mode always gave me that annoying “E:failed to verify whole-file signature” error message. Tried maybe 10 times. After googling a bit I found out that I cannot update directly from 2.2.1 to the latest Gingerbread (2.3.3). Then I tried to update to 2.2.2. The same problem… Verification of the whole-file signature failed again.
More googling 
After reading through a lot of tutorials I came to xda-developers forum. They provided some guidelines, but the tutorial was not complete. Every try resulted in “E:failed to verify whole-file signature“. I did not want to unlock the boot-loader, so the search continued…
On the forum there was a link about how to prepare N1 for Gingerbread. And this was the starting bit that was needed to move the process forward.
NOTE: Going through the following steps will delete all you info from the phone! BACK UP FIRST!
The tutorial
Installation process can be followed on the video here
(watch on Youtube in high-quality)
Step One (from androidcentral forum)
I had to restore Android 2.2 on the phone before moving to 2.3.3. To do that I:
- Downloaded Passion-FRG33.zip ROM file from here.
- Renamed it PASSIMG.zip. (must be exact name!)
- Placed PASSIMG.zip to the root of my SD card on the phone.
- Turned off the phone.
- Then I had to turn on the phone while holding VOLUME DOWN button (hold down the button and press power button)
- Phone found the PASSIMG.zip file and by Accepting the install (click VOLUME UP) I got it installed
Step Two (from xda-dev forum)
Video part: 03:05-10:21 (for some reason the video starts again after 10:21. Please just ignore it 
- Downloaded the full 2.3.3 ROM from Google. Link here.
- Deleted the PASSIMG.zip file from the card. (<–IMPORTANT!!)
- Renamed the “656099b119f8.signed-passion-ota-102588.656099b1.zip” to update.zip (must be exact name!).
- Copied it to root folder of my SD card. (SD_card/update.zip)
- Turned off the phone.
- Turned on the phone while pushing the trackball’s button down.
- Selected BOOTLOADER-> RECOVERY on the screen with the skating Androids.
- Phone restarted and when Exclamation symbol appeared I pushed Power and Volume Up buttons. (At the same time!!! Might take several tries)
- Screen appeared where I, using trackball, selected “apply sdcard:update.zip“
Video
I created a “short” video about this update process. It shows update process in real time, so you’d have a reference point to see how long everything takes.
BTW, I guess I over-edited the video a bit too much… The actual error screen is not shown 
Please take a look at this video if interested.
Step ONE: 00:38-03:04 (installation more or less in real time)
Step TWO: 03:05-10:21 (installation in real time)
The End
Please feel free to comment and ask questions.
March 6, 2011 at 23:55
Thank you!
Had issues with updating, and this solved it!
March 8, 2011 at 02:30
Hi SaDia V
I tried this several times. When I load from bootloader, My phone does recognizes PASSIMG file during the white screen but when it comes to next black screen, it only says ‘ apply update.zip’ where as I didnt had any such file. I only had PASSIMG.zip file.
I also get this signature verification error when I try to update straight to 2.3.3 via update,zip method.
I am on stock unrooted 2.2.1 FR83D. no OTA yet and cant even update to manually,. This Signature verification failed error is still coming.
any help would be appreciated
thanks
aman
March 8, 2011 at 02:42
Hello Aman,
did you downgrade to 2.2 successfully? As far as I understand when you copy the passimg.zip file to the SD card it goes to bootlader menu instead of lunching hboot to flash the 2.2 (look at the first part of the video). If you do not get this screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEsHI-YE1WM&t=100 automatically (when there is only passimg.zip on the card, at least for me, it automatically loaded hboot and asked whether I want to update) maybe the name of the file is incorrect (check whether is not passimg.zip.zip or sth like that).
Let me know how it goes
March 25, 2011 at 12:03
I got success to Gingerbread update
Thanks a lot
April 8, 2011 at 23:12
It worked, thanks a lot dude! No more waiting on Voda’s stupid roms
April 18, 2011 at 08:28
no dice! i’ve done everything exactly as stated above still not working. I was able to get the PASSIMG.zip file to load successfully. Then, I deleted PASSIMG from sd card… then restarted as required… still i get (status 7) Installation aborted. What am I doing wrong??? I have an unlocked and rooted nexus one. any assistance is greatly appreciated. I desperately want gingerbread and can’t find anything that works on my phone.
BTW, automatic update does not work either.
April 19, 2011 at 00:33
Hey,
did it downgrade without any problems using passimg?
I’m not sure why it fails to load the new rom.
I’d suggest trying to do Step one again, just make sure that you start up the phone and let it boot up before doing step two.
Btw, try formatting you SD card (make a backup copy of all the music/movies/pictures before!).
April 29, 2011 at 02:33
Hi there – previously followed the update to manually install gingerbread but didn’t work – however your blog guiding me through the roll-back to 2.2 worked and I didn’t even have to install the update manually as once back to 2.2 I immediately got the OTA update to 2.3.3 and now have Gingerbread!
Thanks so much for sharing this information – you’re a star! **
April 29, 2011 at 02:48
I’m glad it worked
2.3.3 is cool 