After months of waiting, Gingerbread is finally spreading beyond its Nexus S roots. While we showed you this morning how to check if your Nexus One is up for the current round of OTA updates, we’d understand if your patience is wearing a bit thin and you just want to get your hands on the darn update, already. Luckily for you, both Nexus One and Nexus S versions of Android 2.3.3 are now available for download, ready to install ahead of OTA availability.

Nexus S users likely aren’t so anxious to get 2.3.3 installed, so here’s the upgrade procedure for the original Nexus One, courtesy of Android Central:

1. Download the update.

2. Rename the file to update.zip. Note that if you’re using Windows, just rename it to “update” (no quotes, of course) because it’s already a zipped file.

3. Copy the update.zip file onto your microSD card.

4. With your Nexus One off, hold down the trackball and press the power button.

5. You’ll be booted into a white screen with three Android robots on skateboards. Select “Bootloader.”

6. On the next screen, select “Recovery.”

7. Your phone will reboot, giving you a picture of the Android robot and an exclamation point inside a triangle.

8. Now press the power button and volume up button at the same time. It could take a couple of tries.

9. Now (using the trackball this time) choose “Apply sdcard:update.zip” and let things run their course.

Stock Nexus Ones should have no problem with the update, though you may run into snags if you’ve tried rooting the phone and bringing it back to a base configuration. There’s a fix for that, though it’s a bit complicated.

If the thought of all this flashing has you cringing at the mere mention of the word “brick”, you can always just sit back, relax, and wait for the OTA Gingerbread to come to you.

Download: Nexus One, Nexus S

Source: Android Central

Via: Droid Dog