Today I got a OnePlus Two without an invite, from one of the many crazy providers with European warehouses. Woo-hoo. Unfortunately, recent reports state they come with malware. Since this phone will not be used by me, I'll clean it up. Here are the steps I took:

Preliminary steps

First, booting up the phone. It's a nice one:

oneplus-2

It looks like it has some bits that should not be there (floating apps, battery saver ...).

I do have the android SDK installed, so I do have adb and fastboot. if not, please go and install them for your platform. The OnePlus forum has two tutorials for Windows and Mac.

developer mode

To go further, I had to go into developer mode. Since this is a repeat operation, here are the steps:

  1. Unlock he phone
  2. Open the Settings app (has a cog-like icon)
  3. Go to About phone (at the end of the options)
  4. Click 7 times on the Build number
  5. Go back to Settings
  6. Find the newly enabled Developer options
  7. Enable USB debugging
  8. On your PC, execute adb devices -l and accept the connection on your phone

Unlock the bootloader

  • On your phone, enter the developer mode
  • Reboot into bootloader with adb reboot bootloader
  • .. The phone should show something like "Fastboot mode"
  • Execute the unlock: fastboot oem unlock

Install TWRP

  • On your PC: download TWRP image (link for the relevant image is here)
  • On your phone, enter the developer mode
  • Enter the bootloader mode again: adb reboot bootloader
  • Flash the recovery: fastboot flash recovery <TWRP_IMAGE.img>
  • Reboot via fastboot fastboot boot <TWRP_IMAGE.img>. This should reboot in TWRP. If it reboots to fastboot mode, force a reboot from the phone (Vol Down and Power)

Root via flashing SuperSU

This is simpler...

  • Boot the phone into normal mode
  • Copy the SuperSU file via the Android File Transfer app
  • Reboot to recovery
  • Flash the SuperSU file
  • Wipe Dalvik and Cache
  • Reboot the system

Flashing the ROM

  • Use ADB to push the downlaod ROM to the device: adb push OnePlus2Oxygen...zip /sdcard/
  • Wipe everything (Cache, Dalvik, System, Data)
  • Flash the zip (and whatever else you may want to flash)
  • Reboot the phone

All in all should be a 1-hour operation.

Good luck!