Rooting

Sep

Thinking About Rooting The Kindle Fire? Amazon Won't Put Up A Fight To Stop You!

Amazon's new tablet, the Kindle Fire, has been grabbing all of the headlines following Amazon's press event yesterday, and rightfully so. Priced at an aggressive $199, it has virtually alienated all other Android tablet manufacturers in one fell swoop, offering potential buyers a great piece of hardware and all of the content Amazon has to offer to back it up.

Despite this, there are still a few things that the Fire won't offer. It's running a heavily skinned version of Android 2.3, so the experience will be completely different to other Android tablets currently available. Also, it doesn't ship ...

Mar

[Exclusive] How To Root The HTC Thunderbolt - Instructions By Team AndIRC (V1.02 2011/03/18)

Posted by Justin Case in HTC, Mods, News, Thunderbolt (Mecha), Verizon Wireless

Last Updated: March 26th, 2011

Update: This method is outdated - please refer to this guide instead.

Jamezelle, jcase (that's me), and all of AndIRC (i.e. everyone - AndIRC is an open dev group), the same folks who rooted the pre-production Thunderbolt in February, proudly present:

A Very Dirty HTC Thunderbolt Root V1.02 2011/03/18

Pros

Root with read/write access to /system
Ability to downgrade and flash any RUU (i.e. signed firmware)

Cons

No custom recovery [yet]
No custom kernels [yet]
The root procedure currently requires flashing a slightly older version of the firmware (RUU_Mecha_VERIZON_WWE_1.05.605.0_Radio_1.07.00.0108r_NV_8K_1.38_9K_1.54_release_166255), which could potentially have more bugs. Right now, we

...

Feb

Root No Longer Required For Taking Screenshots In Android 2.3.3

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Gingerbread 2.3, Nexus One (Passion), Nexus S (Crespo/Soju)

While rooted Android users have been taking screenshots on their phones for a while now, stock, non-rooted owners have been left out of the fun (there are some notable exceptions to this rule, like the EVO 4G). No longer, according to Paul O'Brien, one of the visionaries in the Android community, who posted the following in reply to Cyanogen (aka Android god):

We haven't been able to confirm what exactly changed in 2.3.3, but according to Android Central, screenshots are now possible without root "because of some changes in the way the SurfaceFlinger service handles what it captures from the ...

Dec

Android Devs To Manufacturers and Carriers: It's Not Rooting, It's Openness

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Editorials, News

The Android dev team has generally been assumed to have a passive stance on rooting and unlocking Android devices. That is, do it if you want - we won't stop you. And there's certainly evidence abound supporting this - Google's Nexus One could be unlocked via a simple ADB (Android Device Bridge) command: fastboot oem unlock. The same is true of the Nexus S.

Of course, it only makes sense - Google doesn't want to put any unnecessary barriers between Android developers and the open source OS, especially on developer phones.

But a new post on the official Android ...

Nov

T-Mobile G2 Now Has Permanent Root, Desire Z And Desire HD Come Along For The Ride

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Desire HD (Ace), Desire Z (Vision), G2 (Vision), HTC, News

People want to own their phones. Try as they might to frustrate their customers, networks and manufacturers are fighting a losing battle against the hacking community. The latest victory is an enormous one: the HTC Vision, better known as the T-Mobile G2 and Desire Z has finally been defeated. That pesky eMMC chip locking up the /system of the G2 has been circumvented, and full, glorious, permanent root has been attained:

12:04 < scotty2> -rw-rw-rw- root root 0 2010-11-09 03:00 test

Yep, that's full read and write permissions there, and it's permanent too. The #g2root channel has had an idea ...

Oct

ZTE Blade / Orange San Francisco Review: Two-Thirds Of A Nexus One For One-Third The Price

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Blade, Devices By Manufacturer, Orange, Phone Reviews, Reviews, ZTE

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Introduction

Since the advent of Android in 2009, the family of devices running Google's mobile OS has grown from one handset to now hundreds and possibly thousands of unique models. In recent months, Android has seen an explosion of devices coming from lesser-known Asian manufacturers, with one of the main selling points being price. The manufacturers realized that with Android they had a readily and freely accessible operating system, a large market of potential customers, and all they had to do was put together a cheap device to capitalize on Android's continued growth. Unfortunately, these devices often cut corners where ...

Aug

Samsung Captivate/Vibrant Now Rootable With One Click™

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Captivate, Mods, Vibrant

Android dev TGA_Gunnman has been added to Amazon’s hit list for this latest in a litany of single-click phone unlocking methods. In spite of the impending lawsuit (not really), his Samsung Galaxy S One-Click Root program does exactly what it says on the, err, titlebar.

There are separate versions for the Captivate and Vibrant, so make sure you get the right one. All users have to do is download the program - currently Windows only - run it, and click the One Click Root button with their Captivate/Vibrant connected up to USB. Now all you have left is to ...

Aug

Motorola DROID X Gets Single-Click Root — On PC Or On Phone, It’s Your Choice

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Droid X (Shadow), Mods

A common complaint leveled against Android is that it’s too technical or too difficult to use. This is especially the case when it comes to hacking around on your phone. While the command line may be the interface of choice for some Android users, it’s not exactly the most user friendly of solutions. Enter one-click rooting, something that iPhone jailbreakers should already be familiar with. One click. Can’t get easier than that, right? All it takes is downloading a simple Windows application, a click of a button, and BOOM (to use an Apple phrase) you’re all SuperUser-y.

For those ...

Jul

United States Library Of Congress: Jailbreaking/Unlocking/Rooting Your Phone Is A-OK With The Government - Here Are The Implications

Posted by David Ruddock in News

If you’ve cruised the blogosphere today, you’ve probably noticed a number of articles talking about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the Library of Congress having decided to add a few exemptions to the sweeping piece of legislation’s authority. Why is this a big deal? And is it a big deal at all?

On the latter, in some ways yes, and I’ll explain why only some later. For the former, it signifies a change in attitude over what constitutes infringement of digital copyright for two major pieces of technology, one of which we’re interested in here at Android Police ...

Jul

How The Mighty Has Fallen – The DROID X Has Been Rooted!

Posted by Ron Hamelin in Droid X (Shadow), Mods, News, Verizon Wireless

This article discusses rooting your device. THIS BREACHES [VOIDS] THE TERMS OF YOUR PHONE’S WARRANTY AND YOUR VERIZON SERVICE CONTRACT. Proceed at your own risk.

For those of you who have been wondering if the Droid X would ever be rooted, you can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. The folks over at AllDroid just posted that Verizon’s biggest and baddest Android device has been rooted!

So those of you new to Android and/or the DROID X, you might wonder what this “rooting” business is all about. We have published an article just for you: Rooting Explained + Top ...

Jun

"UnrEVOked" - A Painless EVO 4G Rooting Method, Coming Tomorrow. Creator Says EVO Vulnerable To Hackers Unless Rooted

Posted by Chris Dehghanpoor in Carriers, Devices By Manufacturer, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, News, Sprint

Well, this is fun. Minutes after I completed and published my post further detailing how to root your EVO, I catch a teaser for ‘unrevoked’ - a ‘painless’ EVO rooting method that’s to be released tomorrow. Unrevoked is the work of Matt Mastracci, who gave us our first sneak peak at a rooted EVO, and one of the developers who contributed to the hack.

As Matt details here, there are several critical security flaws present in the custom Sprint software included on the EVO, and these flaws were the driving force behind releasing an easy ‘anyone can do ...

Jun

Got Root? EVO 4G Rooting Instructions Released

Posted by Chris Dehghanpoor in Carriers, Devices By Manufacturer, EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, Mods, News, Sprint, Tutorials

This article mentions rooting and the flashing of non-stock roms. If you’re unfamiliar with either term, hit up our primers here and here for additional information

Good news for those of you that were hoping to root your EVO the minute you tear it free from the box: the instructions and files needed in order to root the device have been officially released online.

User ‘toastcfh’ over at XDA-Developers, who’s been providing us with teaser images and video of his rooted EVO for the last couple of weeks, has come clean with detailed instructions on how you can get sweet, ...

May

Custom ROMs For Android Explained - Here Is Why You Want Them

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Mods, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: October 10th, 2011

Introduction

Ever wondered what the whole Android custom ROM scene was about?

What is all this talk of installing "aftermarket", custom upgrades on your phone?

Who needs it? Why do it? Is it safe?

Don't fret - I'm here to explain - the AndroidPolice Academy is now in session.

By the way, the word ROM means Read Only Memory, but has migrated in the modding community to mean an actual custom OS image that you install into the ROM area of your phone.

Also, the word kernel essentially means the heart of the OS - it's the

...

Apr

HTC Desire Root Instructions + Apps2SD Now Live

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Desire (Bravo/BravoC), HTC, Mods, News

Last Updated: April 2nd, 2011

Yesterday, we reported on an exciting announcement for all HTC Desire owners - @PaulOBrien managed to root the device and promised detailed instructions to be posted today.

Well, he's backed the promise up with action and as of this morning, full instructions have been posted.

Paul notes that HTC made it much harder to access key partitions and write any data to them, compared to, say, the Nexus One. This made the process of rooting extremely complicated and left it a quite crippled (he's still working on uncrippling it).

The current set of instructions (29/Apr r3) is below - ...

Apr

201

[Updated] Rooting Explained + Top 5 Benefits Of Rooting Your Android Phone

Posted by Sarah Morrow in Mods, Tips

Last Updated: June 26th, 2011

In this article, I will discuss all kinds of aspects of rooting your Android phone and the benefits that come with it.

Maybe you've heard about "rooting" a phone from a friend or read about it somewhere on the Internet. Maybe you even *kind of* know what it is but aren't sure what you can do with it. Or maybe you are already running a rooted phone and looking for more ways you can utilize it. Whatever the case may be, this article is for you.