Update
This process does not work anymore since Chris Walsh has taken down the utility after being contacted by Microsoft. Microsoft has told him that flashing the phone using ChevronWP7.Updater may have unknown consequences to the future phone functionality. Read more about it here.

I have gotten impatient waiting for my Samsung Focus to receive NoDo update. Thanks to Chevron we do not need to be hostages of AT&T. I followed instructions on My Coding Adventures to successfully update my phone. Here is how I have updated Samsung Focus from version 7004 (original version) to 7390 version. These instructions are for 64-bit only. If you don’t have a 64-bit OS, then it is time to get one.

1. Installed Windows Phone Support Tools (x64)
2. Killed all Zune processes.
3. Plugged the phone in and waited for 30 seconds.
4. Unzipped ChevronWP7.Updater
5. Run ChevronWP7.Updater. The command line interface will opened and ask me to select the phones language. Warning: If your language is not present, do not continue. Selected my language (0 which is USA). The process started the update to pre-NoDo first providing the information at each step. I enjoyed knowing what was going on during the update process.

6. The phone was rebooted as the last step of the process. After the reboot I verified the OS version in the phone settings which was showing 7.0.7008.0.

7. Since the 7008 version is pre-NoDo, I had to run ChevronWP7.Updater one more time. So I did.

8. At the end, the phone rebooted one more time to complete the final update to NoDo. Following the reboot, I went to the settings to verify the version number. As expected, the version was 7.0.7390 this time around.

Conclusion
The NoDo update was smooth and has succeeded without any glitches. Thanks to Chris at My Coding Adventures, the creator of ChevronWP7.Updater. He has liberated us from the AT&T shackles.

Update (5/2/2011): Even though I had flashed my phone, I have received the official update as if no previous flashing was performed on it. It has been few days since the official update was installed and everything has been working fine. Microsoft’s warning that flashing the phone may prevent future updates does not appear to be valid.
Update (7/1/2011): I had used Walshed Phone Support Tool to return my device to normal state in order to be able to receive future updates. Last night I started installing Mango update and receive error code 80180048. This is a known issue. See my other post for a workaround.