dfu-util is a program that implements the Host (PC) side of the USB DFU (Universal Serial Bus Device Firmware Upgrade) protocol.

In the Openmoko project, we use this program to communicate with our specially enhanced u-boot boot loader, which implements the DFU device side.

Using dfu-util and your smartphone, you can

* transfer and flash partitions in internal NAND Flash.
* transfer anything into RAM
o this can be used for fast development cycles of low-level code such as kernels without flashing them
* read out the current internal NAND partitions
o this is an easy and efficient way of doing full backups of your phone