So, a new software update was released for the Droid 3. My current version was 5.5.959.

This morning a popup appeared about the update. All was already downloaded, and I could apply the update.

So I applied the update, the system started and there was a failure applying the update :(.

Not too happy about this I started debugging where the problem could be. I found some instructions on how to apply the update manually. But first I had to download the update and copy it to the SDCard. So I just went to the settings menu and let the phone download the update again.

After the download was ready, I logged into the phone and tried to find where it had downloaded the file. As the download was within 30 minutes, I just looked for files that were modified in the last 30 minutes.

So the files are under /cache. Now I needed to copy the zip file to the root of the sdcard.

With the file in place, I now had to shut down the phone.

With the phone powered off, press x and the power button simultaneously, and wait until the android logo appears.

The android logo should now be on the screen.

Now press volume up and volume down simultaneously. A menu should appear.

Use the volume buttons to navigate to the option “apply update from sdcard” and press the powerbutton briefly.

Highlight the update file that was copied to the sdcard and briefly press the powerbutton.

The updated started, but it failed again. Only this time there was an error message.

So there is a problem with the pre-check on the file /system/build.prop. This is the same file I had to modify to refrain the phone from using the Verizon SMS center with my Vodafone sim. So I booted the phone, reversed the change I made to the build.prop file, powered the phone off and retried the update.

This time it came through the pre-check and applied the update :)

After the update had finished the menu appeared again.

I selected to reboot the phone.

After the boot was complete the update had been applied!

The phone is now on 5.6.890 :)

But I did loose root access :(

But that is quite normal after the installation of an update.

This time I regained root with the newly available Linux One Click Root script. It worked flawlessly :) Download the file:

Linux One Click Root

Unzip the file and run the run_to_root_your_droid3.sh script.

Plug in the droid 3 and select the PC Mode on the phone. The script now starts doing its business.

The phone reboot a couple of times, and gives an error on installation of the Superuser.apk package. That is normal, my phone was previously rooted, so the package was already installed.

With root access regained I re-patched the build.props file so I can send SMSes again.

Update complete :)