How to Downgrade from Marshmallow to Lollipop (for Nexus Devices)

Marshmallow 6.0 is interesting and for all those users who have already updated Marshmallow 6.0 Android OS in their devices may just want to know on how they can roll back to the official Lollipop 5.1 Android OS. or you have updated your nexus device and now wants to back in lollipop due to following reasons we will help you to back in lollipop.

If for some reasons you hate Marshmallow or it is creating following problems in your nexus you should downgrade your android version with trick mensioned below

WIFI Mac Issue : In the latest Beta 3 release of Marshmallow 6.0, WIFI MAC address changes upon after every reboot.

Battery Drain and Heating Issue : Battery in Nexus 9 drains no less than water. For us in Marshmallow the device started heating which led to faster battery drain than in normal condition.

Force Close Issue : Even though it was a clean install, apps like twitter and Google Play Services are giving force close issues.

Pre Requisites before Downgrading from Marshmallow :

  Note : Make sure that you take a backup of all the data in your device as updating the device firmware will wipe your phone completely. With the help of below apps/ tips you can backup data present in your device.

SMS – SMS Backup & Restore
Call Log – Call Log Backup and Restore
Photos, Music and Videos – Take manual backup in your computer,
App Data – App history can be found in Google Play Store but the downloaded data in your apps will be lost and will have to be downloaded.

Keep in mind that battery left in your device should be a more than 50%. Make sure that ADB is properly configured in your computer. Without this it’s not possible to perform this downgrade.

Let’s proceed to the next step we have mentioned steps to downgrade the OS in your device.

Guide to Downgrade to Lollipop 5.1 from Marshmallow 6.0:

Download Lollipop 5.1 OS from the below mentioned link for your appropriate device.

Nexus 5
Nexus 6
Nexus 9 WiFi
Nexus 9 LTE

Once downloaded, extract the folder on Desktop.

Open the folder to extract the zip file as shown in the screen capture below.

Now, in your Windows computer press Shift + Right Click to select the “open Command Prompt here” as shown in the below screen grab.

Once done, turn Off your Nexus device so that it can be entered in the bootloader mode. Press Volume Down + Power Button in your Nexus device to enter the same.

Connect your device to computer with original USB cable and execute the below commands one after other to downgrade the device to Lollipop OS.

fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash cache cache.img
fastboot flash userdata userdata.img
fastboot flash system system.img

Please note that post executing all the above commands, it will take around 3 -4 minutes for rebooting the device and show the language preference. It may even take longer time sometimes.
Now you  are in Lollipop.

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