Since I first received my Nexus S, I’ve left it un-rooted and pure and I’ve let it get updated organically through OTA updates. Well, those days are officially over since it was announced on November 13th that the Nexus S would not receive the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean update. In other words, the Nexus S is officially “outdated” which means that in order to get the latest Android OS, I’ll have to go the CyanogenMod route, which is currently at version 10. Or buy a new phone.

Well, I’m not buying a new phone, so I’ll be installing CyanogenMod.

(Fine, I wasn’t a CyanogenMod early adopter. You can all stop looking at me that way.)

Now, I’m not going to write up a whole How To, since the folks over at CyanogenMod have done that for you on their wiki, by phone model. Obviously, we’re focusing on the Nexus S, so the guide that I’m going to follow is here. I will mention a few preliminaries:

To start, you have to unlock the bootloader (i.e., root your phone). You need fastboot for that. In Ubuntu, add the repo and install it like so:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

Secondly, you probably want to back up your device, etc, etc, so use Titanium Backup or something like that. The free version will probably do what you want (your phone needs to be rooted for it to work), but the paid version is a lot more versatile.

Then, just follow the steps in the wiki and install the latest stable release or hey,  live on the edge and install the nightly build. Every night.

I should mention that Cyanogenmod Jelly Bean 4.2 isn’t officially out yet for the Nexus S, but it’s coming soon according to knzo and this article.