Rooting The Samsung Galaxy S

Since I had so much trouble just getting my Galaxy S into “recovery mode”, then I thought I should try to put up the clearest guide I can to this.

It appears that you cannot do this unless there is an ‘update.zip’ in the base directory of your file system (“/”, not “/sdcard”).

Having said that, lets go through the steps.

  1. Power off your phone.
  2. Press and hold down “Volume Down” and “Home”.
  3. While holding those down, hold down the Power button.
  4. When the initial logo appears (The one saying that you have an I9000) release the power button for about half a second, then press it again.
  5. You should now be in “recovery mode” with a very basic text like menu.

With regard to 4. above, if you don’t have an update.zip file in the “/” directory, then the logo will return.  If you keep holding down the power button, the Logo will disappear again, then return.   You can actually do step 4 over and over again, making the Logo disappear, then reappear.  This is a good indicator that you’re holding the right buttons.  However, without an update.zip file, you can do this all day to no good effect.

Now, with that information handy, I used the One Click Root, which made it all very easy.  Note that this is a RAR file.  I use WinRAR (paid for), but I’m sure there are other tools which let you extract it.

The best tutorial that I’ve found on how to use the One Click Root is from Addictive Tips.  Apart from the “recovery mode” issue I’ve described above, following the steps here gave me a rooted Galaxy S very quickly.

You won’t actually see much change once you’ve done the deed, but there is a new application on your phone that gives root privileges. It’s called “Superuser Permissions” and has a logo of a ninja (or perhaps it’s a black knight .. or something else).  When you first run that, it doesn’t look very interesting.  However, run an application that requires root (superuser) permissions, and it will ask you if you want to allow it or not.  After you’ve allowed one or more applications, Superuser Permissions then lists all applications that have permissions, and allows you to edit those permissions.

The first program I used with my new found power was Titanium Backup Pro, which I used to backup everything I could on my phone.   It’s always good to have backups, and is really a very good idea when you’re likely to be doing nasty things to your phone – which I’m planning on in the future.

About Lisa

A Geeky Gamergrrl who obsesses about the strangest things.
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