Unbrick, unroot and restore DROID Ultra to stock with factory firmware and RSD Lite

Root access has been obtained on the new released Motorola devices including the DROID Ultra (XT1080). However, since there’s a new security feature applied to all new Moto devices, make the root exploit not running smoothly. If you ever experience any problems during the rooting process or when flashing a mod/custom ROM, then restore Ultra Droid to stock could be the last solution when several other methods including Factory Data reset can’t solve the problem.

Unbrick unroot and restore DROID Ultra to stock with factory firmware and RSD Lite

As we know, most of the latest Motorola devices released this year has system write protection, which means we’re not able to delete or add any files in the system partition although we have root access. So, at this point we can’t completely get rid of bloatware apps on DROID Ultra, replacing the stock battery with battery percentage graphical as well as modify some other Moto User Interface, mainly because all of those files saved on the system partition. The point is, we still need another exploits to bypass the system write protection.

Motorola DROID Ultra back to stock, unroot and unbrick by using RSD Lite

In some cases, factory restore to stock firmware using RSD Lite can also unroot and recover our bricked DROID Ultra, considering that this method will attempt to reset your smartphone software back to stock/normal condition, just like the first time the device is out of the box. All settings that you have done will be lost and it will back to the default settings. So you should backup all important data before restoring your Droid Ultra to stock:

  1. To be able to connect our device with a computer, then we need DROID Ultra device drivers.
  2. In order to flash a stock firmware, we need RSD Lite app which you can download here.
  3. Download the stock factory firmware for Verizon Motorola DROID Ultra.
  4. Once downloaded, open and extract the zipped firmware file by using Winzip or 7zip.
  5. Open the extracted folder and look for a file with an XML extension. Open the file (*.xml) with Notepad, you’ll see many command lines there, look for the line that contains “getvar” (for example “step operation = “getvar”) and remove it, after that save the changes.
  6. Run RSD Lite app, open the XML file that was previously edited.
  7. To flash stock firmware, we have put our phone to fastboot mode.
  8. Now connect the phone to the PC/Laptop via USB cable, we recommend using the original USB cable that’s included when you buy this phone.
  9. Now look at the bottom column, if your phone is properly connected and the device drivers are installed, then your device will be detected, just click on the recognized device and you will see the complete information of your smartphone on the Device Properties.
  10. Now it’s time to flash, just hit the “Start” button to start out.

Restore DROID Ultra to stock software with RSD Lite lasted in few minutes (15-25 minutes), you can see exactly what processes are running by looking at the Status. After the flashing process is done, the phone will be rebooted automatically, after fully boot up our DROID Ultra (XT1080) would return to the stock factory firmware.

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