Pwnership: Ownership of something pwned.
Intro:
You don’t have to know what AOSP, NDK, and the SDK are to pwn phones, nor do you have to keep track of a myriad array of recommended specifications for each device, and vanilla backups of each one. You will however have to make the first step and come to terms with pwnership, what it means, what will happen, and how to reverse the changes if you don’t like it. Now that we are on ICS, flash is no longer developed, so the problem of locked devices has hit home for a lot of consumers/users that wouldn’t normally root their devices.
Pros:
You become the real owner/administrator of your device, you can run adobe flash, you can write, run, and script android applications not from the market, you can control permissions, you can disable all advertising that eats your data, cpu and battery, you can uninstall locked programs and bloatware, you can freeze broken programs, you can firewall yourself from specific IPs and ranges (IE gov and edu), and encrypt to your heart’s content, you can put your carrier back in your pocket instead of being in theirs.
Cons:
It takes a long time to back up using a stock sd card, you will have to buy a few apps to really enjoy it, you will void your warranty if you do not unroot your device before bringing it in for service, you will have to learn more about your device as an administrator to control its broad range of power and ability.
Context:
In the CONUS, most android devices you’ll get your hands on are post development, loaded with bloatware, bound by a contract, and bent over a table and sodomized with ads you pay for. They may also have apps that cannot be uninstalled, and a backdoor service for carrier admins to remote control your phone with.
I don’t know about you, but I do not pay for advertising. I do not pay for speed limits, throttling, advertising, bloatware, third parties, middle men, or other useless garbage.
Join me in breaking the hearts and wallets of the senseless advertising executives and lawyers who allow applications like MOG Music, Slacker Radio, and NFL Mobile to be installed and locked onto devices prepurchase!
If you haven’t already installed the drivers for your device, and you are using the Motorola phones this article was mainly written for, you can get them here. If you are using a phone from another manufacturer, you know how to google for them.
Instructions:
First, you will need to download an up to date rootkit for your phone.
It should include busybox, supersu, and you should have already installed the USB drivers from your manufacturer’s website. In this case, we’ll use the Eternity Project EasyRootICS 1.5 kit from Pedro Torres and XDA found here.
from article:
1. Download and unzip the package (hint: save it to your PC Desktop)
2. Install Motorola Drivers – Get them here (hint: uninstall other android device drivers from PC)
3. Enable Unknown Sources (Config > Security > Unknown Sources)
4. Enable USB Debug (Config > Developer Options > USB debug)
5. Enable Mock Locations (Config > Developer Options > Mock Location)
6. Connect the phone to your PC as Media Sync – MTP (Change it after connect you phone to PC in Config > Storage > Media Sync)
Run the batch file and wait patiently. If it doesn’t work the first time, make sure you are logged into an administrator account, and that adb.exe is set to run as administrator in the compatibility tab, and that you right click and launch it as administrator.
Thanks Pedro and XDA!
Once you have rooted your device, download clockworkmod recovery bootstrap specific to your phone, I used ClockworkMod Black Touch, then buy and download rom manager pro to manage your phone’s roms and back them up using clockworkmod.
Buy and download rom toolbox pro to back everything up, then use it to uninstall the bloatware on your phone like NFL Mobile, Slacker Radio, and other BS, then use it to set auto-kill for apps like Facebook which you don’t want to install, yet need not run at boot time. Finally, use rom toolbox pro to freeze all the apps you don’t want to use regularly and to tweak all the little settings you want.
Finally, you’ve rooted your phone and are using superuser rights in root!
