A little while ago I got myself an original[1] Wileyfox Swift to replace my ageing Samsung S4 Mini. The Amazon page I bought it from gave the impression that it would run Android 7, but that page was (and likely still is)[2] really confusing as it covered multiple versions of the Swift line up.

The phone I received came running Android 5.0.1 (Lollipop), which is pretty ancient, and yet the check for updates always reported that no updates were found. I went looking for a way to manually update, and found Cyanogen Update Tracker. There’s a footnote on the downloads page that specifically refers to my phone and the version of Android it carried (YOG7DAS2FI):

Wileyfox Swift (OLD VERSION) – Install this package only if your Wileyfox Swift is running one of the following Cyanogen OS versions: YOG4PAS1T1, YOG4PAS33J or YOG7DAS2FI.
Afterwards, install the package marked as “LATEST VERSION”.

As things turned out I didn’t need the “LATEST VERSION” as over the air (OTA) updates sprung to life as soon as I did the first update[3].

Doing the manual update

1. Check that you’re on ‘Wileyfox Swift (OLD VERSION)’ by going into Settings > About Phone and confirming that the OS Version is YOG4PAS1T1, YOG4PAS33J or YOG7DAS2FI (mine was the latter).
2. Download cm-13.0-ZNH0EAS2NH-crackling-signed-9c92ed2cde_recovery.zip (or whatever Cyanogen Update Tracker has on offer) onto the phone, keeping it on internal storage in the Downloads folder[4].
3. Turn the phone off.
4. Turn the phone on into recovery mode by holding the volume down button whilst pressing the power button.
5. Use the volume button to move to and power button to select Install update > Install from internal memory > Browse to Downloads and select the zip file that was downloaded.
6. Wait – it will take a while to install the update (Android with spinning matrix in front of it) and a while longer to update apps.

After the manual update

As soon as my phone was ready it started nagging me to accept OTA updates, which eventually took me to Android 7.1.2 (Nougat).

Notes

[1] I got an original Swift rather than the more recent Swift 2X as the original can handle two (micro) SIMs and a MicroSD card at the same time, which suits my travel needs of UK SIM (for Three ‘Feel at Home’), US SIM (for local calls in the US) and MicroSD (for my music and podcasts). Sadly the 2X makes you choose between that second SIM (one of which needs to be a nano SIM) and MicroSD.
[2] An example of an increasingly frequent anti pattern on Amazon where entirely different products have their Q&A and reviews all munged together.
[3] Though perhaps I could have saved some time here, as it took about 4 OTA updates to get me to the latest version.
[4] My initial attempt to upgrade from my MicroSD card didn’t work – perhaps because it’s 64GB.