A few weeks ago I bought a Nexus One from Vodafone, which unfortunately comes with a Vodafone-specific firmware that doesn’t allow upgrading to any new versions that haven’t been blessed by corporate in the UK. I’d prefer to have the stock firmware, and I’d particularly prefer to have the recent 2.2.1 update, so I have reflashed it to the standard Google firmware.
I used the instructions from here (a Vodafone UK forum thread!), and it all went smoothly. There’s no unlocking of the boot loader and no rooting of the device involved. The update took fifteen minutes or so and progressed pretty much on its own. I had to set a few things up again afterwards – the SwiftKey keyboard wasn’t activated, and Google Earth and Sky Map weren’t automatically restored the way the other applications were. No major issues.
I’m now running stock FRG83 Android 2.2.1, automatically upgraded from FRG33 shortly after install (make sure it’s on wifi not too long after update, or it’ll pull down 80MB over the mobile network). I started from the Vodafone FRF91, which is distinguished from the stock FRF91 by the kernel version display in “About Phone” showing “haley@…” instead of “android-build@…”. Search terms mentioned, I’ll just say it all went well, even if there were perhaps other things I could have done with my time right now.