How to Root Android Phone – Best, Safe & Easy Way to Root Your Android
“Rooting” your Android phone—giving yourself “root” or administrator access to its OS—will unlock your handset’s full potential, you could get better battery life, faster performance, deeper customization options, and other benefits. However, the process itself differs from phone to phone, and the root methods are constantly improving, so we can’t explain to you how to do it in this article—it’d be outdated by the time youread this page. Instead, we can answer some of your ques-tions and point you in the right direction.
Isn’t rooting my phone illegal? Nope. The u.S. federal government recognized the legalityof rooting a phone in july 2010.
Is rooting my phone worth the trouble? In my opinion, yes. My phone is faster than it has ever been,the battery lasts longer, and I have all kinds of new features, including free wireless tethering and notification-bar widgets. Rooting your phone is generally a fairly quick process, thoughthe complexity depends on your specific situation. Once you’ve rooted your handset, you can begin installing apps and even custom Android read-only memory (ROM) that will take advantage of your handset’s new capabilities.
Won’t rooting my phone be difficult? It depends on the model of phone you have. On many phones (such as the Nexus One, the Motorola Defy, and theEVO 4G), the process is incredibly easy: The Android Markethas apps such as Simple Root, universal 1-Click, or Z4root that will safely root your phone with a single click. Owners of HTC-manufactured phones can also use unrevoked3 (www.unrevoked.com) to root their phones. If you’re not sure which tool you should use, plug “root [name of your phone]” into Google and see what comes up; if Google supplies multipleoptions, head to the device-specific forums at xda-developers.com to see what other people have tried out and what has worked. The rooting procedure differs depending not only on your phone, but on the version of Android that the phone is running, so check that the root tool you’re considering is compatible with your phone. Do some research into what is required for your setup, read some step-by-step guides, and assess whether you’d be comfortable trying it yourself.
Do I risk bricking my phone? “Bricking” in the context of tinkering with root access refers to messing something up so thoroughly that the phone becomes completely unusable. That outcome is possible, but unlikely. you may have to connect your phone to your computer and rewrite some data; but if you do your homework, you will almost always be able to find a way at least to restore your phone to its original state. just make sure that your battery is full before you install a new OS or ROM, or you could end up with a half-installed OS,which would be very hard to fix.
If I root my phone, will I have any customer support? No—and you’ll most likely void your warranty, too. But a few places provide help. At two sites in particular—the Cyanogen-Mod forum (forum.cyanogenmod.com) and the XDA-Developersforum (forum.xda-developers.com), you’ll probably find the an-swers you need, and you can always start a new thread to ask your question. If you think you’ve mucked things up badly and need immediate help, many Internet Relay Chat channels specialize in support for rooters. (Download an IRC client onyour computer and head to irc.freenode.net, where the chan-nels #android and #android-root are particularly helpful.)
Could my phone overheat and explode? A major incentive for rooting your phone is the ability to over-clock its processor to gain more speed (or underclock it to ex-tend battery life). When you overclock your processor, though,it will get hotter. If you push your phone too far and don’t setany fail-safes (a maximum allowable temperature in the over-clocking utility), you could burn out your processor. However,it is very easy to set safety thresholds to prevent that result.SetCPu for Root users, for example,allows you to set up various profiles. I’ve created a profilethat slows my processor considerably if the processor tem-perature reaches 40 degrees Celsius, and it works perfectly.
“Rooting” your Android phone—giving yourself “root” or administrator access to its OS—will unlock your handset’s full potential, you could get better battery life, faster performance, deeper customization options, and other benefits. However, the process itself differs from phone to phone, and the root methods are constantly improving, so we can’t explain to you how to do it in this article—it’d be outdated by the time youread this page. Instead, we can answer some of your ques-tions and point you in the right direction.
Isn’t rooting my phone illegal? Nope. The u.S. federal government recognized the legalityof rooting a phone in july 2010.
Is rooting my phone worth the trouble? In my opinion, yes. My phone is faster than it has ever been,the battery lasts longer, and I have all kinds of new features, including free wireless tethering and notification-bar widgets. Rooting your phone is generally a fairly quick process, thoughthe complexity depends on your specific situation. Once you’ve rooted your handset, you can begin installing apps and even custom Android read-only memory (ROM) that will take advantage of your handset’s new capabilities.
Won’t rooting my phone be difficult? It depends on the model of phone you have. On many phones (such as the Nexus One, the Motorola Defy, and theEVO 4G), the process is incredibly easy: The Android Markethas apps such as Simple Root, universal 1-Click, or Z4root that will safely root your phone with a single click. Owners of HTC-manufactured phones can also use unrevoked3 (www.unrevoked.com) to root their phones. If you’re not sure which tool you should use, plug “root [name of your phone]” into Google and see what comes up; if Google supplies multipleoptions, head to the device-specific forums at xda-developers.com to see what other people have tried out and what has worked. The rooting procedure differs depending not only on your phone, but on the version of Android that the phone is running, so check that the root tool you’re considering is compatible with your phone. Do some research into what is required for your setup, read some step-by-step guides, and assess whether you’d be comfortable trying it yourself.
Do I risk bricking my phone? “Bricking” in the context of tinkering with root access refers to messing something up so thoroughly that the phone becomes completely unusable. That outcome is possible, but unlikely. you may have to connect your phone to your computer and rewrite some data; but if you do your homework, you will almost always be able to find a way at least to restore your phone to its original state. just make sure that your battery is full before you install a new OS or ROM, or you could end up with a half-installed OS,which would be very hard to fix.
If I root my phone, will I have any customer support? No—and you’ll most likely void your warranty, too. But a few places provide help. At two sites in particular—the Cyanogen-Mod forum (forum.cyanogenmod.com) and the XDA-Developersforum (forum.xda-developers.com), you’ll probably find the an-swers you need, and you can always start a new thread to ask your question. If you think you’ve mucked things up badly and need immediate help, many Internet Relay Chat channels specialize in support for rooters. (Download an IRC client onyour computer and head to irc.freenode.net, where the chan-nels #android and #android-root are particularly helpful.)
Could my phone overheat and explode? A major incentive for rooting your phone is the ability to over-clock its processor to gain more speed (or underclock it to ex-tend battery life). When you overclock your processor, though,it will get hotter. If you push your phone too far and don’t setany fail-safes (a maximum allowable temperature in the over-clocking utility), you could burn out your processor. However,it is very easy to set safety thresholds to prevent that result.SetCPu for Root users, for example,allows you to set up various profiles. I’ve created a profilethat slows my processor considerably if the processor tem-perature reaches 40 degrees Celsius, and it works perfectly.
