I’ve got a HTC Magic [Australian, through Vodafone, 32B]. I’ve had it for a year now. It’s old, the hardware is somewhat antiquated, but I still love it to bits, and thanks to crazy kids like @cyanogen, it can stay up to date, OS wise.

I recently switched from 4.2.15 to 5.0.7, but the switch was not without its hiccups, so I thought I may as well try and simplify the XDA instructions [as they’re somewhat overwhelming for n00bs like me], and add in some additional steps/information that they might take for granted.

I’ll repeat it again, I was rocking CyanogenMod 4.2.15 before this, meaning that I’ve already rooted my phone. Surprisingly, it was an absolute bitch to get back to 1.5 since I’d upgraded to vanilla 1.6.

Oh, and I should probably add in a disclaimer. There’s a chance you’ll brick your phone, and I refuse to take no responsibility for it! Having said that, it’s pretty safe. “You gotta risk it to get the biscuit”

Download the roms:

There’s two roms you’ll have to download.

• CyanogenMod 5.0.7
• Google Applications 2.1 – This contains the Android 2.1 versions of Google apps like Gmail, the Android market, etc

Download both these roms and stick them on your SD card. You might as well do this now so you can install them straight from Recovery Mode once you wipe.

Backing up:

If you’re upgrading from 4.2.15, you’ll have to wipe your phone, so, you’ll have to do a Nandroid backup. In fact, unless you’re on CM5 already, you should really wipe.

I’m using Amon_Ra’s recovery, by the by.

1. Boot into Recovery Mode by turning off your device then powering it on while holding Power+Home.
2. If you should get a triangle icon with an exclamation point, hit ALT + L to get to the menu.
3. Once in Recovery Mode, select “Create Nandroid backup.” This will create a folder on your sdcard named “nandroid.”
4. Wait for it to complete.

Nandroid saved me quite a few times. It pretty much creates an image of your phone at a point in time, and thank god for that. You can go crazy with your phone and know that you have an easy way to just press a few buttons and go back in time safely.

If you need to restore…

1. 1. Boot into Recovery Mode by turning off your device then powering it on while holding Power+Home.
2. 2. If you should get a triangle icon with an exclamation point, hit ALT + L to get to the menu.
3. 3. Once in Recovery Mode, select “restore from latest backup” This will take some time, but eventually, it will finish (have patience young grasshopper).

All my apps were already on the SD card, but I’m a sentimental guy, and I wanted to keep all my sms messages and call logs, so I used Titanium Backup. Of course, you can also use it to back up apps if they’re on your phone’s memory.

1. Open Titanium Backup.
2. Select the ‘Backup/Restore’ tab.
3. Press ‘menu’ on your phone and select ‘Batch’.
4. Select ‘Backup all user apps + system data’ just to be safe. When it comes to restoring though, I’ll point out the two that seem to restore the call logs and messages.

Scan the code below on your phone to go to the Android Market and download Titanium Backup.

Wiping:

Always scary, but as long as you’ve backed up, you should be ok.

1. Boot into Recovery Mode.
2. Scroll down and select ‘Wipe data/factory reset’.
3. STAY in Recovery Mode.

Installing:

1. Right, so you’ve backed up, wiped, and are now sitting in Recovery Mode.
2. Select ‘Apply sdcard: choose zip’ and choose ‘update-cm-5.0.7-DS-signed.zip’.
3. Let the installation complete and STAY in Recovery Mode.
4. Select ‘Apply sdcard: choose zip’ and choose ‘gapps-ds-ERE36B-signed.zip’.
5. Select ‘Reboot system now’.
6. Wait a while. By “while”, I’m talking 5-10 minutes, possibly longer.
7. Win!

If your apps were already on your SD card, they should already be there. Your home screens will look kind of different though, so be prepared to move/add shortcuts again.

Restoring [OPTIONAL]:

As I said before, I wanted my call logs and messages, and you might care for it, so feel free to skip this step.

1. Open ‘Titanium Backup’.
2. Select the ‘Backup/Restore’ tab.
3. Look for ‘[CONTACTS/CAL..’ <- Call logs, I thunk
4. Select ‘Backup !’
5. Look for ‘[SMS/MMS/APN]’ <- Messages, I thunk
6. Select ‘Backup !’
7. Reboot your phone, and they should all be there.

This restoration actually screwed me over the first time around, because I restored EVERYTHING using the batch option, and I only realised later, that EVERYTHING meant settings related to Android 1.6 Google apps, which is why I wasn’t getting push email via Gmail, and why I couldn’t download anything from the market >.< I actually went back to 1.6 using Nandroid, because I was so frustrated with the lack of push email, and then read up on it again and figured the batch restore caused some conflicts.

Well, that was supposed to be a short post in my mind /facepalm

Also, thanks to @robertsparis, my Android soundboard for anything to do with modding.