Saturday 11 January 2014

Samsung SGH-S730M - Thou shall not be rooted - Part 1

As with any steps like this if you choose to try rooting your phone or installing custom Roms etc then this is your own choice and no one but yourself is to blame if it all goes wrong.

I was given one of these phones which is carrier locked to Telus in Canada.

It's not much different to any small Android phone but I was interested if I can 1) Root it and 2) Unlock the Carrier.

I suppose the easiest way to unlock the SIM is just purchase an unlock code but I did find some info on actually editing an XML file to remove carrier lock.

The first issue seems to be root and looking everywhere you then find the usual sites that direct you to pop up city with thousands of pop ups and "this can only be done using a Windows PC " etc.

One program was unlockfree which I installed on my daughters Windows machine (just before I wiped it and rebuilt it), this installed all sorts of junk on the machine as expected and was clearly just a way of infecting the machine with downloaders etc.

I also tried Root_with_Restore_by_Bin4ry which went through the stages but wouldn't root the phone - fortunately with this program I could run it through Linux with my existing adb set up.

Rummaging through adb web site itself I noticed Samsung_Quick_Root but this had possible issues and looked like it needed a Windows program first.

I then stumbled across Poot- http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2204259

You download the APK, I then used ES File Explorer to install this onto the machine, it installs Ministro Library (which appears to be a way of Poot accessing some external files ?).

Anyway, I followed the instructions and rebooted - SU check confirms I have root.

I did install Rom Manager and SU checker earlier and these all said root was not running, now they both say root is OK.

It appears the phone has CWM installed as when I ran Rom Manager it asks me to set up recovery options, the first one says the phones not supported so I chose the 2nd one, I chose the option to say my phone wasn't on the list and it asked me to chose CWM 2.x or 3.x so I picked 3.x. It then refreshed to show the current recovery option is ClockworkMod 5.X.X (right hand image) so I assume this means there is a newer version already installed in the phone ?


         

Poot shows Root access, as does Root checker (Right hand image)

         

 So at the moment I have root access and CWM so I can take a full backup in case I mess things up.

Some key presses that were handy, power down the phone then hold Volume +, Home and Power - the phone will buzz and you see the Samsung name appear, release the keys.

This takes you into a menu where you can factory erase the phone if you need.