How to Root the Samsung Galaxy S III

All the focus might be on the 14th of March and the Galaxy S IV right now, but if the enduring success of the Galaxy S II is anything to go by, Sammy’s current flagship is here for the long haul. Given that, we thought we’d take a little trip down rooting lane, to find the very best way to squeeze the best performance out of the Galaxy S III.

Like any other Android handset, we’re firmly of the opinion that you’ve gotta root your handset if you want to get the very best performance outta it. But, with the Galaxy S III, we’re going a step further: we’re stripping away Samsung’s proprietary TouchWiz skin and whacking a custom version of Android on there, and then adding a few more tweaks to round things out.

As always, rooting is at your own risk, and will most likely void your warranty. If you do need to send it back to the factory, make sure you restore stock software first. We’ve tried and verified all the methods below, but computers can be fickle beasties so it’s possible, if very unlikely, that you might brick your device.

Step 1: Backup

Since you’ve likely had your Galaxy S III for a while now, there’s a decent chance that you’ve got assorted Instagram photos/a well-curated porn collection you want to preserve for posterity. That’s all fine — we’re going to use Carbon Backup to save all your dirty sexts precious memories.

- Download Carbon Backup to your Android device.

- While that’s happening, download the desktop client from here

- Connect the phone to the computer, and help them perform the special Carbon mating ritual that will enable Carbon backup — it’ll hold your hand throughout the whole procedure, don’t worry.

- Select all apps, and create a backup using Carbon. You can either back up to the cloud (but you’ll need the paid-for Carbon Premium to restore from the cloud), or create a backup to an SD card or your computer.

Step 2: Let’s Get Rooty

Download the Galaxy S3 Root Toolkit from here. Remember a silent prayer of thanks to mskip, the dev behind it.

- Follow the instructions, installing the Root Toolkit to a root file on your PC.

- Run the program (no need to ask to check for an update). Select your model when prompted — you can find it in Settings–>About device–>Model number (and Android version right underneath).

- Scenes closely resembling The Matrix will play out while the Root ToolKit downloads all the necessary stuff. Eventually, you’ll get to the screen seen above. Unplug your device, and select number one (and number one again, when it asks you to confirm).

- The drivers will now install (it’ll take a moment) — you’ll have to click through a couple of pages on a normal Windows installer. When you get the “Connect your device via the usb cable…etc” message, do what it says and connect it.

- Go back to the main menu. You want option 2 (root options), and then option 3 (ALLINONE). You want to flash option one (CWRecovery) and then option 2 for superuser.

- Check that you’ve got USB debugging enabled (you should do). Type yes to start rooting.

- Something called ‘Odin’ will open. Follow the instructions on-screen in the Root Toolkit, which will load the recovery image. Your phone will reboot, and you can close Odin.

- The Toolkit will do a few more things, and then congrats, you’re rooted!

Step 3: Flash CM and Rid the World of TouchWiz

Samsung phones come pre-loaded with TouchWiz, which, if Reddit is to be believed, is “worse than Hitler”. I wouldn’t quite go that far, but the normal Android interface is certainly better. To get that, we’re going to install one of the most popular custom ROMs, CyanogenMod.

- On your phone, download ROM Manager from the Play Store.

- Open it, grant root access, and it the very top option, Recovery Setup. Follow the instructions to flash ClockworkMod Recovery.

- Download the CyanogenMod version that we want from here. Copy the .zip onto your device, preferably somewhere you’ll remember like download.

- Go into the ROM Manager, and select “Install ROM from SD Card”. Select the CM 10.1 file that you copied over to your device earlier, tick Backup Existing ROM and Wipe Data and Cache, and then hit reboot and install.

- Once it’s done, you should see the CyanogenMod boot screen.

Step 4: Restoring BackUps

- Custom ROMs like CyanogenMod don’t come with Google Apps like Play Store and GMail by default, so we have to re-download them. You can download the actual apps from here.

- While it’s downloading, you need to enable USB debugging again. Go to “Settings –> About –> Build number”, and tap “build number” about ten times, until you get a little message saying “you’re now a developer”. Head back into settings, go to “Developer Mode”, and turn on USB debugging.

- Once you have the download, copy the .zip onto your SIII. Power down your device, and boot it up into the bootloader (hold down power, home and volume up buttons at the same time). Select “Recovery”; then, install zip from SD card. Navigate to the Google apps zip you just copied over, and hit go. Once the install is complete, reboot.

- Once you’ve got past the initial setup, download Carbon backup from the Play Store again, set it up (again), and restore from your backup.

Step 5: Pimp That Galaxy

Congratulations! You’re now running a custom build of Android, so you’ve got far more options at your disposal now. Some changes to be made will be a matter of personal taste (like the design of your homescreen); others are more technical tweaks, which are the ones we’re going to cover here.

- You’ve now got access to a new menu, right down the bottom of settings: “Performance”.  There’s one change I would recommend you make to get better performance out of your Galaxy SIII. Go into “Performance–>Memory management”, and tick the “allow purging of assets” box. This will effectively increase the amount of memory available, making hardcore multitasking a lot easier.

- Go to “Settings–>System–>Notification drawer”, and enable the Power widget. This’ll give you all sorts of handy toggles (customisable in the “Widget Buttons” menu) in the notification drawer. In the same System menu, there’s also a “Status bar” menu, which gives you the option to change the battery icon to a percentage.

- Download Tasker from the Play Store. Tasker’s a wonderfully neat app that you can program to do just about anything. For some neat ideas and walk-throughs, have a look at this thread on XDA forums, which explains everything pretty well. There are even more ideas on this Lifehacker article.

- Set up profiles. Something that’s missing from pretty much every mobile OS nowadays (but was a staple back in the days of Symbian), profiles are basically presets of a bunch of settings, like ring volume, Wi-Fi on/off, etc. I’ve got one for work, one for home and one for silent, for example. You can quick-change profiles by holding down the power button.

- Download Apex launcher and get to work on your home screen. The stock Android screen is just, well, boring. Apex launcher (or the equally good Nova)  provide endless options for customising your homescreen. If you need inspiration, check out Mycolourscreen.

- Download Light Manager to manage the notification LED. My advice is to set the LED to colours that match the app (so blue for Facebook, red for Gmail etc), but it’s your choice.

- AdFree works like an ad-blocking extension in a browser. Simples.

Those are my standard recommendations — but of course, there’s basically limitless possibilities for what you can do with your device now. Not to mention, you should also see better battery life, more frequent updates and a less of that TouchWiz hell.

Have we missed anything out? Let us know in the comments below!

Source : 

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/03/how-to-root-the-samsung-galaxy-siii/

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Root Galaxy Nexus I9250 on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

The Galaxy Nexus is still one of the most popular phones out there, despite being superseded by the Nexus 4. Luckily, you can root it with just a few clicks thanks to a program called the Nexus Root Toolkit. Here's how it works.

For more information on what rooting is, what it can do for your phone, and what all those confusing terms mean, check out our always up-to-date guide to Android rooting.

The Nexus Root Toolkit is pretty simple to use. You will need a Windows PC (so if you don't have one, borrow one from a friend), but everything else is pretty self-explanatory. You can find more detailed instructions on the app's home page, but essentially, you'll just need to install the program, launch it, click the Drivers button, back up your apps and data if so desired (since rooting will wipe your device), then use the Unlock and Root buttons to unlock your bootloader and gain root access. From there, you can download ROM Manager from the Market, from which you can flash the ClockworkMod Recovery, make nandroid backups, and flash custom ROMs. The Nexus Root Toolkit can also unroot your phone if you decide rooting is not for you.

The Toolkit should get you pretty far, but for more info on troubleshooting, ROMs, themes, and more, check out the Galaxy Nexus forums over at XDA Developers.

We don't own every Android device out there, so there's no way we could possibly test all these methods ourselves. In addition, it's very difficult to stay up to date on which rooting methods work and which don't. So, we're relying on you to help us out! If you find that one of the methods we list is outdated please send us an email (preferably with an up-to-date method, if you've found one) and we'll get everything squared away.

How to Root Galaxy Nexus I9250 on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS

1. First, you need to download the root package (use the link from here) and the Super User file (the download link is here).
2. Save these files on your computer.
3. Connect your device with the computer and copy-paste the downloaded files from the computer to your Nexus.
4. If ADB is installed on the PC, open command prompt window (start -> run -> cmd) and on the window that will be opened enter the following commands: “ADB Device” and “ADB Reboot recovery”.
5. Unplug the USB cord.
6. If on your computer you haven’t installed the ADB tool, then turn off the phone.
7. Reboot by pressing the Volume Up, Volume Down and Power buttons at the same time.
8. From the menu that opens select “recovery”.
9. Now, from the recovery menu, select “install zip from SD card” followed by “choose zip from sd card”.
10. Pick the root package and then the Super User file you have downloaded before and start the root operation.
11. In the end, select “+++go back+++” and “reboot system now” and you are done.

Congratulations, you have managed to safely root the Samsung Galaxy Nexus I9250 that runs on the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean firmware. Now you can look forward in installing custom ROMs on your device along with other complex apps that requires root access in order to run properly. Use the comments area from below for sharing your impressions and thoughts with us and with other users and stay close for more step by step guides and Android related news.

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Rooting Methods

Here you'll find what we think are the best rooting methods for the 10 most popular phones among readers. We won't go through the nitty gritty details of each method, since we can't test them ourselves, but we will tell you what you need and what each method entails. Before rooting, we recommend you read up a bit more on your phone, and we've provided some links for further reading at the end of each description. Click on your phone's thumbnail below for more.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Samsung Galaxy S III

LG Nexus 4

Samsung Galaxy S II

Samsung Galaxy Note II

HTC One X and One S

Samsung Galaxy Note

Motorola Droid Razr and Razr Maxx

HTC Thunderbolt

Motorola Droid Bionic

HTC EVO 4G

Motorola Droid X

HTC Droid Incredible

Samsung Nexus S

HTC Desire

HTC Inspire 4G

Motorola Atrix 4G

Where to Go If Your Phone Isn't Listed

Just because your phone isn't listed doesn't mean it isn't rootable (in fact, some of the above methods might work on other phones). Some rooting tools root multiple phones, and HTC's official unlocking method will unlock the bootloader of nearly any HTC phone—which gets you part of the way toward rooting (you'll need to look up more information on how to flash a recovery to your specific device). It's also worth mentioning that there can be multiple methods out there. HTC's official route isn't always the easiest method, so if your phone has a one-click tool available, it's usually better to use that because it's quicker, will give you S-OFF, and won't leave a digital "watermark" on your phone that permanently voids your warranty. Lastly,SuperOneClick is a great one-click app that roots a ton of phones, especially older ones, so do a bit of googling and see if it works for yours—because it's just about the easiest root method out there.

The best way to research your phone, though, would be to check out the All Things Root section of your phone's forum at Android Forums. If you find your phone's subforum and click on All Things Root, there's almost always a sticky post with info on rooting methods, ROMs, and other special troubleshooting tips that could apply to your specific phone. Looking up your phone on the XDA Developers forums is always a great idea too, and the CyanogenMod Wiki often has lots of information on rooting and flashing ROMs as well (even if you aren't flashing CyanogenMod). With a bit of research, you should be able to find at least one guide that works for your specific device.

Source:

http://lifehacker.com/5789397/the-always-up+to+date-guide-to-rooting-any-android-phone

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Up to Date Guide to Rooting on the Popular Android Phones

We love Android, but rooting your phone can give you the opportunity to do so much more than your phone can do out of the box—whether its wireless tethering, speeding it up with overclocking, or customizing the look of your phone with themes. Here's how to root some of the most popular phones with minimal effort.

Rooting, for those of you that don't know, means giving yourself root permissions on your phone. It's similar running programs as administrators in Windows, or running a command with sudo in Linux. With a rooted phone, you can run more apps (like backup or tethering apps), as well as flash custom ROMs to your phone, which add all sorts of extra features. If you're on the fence about rooting, check out our top 10 root-only apps that make it worth the hassle.

There are a ton of different Android phones out there, and while some rooting methods might work for multiple phones, there is no one-size-fits-all guide for rooting every phone out there. As such, we can't show you how to root every phone in existence, especially since we can't test every method. So we're going to post methods for the ten most popular Android phones among our readers and the ones you voted as the five best, and keep it updated as new phones come out (in fact, we recently just updated it with five new phones for 2013). If your phone isn't on the list, be sure to check the Where to Go if Your Phone Isn't Listed section for suggestions on where you can find more info pertaining to your specific device.

Glossary of Rooting Terms

As you learn more about the rooting process, you'll probably run into a bunch of terms that can be confusing. Here are some of the most important ones and what they mean.

Rooting Terms

• Root: Rooting means you have root access to your device—that is, it can run the sudocommand, and has enhanced privileges allowing it to run apps like Wireless Tether orSetCPU. You can root either by installing the Superuser application—which many of the below root processes include—or by flashing a custom ROM that has root access included.
• ROM: A ROM is a modified version of Android. It may contain extra features, a different look, speed enhancements, or even a version of Android that hasn't been released yet. We won't discuss ROMs in depth here, but if you want to use one once you're rooted, you canread more about doing that here.
• Flash: Flashing essentially means installing something on your device, whether it be a ROM, a kernel, or something else that comes in the form of a ZIP file. Sometimes the rooting process requires flashing ZIP file, sometimes it doesn't.
• Bootloader: Your bootloader is the lowest level of software on your phone, running all the code that's necessary to start up your operating system. Most bootloaders come locked, which keeps you from rooting your phone. Unlocking your bootloader doesn't root your phone directly, but it does allow you to root, then flash custom ROMs if you so desire.
• Recovery: Your recovery is the software on your phone that lets you make backups, flash ROMs, and perform other system-level tasks. The default recoveries can't do much, but you can flash a custom recovery—like ClockworkMod—after you've unlocked your bootloader that will give you much more control over your device. This is often an integral part of the rooting process.
• ADB: ADB stands for Android Debug Bridge, and it's a command line tool for your computer that can communicate with an Android device you've connected to it. It's part of the Android Software Developers Kit (SDK). Many of the root tools below use ADB, whether you're typing the commands yourself or not. Unless the instructions call for installing the SDK and running ADB commands, you won't need to mess with it—you'll just need to know that it's what most of the tools use to root your phone.
• S-OFF: HTC phones use a feature called Signature Verification in HBOOT, their bootloader. By default, your phone has S-ON, which means it blocks you from flashing radio images—the code that manages your data, Wi-Fi, and GPS connections. Switching your phone to S-OFF lets you flash new radios. Rooting doesn't require S-OFF, but many rooting tools will give you S-OFF in addition to root access, which is nice.
• RUU and SBF: ROM Upgrade Utilities (for HTC phones) and System Boot Files (for Motorola phones) are files direct from the manufacturer that change the software on your phone. RUU and SBF files are how the manufacturers deliver your over-the-air upgrades, and modders often post leaked RUU and SBF files for flashing when the updates haven't been released yet. They're also handy when downgrading your phone, if a rooting method isn't available for the newest software version yet. You can flash RUUs right from your HTC phone, but Motorola users will need a Windows program called RSD Lite to flash SBF files.

source:

http://lifehacker.com/5789397/the-always-up+to+date-guide-to-rooting-any-android-phone

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ROMs for Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 Jelly Bean 4.2

The Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 is one of the most popular Android low-end phones which has been in the market for a long time. The device was launched in February 2011 with Android 2.3 Gingerbread which has recently been updated to Android 2.3.6 (still GB). Due to its moderate hardware specifications, the phone never saw an official update even to Android 4.04 Ice Cream Sandwich, not to talk of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Android being and Open Source OS, it has endless possibilities. You can always expect the unexpected with an Android phone in your hand. Thanks to the great developers who work hard day and night to give us even those updates and features that we do not get officially by a mobile phone manufacturer. These Android Devs have made our experience with the Galaxy Ace S5830 richer by cooking awesome ROMs that have made us stick to this little monster for such a long time.

One day just during a regular analysis of the web search keywords at Droidviews I noticed how desperate the Galaxy Ace users are to update and install a Jelly Bean ROM on their device. Hundreds of people coming daily for a Jelly Bean ROM for the Galaxy Ace everyday! This made me write an article with a collection of some of the best Jelly Bean ROMs that helps you choose one that is most suitable for you.

Do not Forget to Read:

Things to Do Before and After Installing a Custom ROM

Disclaimer:

Flashing a custom ROM on your Galaxy Ace S5830 might prove a little risky for you phone. Neither Droidviews, nor the developers of any of the ROMs listed here shall be responsible for any damage to your phone. All the ROMs have been tested by thousands of users worldwide but if you are not careful enough during flashing the a ROM, the case might different for you. Use your own discretion and then proceed.

How to Install a Custom ROM on Galaxy Ace s5830:

Getting Ready:

Well, if you ready to flash a Jelly Bean ROM on your Galaxy Ace, you need to do a few things before proceeding to flash the ROM. Since a custom ROM is directly related to modifying/replacing the system files, it requires root access and there fore you will have to root your phone before being eligible to any such action. If you have yet rooted your Galaxy Ace, head over to our handy tutorial first, then continue from the steps below: Root Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830

Among the other things you need to do before installing this ROM are:

• Get your Galaxy Ace fully charged.
• Backup all your contacts, messages and other important data. Backup your contacts, call-logs, messages, APNs, bookmarks, calendar, apps & games Using These Nice Free Apps.
• Turn on the USB Debugging mode on your device. Go to Settings> Applications>Development> USB Debugging> check the box.
• Download the ROM  you like from the links below. Do not extract the zip file and copy it  to the main directory of your device’s SD Card (not in a sub-folder).
• Download Google Apps for your phone from below (do not extract) and copy it to the same location as the ROM file.
• IMPORTANT: Download a Root File Manager app from the Google Play Store. Open the root file explorer and look for a folder called “efs” and backup the this folder to the External SD card of your phone. It will be even better if you backup this folder on your computer too. In fact, this folder contains your phone’s IMEI. In case you discover that your phones IMEI number has gone/lost, you can restore the “efs” folder back to its place and your problem will be fixed.

Installing a ROM on Galaxy Ace:

1. First of all make sure that you have done all things mentioned above under preparations.
2. Turn off your device and boot it into CWM Recovery Mode. Press and hold  the Home+Power  keys till the start up screen with “Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830″ logo blinks for two times and you see a screen as shown below.
3. In the Recovery Mode, use Volume and Power keys to navigate between the options and select them. 
   
4. Open “backup and restore” and backup your current ROM (important). When the backup is donego back to the main menu
5. In the CWM Recovery Mode, scroll to “wipe data factory reset” option and select “Yes”.
6. Then come back to the main menu and select “install zip from sdcard> choose zip from sdcard”.Now browse to the ROM file and select it. Confirm your choice by selecting “yes”.
7. This will start the installation process and will take a few minutes to complete.
8. When it is done, go back and install the GApps using Step 8.
9. Return to the main menu again and select “reboot system now”. It might take a few minutes before your device reboots, so a little patience is required.

When the phone boots up, you will be able to enjoy the newly installed Jelly Bean ROM on your phone. Cheers!

Source :

http://droidviews.com/2012/best-android-4-1-4-2-jelly-bean-roms-for-samsung-galaxy-ace-s5830/

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