A method for receiving, storing, and applying an update package to modify an original image stored within non-volatile flash memory devices. More specifically, the present design provides a download agent responsible for communicating with a server to transfer and store the update package; and an update agent responsible for verifying, decompressing and decoding the update package. The present design separates non-essential operating system (OS) components and applications from the core OS, stores non-essential OS components, applications, and download agent as a single image in a read-only file system. This image may be updated by applying an update package created by running a binary differencing engine on two pre-built file system images representing the current and new file systems to modify the stored image. Additionally, the present design applies an update package to the core OS, which includes the update agent.