The Start to Finish Guide to Rooting Your Android Phone

Rooting your Android device is much like jailbreaking an iPhone. Once rooted, you can make your phone run faster, tether it to your computer, tweak hidden settings to your liking, and more. Rooting essentially means giving yourself root permissions on your phone. It's the equivalent of running programs as administrators in Windows, or running a command with "sudo" in Linux. There are a number of great reasons to root your Android phone, highest among them being speed (through custom ROMs and through overclocking), tethering, and installing apps and widgets from other
builds. Sure, all Android users are looking forward to a big performance boost and tethering features in Android 2.2 Froyo, but that doesn't mean rooting will become obsolete. In my opinion, it's the little things that make it. There are tweaked versions of the Android OS out there, also known as custom ROMs, which fix some small annoyances with the stock version of the OS. For example, some ROMs turn the "sound off" slide on the lock screen to a "vibrate only" slider, or allow the phone to go into landscape mode just by turning it on its side. If you're unhappy with the way Android looks, you've also got a large number of custom themes you can install, not to mention the numerous other Android marketplace apps that require root access. This particular guide is for the Motorola Droid, which is still the most popular Android device at the moment. The rooting process is going to be different for every phone, so you'll have to look up specific instructions if you don't have the Droid. They shouldn't be too hard to find—we've already posted about the Nexus One. The second half of the guide, on installing your ROM installer/backup utility, ROM Manager, should be compatible with a few other Android phones (such as the Dream, Sapphire, and Nexus One, to name a few), but not all of them. If you aren't sure whether your device is supported, run a quick search on the available ROMs for your device and see if ROM Manager has them in its database. One warning: The first step, downgrading your phone from 2.1 to 2.0, can be dangerous. If any part of this process has the ability to brick your phone, it's this step. I can say that I have done this to two Droids without any phones getting bricked, but as always, your mileage may vary. Know that the software is a little bit finicky, and sometimes fails at re-flashing the stock ROM. If it does, you can just run it again to make it work. I had to run it three times on my friend's Droid before it flashed, and at one point in the middle his phone was stuck on the bootloader. If this happens to you, don't panic. We just ran through the process a third time and everything succeeded. If you are not comfortable doing this, then don't do it—again, I have had great results (despite finicky software), and so have many other people, but your mileage may vary. You have been warned. 

What You'll Need

• An Android-based phone, specifically the Motorola Droid. Like I said, certain parts of the process may be similar for other phones, but this how-to is specific to the Motorola Droid, so your mileage will vary if you have something different.
• A Windows machine. Unfortunately, we will be using Motorola's tool to re-flash Android 2.0.1 onto your phone, which is a Windows-only tool. So if you aren't running Windows already, power up Boot Camp or find a friend with a Windows machine that you can borrow. XP, Vista, and 7 should all be fine.
• Our Lifehacker Droid Rooting Pack, downloadable with BitTorrent. If you don't have BitTorrent or are having trouble downloading the pack, there are links to the files within the how-to..

Step 1: Downgrade Your Phone to 2.0

Android 2.1 has not yet been rooted, so the only way to root your phone is to have 2.0 or 2.0.1 (although most custom ROMs contain 2.1's features, so fret not). Unfortunately, this means you need to flash your phone back to the stock ROM with Verizon's RSD Lite tool. You will lose all your applications and settings doing so, so be ready. You won't lose anything on your SD card, though, nor will you have to re-purchase applications. The Android market remembers what you've bought and will let you re-download any of them for free. Once you've said goodbye to all your settings, download our Lifehacker Droid Rooting Pack via BitTorrent (and please seed it for others!). This contains all the files you'll need. You can alternatively get the files for this step on this page (which also has a nice video tutorial of this first step).

Update: As it turns out, there is a way to root your phone running 2.1. However, you still have to use RSD Lite, and all your data will still be wiped. You can follow those instructions if you so choose (though I haven't tested them myself), but as far as I can tell there are no real benefits to doing it one way over the other. Sorry about any confusion or misinformation.

First, install the Symphony USB drivers (either 32-bit or 64-bit, depending on your system) and RSD Lite. Note that you'll need previously mentioned 7-Zip installed to extract the RSD Lite files. Connect your phone to your PC via USB and turn it off. Boot it back up while holding up on the D-pad to access your phone's bootloader, shown above. If it says everything is OK and that you're connected via USB, start up RSD Lite as an Administrator (by right clicking on it). All you need to do is open up the .sbf file you just downloaded, and hit the start button. Let it run and don't touch anything! Get up and make some tea or something; you don't want to interrupt this process.

Here's the finicky part. You'll be able to watch the progress of each step in the right hand column of RSD Lite, and when it's done it should say "completed" and reboot your phone into the stock ROM. However, note that a lot of times it will run the last step to 99% and say it failed (or just hang at 99%). If your phone reboots into the stock ROM, it's safe to unplug your phone and move on. However, if RSD Lite says it failed and your phone still shows the bootloader screen, you need to run the process again, so hit the start button again and let it roll. Mine worked fine the first time through (though it hung at 99%), and my friend's took three tries before the ROM flashed and the phone rebooted itself. Like I said, it's finicky, and kind of nerve wracking, but keep calm and carry on. Run it until it works and you should be fine. Once it's up and running, re-activate your phone and go through the process of setting up your Google accounts and such, and move on to the next step.

Step 2: Root Your Phone

Connect your phone to your computer, and this time mount it as a drive (by dragging down the notifications bar and hitting the "select to copy files to/from your computer" option). In the second folder of the aforementioned torrent, you'll find a file called update.zip (you can also get it here). Drag it to the root of your SD card, and then reboot your phone into recovery mode by holding the "x" key on the keyboard as it starts up. When you see the screen below, hold the volume up button and then press the camera button.

Use the D-pad to navigate the menu and select items. Choose the option to apply sdcard:update.zip. When it's finished, select the reboot option and let your phone start back up. You won't notice anything different, but you will have root permissions. Move on to the next step to put them to use.

Step 3: Install Custom ROMs for Your Device

Now that you're rooted and ready to go, it's time to put a custom ROM on your device. Search the Android Market for "ROM Manager" and install it. There are two versions, a free version and a premium one (for $5). The free version will take you pretty far, but if you want access to more ROMs and themes, you'll want the premium version. For the purpose of this tutorial, we'll only use options available to users of the free version, since that's where the best goodies are anyway.

The first thing you have to do after starting up ROM Manager is flash ClockworkMod Recovery, which will be your best friend for backing up and restoring your phone as you add new things to it. Click the Flash ClockworkMod Recovery button (it's the first thing you'll see when you first launch Rom Manager) and confirm your phone model. You'll see a progress bar at the top of the screen, and you'll get a notification when it's finished. Once it's been flashed, go back to ROM Manager and hit the "Download ROM" button.

Whether you're running the free or premium version, the ROMs in the "free" section are probably the best to go with, unless you know you want a certain, more obscure ROM. Previously mentioned CyanogenMod is my ROM of choice, as it seems to have the most features and most support from the rest of the community as far as add-on compatibility goes. However, Bugless Beast is very stable and provides a super easy, one-step install process, so if you don't need all the bells and whistles, that would also be a good choice. If you want to get the experimental 2.2 Froyo build, click on Stock Images and find it on that list.

Once you click on the ROM you want, you'll probably be presented with a few screens containing add-ons that you can download and install with it. As far as CyanogenMod goes, you'll definitely want the "Google Apps" add-on (which contains Google's proprietary apps like Gmail, GTalk, and the Market). If you're downloading Bugless Beast, you'll get to choose your overclocking kernel and theme at this time (see below for more notes on overclocking kernels). Your Droid will begin downloading the ROM and its add-ons, and you can check the progress by dragging down the notification bar at the top. Once it's done, you'll be prompted with a pre-installation notification, shown below. Check both of these options. This will ensure that your current ROM is backed up in case anything goes wrong, and that the ROM installs correctly. Hit OK and let the phone reboot and do its thing.

If you're installing CyanogenMod, you'll have to go back to ROM Manager after your ROM is installed to get overclocking kernels. From the main ROM Manager page, hit your menu button and go to Settings. Enable advanced mode and return to the main page. Go back to Download ROM, click on CyanogenMod, and then click on bekit Kernels.

You have quite a few choices; the number of slots determine how many presets you have to choose from, the speed is the max speed to which you can overclock your processor, and the voltage decides how much power (and thus battery life) it draws. On the Droid, I've found that the 7-slot, 1GHz low voltage kernel works quite well. Higher speeds might require more voltage, so be sure to do some research on your phone and what kernels will and won't work smoothly. Note that when you install add-ons, you don't need to select "wipe data and cache"—you only need this when flashing a full ROM. You will still want to create another backup, though, just in case things go wrong. You can always delete old backups from your SD card if you start to run out of space.

Also note that if you want themes for CyanogenMod, you'll have to get the premium version of ROM Manager, and pick your themes from the premium category under Download ROM. Flash them and other add-ons the same way you did the kernel.

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From here on out, the world is your oyster. Now that you have root permissions, be sure to go to the Market and download the "wireless tethering" app for tethering and SetCPU for overclocking, as well as any of the other apps you need to restore from your old set-up. The nice thing about ROM Manager, too, is that you can restore ClockworkMod backups at any time just by going to the bottom of the main ROM Manager page and hitting "Manage and Restore Backups"—so don't be afraid to experiment with different ROMs and compatible add-ons. If you don't like them, you can always restore to an old backup and have all your settings and apps perfectly preserved. Good luck, and be sure to share your experiences, expertise, and favorite ROMs and add-ons in the comments below.