How to update the firmware of [ Taiwan Mobile Amazing A32 ] to v2.0
The Amazing A32 is a flagship phone released by Taiwan Mobile. Being one of the more affordable phones, it comes with a measly 1 GB of ram and only 8 GB of storage. While not considered a powerhouse by any means, it can still perform most basic smartphone functions reasonably well, thanks to its 4 processor cores.
Controversy
On January 2021, various news outlets reported a security issue on the Amazing A32 phone model, which has been found to contain malware installed during the manufacturing process. In response, Taiwan Mobile issued a recall of the A32 model, and set up the following page where users can download a cleaned copy of the stock ROM, tagged as V2.0:
I'm writing this post mainly to provide an English version of the whole process, since the website offers all the instructions in Chinese. I do own one of the affected A32 units and I can proudly say that I have successfully upgraded the firmware. This post is to also document the procedure in case I need to perform the update again in the future.
The update process
A few reminders first before we continue:
- The update requires an SD card that has at least 2GB of storage space.
- The phone to upgrade must be able to turn on and function normally.
- This process may take some time to complete. To prevent possible errors, connect the phone to a power source, or at least ensure that the battery level is above 40% before starting.
- Surprisingly, the software upgrade does not result in the loss of data. However, I would still recommend backing up your data before updating.
Also, all the images used in this post are directly lifted from the update page. I would also like to stress out that this procedure is only applicable to the TWM Amazing A32 model, which looks like this:
Step 1: Download and transfer
First, we need to acquire the updated rom and transfer it to an SD card.
- Go to the official website and download the updated ROM.
The file I got was and was around 1 GB. - Copy the ROM to an SD card, and insert the SD card into the A23 unit.
- Using the phone's file manager, verify that the A23 can read the SD card and see the copied ROM.
Alternatively, you can just use the phone to directly download the ROM into the SD card. I just prefer to download the file using a PC since I wasn't really confident that the A23 can download a 1 GB file fast enough via wifi.
Step 2: Enter Recovery Mode
We now need to boot the phone in Recovery Mode to continue. The process requires pressing the physical buttons on the right side of the phone.
- Turn off the phone.
- Hold down the + buttons until the phone turns on and the Select Boot Mode screen appears.
- Press the key to move to the Recovery Mode position.
- Press the key to enter Recovery Mode.
Step 3: Start the update
The Recovery Mode menu provides options to select which ROM we want to apply.
- Press the key to select Apply update from SD card.
- Press the button to enter the selection screen.
- Press the key to highlight the ROM copied earlier.
- Press the button to start the update process.
- Wait for the update to complete.
- Once finished, select Reboot system now, then press the button to reboot the phone.
Step 4: Verify successful installation
Last step is to verify if the installation was a success.
- Allow some time for the phone to finish rebooting. This may take a few minutes.
- Once the phone has fully started up, go to the following menu to verify that the update was successful.
> > - The build number should now show .
Success!
That's it. While we're here, you may also consider doing the following:
- Root the phone
- Install lighter version of apps
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