Making An Old Nexus 7(2012) Useful In 2020

Justin Schreiber,Wed Jul 29 2020•blog_post

If for some reason you are holding on to this old tablet, and refuse to upgrade to an iPad like a normal person, here are some steps you can take to my make your old tablet more useful. The Nexus 7 was unfortunately left with a slow unusable version of Android Lollipop (5.1.1) before it was discontinued but, there is an easy way to fix that and even run Android Nougat

Make sure any important data, cat pictures, etc is backed up safely off your tablet. The following steps will require completely wiping the tablet.
Modifications made to your tablet may prevent it from passing SafetyNet checks. ie: Netflix may not show up in the playstore.
Most of these instructions will be for the model I own the Nexus 7 (2012) Wifi aka Grouper but many should apply to the Nexus 7(2012) 3G as well. If you're unsure check the XDA Forums.

A usb micro cable
Time
A Computer With Win, Mac or Linux

Prequisites

Steps

Make sure usb debugging is enabled. If it is not already go in to Setting About and press the Build Number 5 Times until it says you are a developer. Then In your developer options settings make sure USB debuggin is also turned on. This will look slightly different from these screenshots. [Put Screenshots here]

settings developer_options

Make sure you are open a terminal or command prompt in the directory of the adb platform-tools. run
```
 abd reboot bootloader 
 fastboot oem unlock
 
```
Flash TWRP (the guide from XDA says to use CWM (clockwork mod) but it should make no difference until later) then run
```
 fastboot flash recovery path-to-img/twrp-grouper-recovery.img
 
```
Enter recovery
```
 adb reboot recovery
```
Mount /system

mount

Type in Terminal

 adb shell
 cd /system
 mv recovery-from-boot.p recovery-from-boot.bak

If you want to stop here install SuperSU from the link above and reboot into android 5.1.1. Otherwise, proceed to the next section.

Prerequisites

Steps

Factory reset through TWRP
Install the newest version of the AOSP. I recommend the one linked above as it includes built in optimizations that have made my tablet run smoother than how it ran on an older cutom rom.
(Optional if you don't want GAPPS aka playstore, etc) Reboot to Recovery and install the linked GAPPs package
(Optional if you don't want root) download Magisk from the link above and install it with TWRP