If you are an Andriod user who likes to install custom firmware on your device, try various custom recoveries, manipulate the device bootloader or pretty much do anything that allows you to take advantage of the freedom that Android provides, you would more than likely come across the term ADB.ADB is the abbreviation for 'Android Debug Bridge' and provides a terminal/command line interface for interaction between your computer and Android device. It is packaged as part of the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) and allows developers to gain access to or modify the internal components of the Android operating system. Since modding a firmware or installing custom ROMs often deals with changing parts of the system, ADB is essential to gain those abilities. Hence ADB is a must for anyone looking to make any advanced-level changes to your Android smartphone or tablet,
Another common term which you will come across these days is Fastboot, which is generally joined with ADB. Alongside ADB, you'll often see Fastboot as one of the required configuration components, especially for the newer devices.
Fastboot is a command line tool used to directly flash the file system in Android devices from a host via USB. It allows flashing of unsigned partition images. It is disabled in production devices since USB support has been disabled in the bootloader.
How To Setup ADB & Fastboot For Android On Windows
While rooting tools sometimes come with a version of ADB and Fastboot included, its always best to download the latest Android SDK in order to get the newest versions of these tools.
- Download the Android SDK. By default you will be asked to download the SDK with the the ADT Bundle. You can choose to download the SDK Tools only (around 100MB) by selecting 'Download for other Platforms'.
- Extract the SDK Tools to a convenient location (eg: C:\android-sdk\)
- You will first need to run SDK Manager and select Install packaged (leave it on default to get the latest tools).
- After SDK Manager has finished downloading a folder called 'platform-tools' will be created inside the Android SDK folder.
- Now you can run ADB by simply running ADB (C:\android-sdk\platform-tools\adb) on your command prompt.