[HOW TO] [VIDEO]Root the Galaxy S4
- Thread starter qbking77
- Start date
+1. Thanks qbking. That was by far the easiet root I've done to date and I've rooted a fair amount of devices. Thanks button hit of course
you go thank the guy who made the root and made it so easy?
I'm not sure what you mean. I hit the thanks button for qbking. That's why I said thanks button hit of course after I thanked him for making the root so easy. I just used the quote shizkoff777 wrote because it did work perfectly. Am I missing something?
i figured as much, anyways dan rosenberg wrote the exploit and the script called motochopper. he published it a few weeks ago after he did that whole big bootloader unlock for the new razr's.
qbking made a video showing how to use dan's software, i was just wondering if you had gone and thanked him for making the software possible (otherwise you would have had to fire up odin and use cwm/ chainfire stuff and bump your flash counter) http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2252248
i figured as much, anyways dan rosenberg wrote the exploit and the script called motochopper. he published it a few weeks ago after he did that whole big bootloader unlock for the new razr's.
qbking made a video showing how to use dan's software, i was just wondering if you had gone and thanked him for making the software possible (otherwise you would have had to fire up odin and use cwm/ chainfire stuff and bump your flash counter) http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2252248
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, my apologies. I didn't know that but I will definitely hit the thanks button for Dan and you as well. Thanks for letting me know where this method came from. It really was the easiest root method to date for me. So this method doesn't bump the flash counter? That's even better. Sweet. Thanks again shabby
no worries
dan is a good friend of mine, when he is in a godo mood and happy he showers us (the android community) with amazing presents. so i always try to make sure he gets his thanks etc.perhaps @qbking77 could add a link to the video and OP to let people know where it came from?
Can someone fill me in on if there is a reason to root now as there is not a solid recovery out??? or is there? also if i root is there and easy way to unlock teather i really need it for switching ips
While your question doesn't belong in this thread and should have been posted in Q&A, I'm going to go ahead and Answer.
Yes, there are solid recoveries. I use Garwynn's CWM. Only thing I know left to hammer out is exFAT.
shabbypenguin and Dees_Troy have recoveries provided as well. I highly recommend to check them out. Look in the Development and Original Development sections.
Crawrj has a hotspot mod available.
With any of these threads, please look for the Discussion threads before you post in the Development threads.
And please, next time look in the proper sections as you would have found these...
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Glad to see so many names I recognize for the OG epic forum. Tbh I was a little worried about development for this phone when I finally retired my my epic bought the s4 but not anymore. Thanks for your awesome vids qbking.
Thanks for the video, phone rooted within hours of its possession
Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 2
Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 2
Tim, Are going to do any other video's on this phone? Hotspot / getting MSL#, Installing custom recovery? Thank-you:good:
For those who are on Windows 8 Pro like me, run the drivers in Compatibility Mode Windows 7. The installation should pop up. If that doesn't work, you should be able to unzip the installation file, then select the drivers under its designated folder.
lol That it has brother! Which is a good thing. As much as I like breaking out the command lines to execute an exploit, it's rather nice now to just plug and chug.
lol That it has brother! Which is a good thing. As much as I like breaking out the command lines to execute an exploit, it's rather nice now to just plug and chug.
Odd. Mine works just fine. Rooted a few hours ago using this method.
Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda app-developers app
Coincidence. Nothing about this or the other method should break the camera function. Sounds like a possible hardware failure if anything.
Only suggestion I can come up with is either a factory reset, which probably won't correct the issue, or flash the full no root mdc tar and test.
Sent from my SPH-L720 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2
While rooted? Negative.
If you're planning to take it back for them to look at, then you should use the full restore no root tar. It will set everything back to official.
Sent from my SPH-L720 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2
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162Just a video I put together showing how to root the Galaxy S4! I will be adding more videos to this thread in the near future!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_hXUJ-u-cw
I used CF Root.
How to get free native hotspot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYTis-i7HA4
How to install TWRP recovery (if you'd like to flash roms):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBQTx8FmTtk
How to unroot the S4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEJSv9MrVAg8I will try and get an updated root video for MDL builds soon. In the meantime you can follow this thread:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2277480
My simple instructions... Download shabby modified kernel and root zip, put them on internal storage.
Download a custom recovery and flash it via odin (make sure auto reboot is unchecked). once done in odin, boot the phone into recovery mode and flash the kernel then the zip.
OR you can follow my how to unroot video to get back to MDC and just use motochopper. Your choice.
How to unroot:
http://youtu.be/yEJSv9MrVAg6Recently rooted 4.2.2 MJ9 with this method
I waited for several days for a response to my rooting questions and was surprised that there was not one direct reply. I do software development and get frustrated when people don't read instructions and I often let them flounder if they aren't putting forth an effort on their own. But I spent a full day and parts of 3 other days reading these forums, plus I read 80+ books in the last year. No slacker here.
So I went ahead based on the reassuring post from dbenney that this rooting method works and got busy on it. It worked just fine but I thought I would document my experience so that others on the fence will know what to expect.
First of all I just got the Galaxy S4 within the last month. It came with 4.2.2 (MJ9) and the store employee told me to avoid the OTA update which came through on my device as soon as I hooked it up to my home's wifi. He said it was buggy and that 40% of the users who took it have had problems. When I saw the notification for it I held down on the notification, selected App Info from the popup menu and chose to disable further notifications. Based on reading I've done here I do not plan to upgrade to 4.3, I really don't care for the new features beyond 4.2.2. More important, I do not want to be locked in to no backwards compatibility. From all I have read if you update to 4.3 you have no choice but to stay or move forward, no going back. No thank you.
My reason for wanting to root was that I was getting stuck at the Sprint yellow screen on boot. This was before I had even done anything to the phone. I've read that people are getting stuck at the yellow screen and thinking that their rooting activity had something to do with it. I would tend to doubt that rooting is 100% to blame for that because like I said, I had the issue with a brand new phone. I called the Sprint store and they said to do a hard reset which will wipe all my data. Without being rooted I can't use Titanium Backup to restore after a reset so I rooted the phone using the Chainfire method. NOTE: To those wondering if the method has kept up to date, it has. I opened the tar file and saw Jan 10, 2014 mod times on the files it contains so I was sure I hadn't downloaded something old. The links in the docs don't say the file is updated and the dates on the post that contain the links to download the rooting files are mostly from April 2013. Rest assured the rooting methods are updated. All you have to do is open the files you download in 7-Zip and check out the mod times on the files in the zips/tars.
So I rooted, made a backup with Titanium Backup and reset the device. The reset fixed the yellow screen issue. I haven't been stuck on the yellow screen since and I've rebooted at least 25 times since just to convince myself it was resolved. After resetting I re-rooted and restored my backup. The only thing that wasn't restored was my wallpaper, everything else came back perfectly. I recommend using the Snapshot method for restoring files from Titanium Backup. The XML method didn't work as well for me. Titanium Backup will prompt you to make this choice during restore.
You only get the option to disable Knox by going into the SuperSU application. That was mentioned in a previous post. I chose to disable it and it said it disabled it successfully but I'm on 4.2.2 which doesn't come with Knox enabled so I have no idea if it really did or not. Rooting did trip the flash counter but Triangle Away fixed it, however, I'm not convinced that there is a way to get back to unrooted stock without leaving at least some fingerprints. If you are worried about your warranty/Knox capabilities I would not root and would live with plain stock.
I ran into a problem after resetting with the Play store but do not believe it had anything to do with rooting. I kept getting a 920 error saying the download couldn't be completed. I tried a number of things to resolve that but the only thing that worked was going into Applications, finding the Play store app, and uninstalling updates. You can't remove this application but you can tell the phone to uninstall any updates to the app. After that I was able to download again.
After that I moved on to the Wifi hotspot update. I did it exactly as QbKing does in his video where he manually copies the service.* files to the system folder. I rebooted the phone just as it shows in the video and it works like a champ. This was nice because I had already tried and failed to get the Wifi Tethering app I had been using on my Epic 4G to work with the S4.
I also installed the Recovery manager listed in the links and it worked although it appeared to hang the first time going into recovery. I held down the power button to restart the device once or twice and if finally worked. I was probably being impatient on the first try.
The only frustration I have not been able to get past during this process was getting Samba working again. There is another thread from that on XDA so I won't go into a lot of detail about it but the application either doesn't work with 64Gig SD cards, it only will work with FAT filesystems, or some other problem. I tried manually editing the smb.conf file to change the share path, I tried reinstalling, I tried a couple other apps but in the end nothing worked. I really like Samba since it makes moving files back and forth more transparent but there are other ways to sync files to your phone so it is not a crippling limitation, instead it is more of an annoyance.
So now (sans the Samba Server) I have a phone that does exactly what my tweaked out Epic 4G did. Everything seems to be working great. I always had issues with GPS with my 4G but so far I have noticed no problems with the Galaxy S4. Due to the GPS issue I decided going into the S4 that I wanted to stay very close to stock. I have only downloaded apps from the app store. The only non-app store thing I've done is rooted the phone and added the custom recovery using GooManager. Those operations do copy some potentially risky stuff to your device. I installed ROM after ROM on my Epic 4G and they all had one small issue or another. I finally stuck with MarcusantRom, ran it for nearly 2 years before upgrading to the S4.
This about sums up my experience. One thing I didn't include is that I had to reset the phone a few times before nailing everything. There was a little trial and error that went on. I'm a bit particular and I like everything to flow from beginning to end with no intermediate hiccups, so if I made a mistake or didn't like the way something went I would reset the phone and start over. But I think with my experience documented it could save another person some of that hassle. I found QbKing's videos very helpful.
Something else worth mentioning... I also purchased BusyBox Pro ($4.99), SuperSU Pro ($2.49), Triangle Away ($2.49), and Root Checker Pro ($0.99). With 50,000+, 100,000+, 100,000+, 10,000+ downloads respectively there is some serious money in this! ChainFire has sold more than a half million dollars on the Play store with these two apps. BusyBox Pro has sold more than a quarter million. Makes you think twice about your day job. I appreciate the efforts of all these developers work and I’m happy to support their work.
I hope someone out there finds this helpful.6Added a vid to install TWRP to OP
How to install TWRP recovery (if you'd like to flash roms):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBQTx8FmTtk4
Welcome aboard
Read this thread
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2291827
And let me know if you have any questions
Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda premium
