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Getting your root on with Android

#266 | 25:11 |

Lab Rats

Monday March 21, 2011

Andy and Sean take a look at what's involved in rooting the Android smartphone - a process of gaining admin access to the back end of the phone, which allows greater access for modifying the phone's operating system and carrier - talk about the pros and cons of doing so, and show you one easy way to root your phone.

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Show Notes

Rooting
Rooting an Android phone means gaining access to the "root" user level. Android (and other) smartphones typically give you a user account as opposed to what is effectively an administrator account.

Root user
As a root user, you can gain access to portions of the phone that are typically blocked out. This allows you to put a new flavor of the Android operating system on your phone.

Words of caution
Rooting your Android phone (or, for that matter "jailbreaking" your iPhone) is not illegal, at the very least it's not illegal in North America. However, rooting may void your warranty. Your carrier or manufacturer may no longer support your device and your cat or dog may run away. If the latter occurs, it's probably not related to the rooting... unless you're so obsessed with trying different ROMS that you neglected the poor creature.

Windows only
There are ways to unlock your Android phone using a Mac or Linux environment. However, they're not as simple as the SuperOneClick root solution. This software is Windows only. It's worth booting into your Bootcamp partition, running in WINE or borrowing a friend's Windows machine for a few minutes in order to do the unlock.

TheUnlockr.com
The Unlockr has step-by-step tutorials and walk throughs for rooting just about any Android handset you can get your hands on. Highly recommended.

PdaNet
PdaNet is tethering software for the most popular smartphones going. We don't need to use the software itself for the rooting process, but we may need the device drivers that PdaNet includes in order to get our computer talking to our Android device.

Step one - Enable USB Debugging
Go to Settings > Applications > Development > and turn on USB Debugging and allow.

Step two - Plug in to your computer
Connect your smartphone to your computer with the connection cable that came with your phone.

Step three - Run SuperOneClick
Run SuperOneClick as administrator. Right-click the executable and select Run as administrator.

Step four - Click Root
Really, that's it. Click the Root button. If need be, later you can unroot your phone by following steps one through three again then clicking Unroot as opposed to Root.

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