I'm new to the whole thing of rooting, i'm new to androids to be specific. I spent the last two years modding iOS's but my last iphone 4 was stolen and i got my hands on the new SGS2. I like it a lot but i still want to take more out of it.
Why ROOT my phone? What are the pros and cons of doing it? (i dont have this very clear since im new and i dont really know all my phone can do as is, stock). will i be able to reverse it, or delete it with an update?
what i really want more help is with the following:
What are MOD and ROMS and wich one is better recommended?
i have search a lot but im still confused a little bit. ive run into cyanogen mod 7, villian etc. i basically want to make themes and add features to the phone, wich MOD will give me more room to play around, wich one has more stuff running around on the web?
i found a theme called neongt that i liked a lot will it work with any mod or rom i choce?
thanks a lot with whatever help you can give me
* Root is equivalent of Jailbreaking in iOS
* Provides root access to the mobile OS
* Can install backup apps like Titanium backup which requires too to take backup freeze or unfreeze apps
* Villian ROM is based on the latest version of Android OS released for SGS2. Note that there are different firmware for different regions unlike iOS
*CyanogenMod is I believe its from Vanilla Android OS with mods . To know more about click here http://www.cyanogenmod.com
* You can try any one and if you dont like you can always revert back to Stock rom (original which was released by Samsung)
* Mods are additional features to an existing ROM. Example One of the mod is when you click the power button, it will display Reboot , Recovery which is not provided in Stock rom also showing % in battery is another MOD
Hope this helps You can look into http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1058
BTW What I read is 99% impossible to brick the phone. So you can play around with the phone with flashing roms
If you new to android then wait a while before rooting. There are tons of stuff to learn and do without root.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
The only real way at the moment to brick the phone is to put the PIT in and then have a problem while flashing (or put a galaxy s pit in, it has been done, thats a hardbrick).
Root is like total control, you can do anything and edit anything.
The easiest way to root is using CF-root which autoroots you, this is a stock kernel with a custom inframfs which does the rooting.
When chosing a kernel you need to match the bolded bit of the version to the rom you are using CF-Root-SGS2_XX_OXA_KG6-v4.1-CWM4.zip
The rest of the version relates to the region it was built for, but for kernels that does not matter.
Custom kernels normally bring Clockworkmod recovery which gives you options to take a whole phone backup/snapshot of the moment you backed up.
They also have other things like overclocking(not recomended unless you know what you are doing)/undervolting controls.
Also stuff like BLN(back light notification) which uses the touch key backlight to show notifications like an led would.
Custom roms, deodexed means taking the classes.dex files and shoving it back into the jar file so its easier to edit.
At the moment if you deodex the framework (part of the OS) the stock browser lags, some roms with around this by leaving it odexed but this has its disadvantages as some mods need a 100% deodexed rom or a 100% odexed rom.
You can use places like the UOT kitchen to theme your phone yourself or find loads of themes in the right section.
Also part of the rom is called a CSC which contains customisations like apps your carrier wanted to bundle, also APN settings, you can use any CSC with any version in general and dont need to flash a new one unless the rom comes with or asks for one.
Always read the first posts in a thread, and use the search before asking a question
thanks a lot to everyone i have spent last night researching and ive learn a lot, i think i have taken all i can from my phone already, im a modding freak so i cant se my phone behave or look the same way for too long, i have it since july 20 ill keep it as is for a couple of weeks more and then ill try only rooting. after that ill play aruond with the mods until i found one that i can use to make one my self and theme it my way as i use to do with my ios's. thanks a lot for all the advices. ive heard a lot of rumors about bricked phones but i have figure out that is not that risky, as my friend galaxyII back there said, but it still can happen so ill be as carefull as i can
im looking forward to posting/sharing the mods or themes i make, also if you know someone that needs help with iOS devices i can help
i better keep looking around now so i dont mess anything up XD lolz
Related
Hello guys, I was just wondering whether there are any themesout working for the stock ROM. I actually want to change my taskbar look without modifying the whole ROM. I have rooted my phone and installed the mik_os kernel (God bless him).
Any suggestions?
As far as i know... that involves working through odexed files and since if you change the stock color... you'll have to setup the text colors too and THAT is the real pain in the ass if you have no ideia how to do it! (like meeeeee )
Even with tutorials for unexperienced ppl it basically involves you messing with the stock rom and deodex the specific files afecting the status bar and it's texts like the Framework ALL BY HAND! too much hassle if you're a noob, like me!
Basically you can't put themes that change the system setup without "deodexing" the ROM files you have to! That means you would be, in a way, "coocking" your own rom! and therefore it would not be a "stock" rom any longer!
Easiest solution is to get a custom rom that best suits your needs and with said theme you want OR.... make a nand backup of your ROM and go learn how to change and edit the files you need to place a new theme on your ROM and... flash it!?
Last case scenario but highly improbable... get ahold of your current ROM version, the official ROM for your specific phone model and ask somebody you may know or learn it how to do it your self and after you work it out! flash it!
I think there ARE videos on youtube about it but like i said... it's NO amateur stuff believe me!
Either Way remember to always backup your current ROM in case something goes wrong you can always restaure it!
Hey guys can someone give me few good points why would it be better to root my galaxy s2.
From what I know.
chefs can make some really hot themes that I cant have without rooting
having newest android version (2.3.4 I belevie)
I am coming from iphone 4 which was jailbroken to have some better apps and themes.
I just want to know point of view from people who have rooted their phones on galaxy s2 , to be honest touch wiz 4 is actually really nice I like it I am more satisfied with android then iOS. Thanks guys!
patt2k said:
Hey guys can someone give me few good points why would it be better to root my galaxy s2.
From what I know.
chefs can make some really hot themes that I cant have without rooting
having newest android version (2.3.4 I belevie)
I am coming from iphone 4 which was jailbroken to have some better apps and themes.
I just want to know point of view from people who have rooted their phones on galaxy s2 , to be honest touch wiz 4 is actually really nice I like it I am more satisfied with android then iOS. Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi m8,
welcome to the unlimited world of android, in which you'll have full control on ur device
have a look on my thread and tell me if u want to root ?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1195250
Root and discover the universe. it will extend your options to unlimited! u can go anywhere and do everything. "we" are great comunity here and if u will find some problems just ask and your question will be answered.
root will bring u new options - just to make it simple to understand - u can
1. remove apps that u dont like or dont use - improve battery life and speed + u can add anything available!
2. costumize icon + status bar + dialer and much more - make your device on "your style"
3. flash any working avaible ROM with diferent features - what u like u will get
check out for example
1. cognition - simple fast and easy to use
2. MIUI almost unlimited options for changing themes and much more
3. caynogen - stock android - clean and clear - fast and stable
and like this you will have lots of options - i took out few that i like most but they are many more out there.
rooting is the option novadays - dont worry everyone was rooting first time! dont be afraid - believe me.
here +1 for rooting a bigone
The rooting process is too easy for this phone. I actually see no reason NOT to root.
Just being able to use Market Enabler and Titanium Backup seems more than enough reason to root.
There's a case to be made for whether flashing custom ROMs is worth it because the stock ROM is not bad at all. But I would worry about that AFTER rooting.
In case I ever needed to get in touch with samsung warranty issues would there be anyway for them not to find out about it?
I had xperia x1 about 2 years ago I believie , keyboard was mulfunctioning for the first time when I reverted the SPL they replaced my phone second time same thing happened they found out and didnt fix the phone.
patt2k said:
In case I ever needed to get in touch with samsung warranty issues would there be anyway for them not to find out about it?
I had xperia x1 about 2 years ago I believie , keyboard was mulfunctioning for the first time when I reverted the SPL they replaced my phone second time same thing happened they found out and didnt fix the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there is USB jig for resseting the flashing counter and u can always flash stock ROM and they wont know. unless u will brick your phone and u wont be able to flash anything. anyway it wont happend if u will follow the guides here and if u will ask before doing anything.
just pick the right ROM and follow the instructions or ask here in Q/A if u are not sure what to do..
Hi Guys as my title Says..
i need Help very Badly.
First of all MODS and USERS i'm sorry i didn't knew where to post this thread so if its in in-appropriate section please move it to correct section. THanks
OK my problem is this.
i recently (less than a week ago ) bought a Samsung Galaxy S2 its by Bell Canada and its i9100M. i bought it online since my service provider is Rogers.
i guess this phone is already rooted to unlock it and i can see CWM and SU icon there.
Well i'm a Hardcore Blackberry Fan and have been using Blackberries from last 6 years. I loved the new samsung because of it looks and its screen.
I Had Lot of Problem with it like setting up my yahoo as push email, setting the Ringtone Profile, setting up the Custom Ringtones for Text Messages..
Having wrong time stamps on Recieved TEXT Message.. well i fixed all those by installing apps from market and forwarding my yahoo to my gmail...
i Hated doing all that but infront of the beauty of this phone i had to compromise but today it took 3 hours to find my gps location and day by day im using it i'm hating it .....
SO OK I DID MY RESEARCH AND FOUND OUT ALOT... the more i'm researching the more i'm getting confused...
first of all what is the difference between custom ROM and KERNEL.
i know custom rom could be like operating system but customized by unofficial person.
what the h is KERNEL..
to install rom's or kernel do i really have to root.
To unlock do i have to root or is there a paying method.
also i want to know if i'll go back to stock rom can i still unlock it.and recieve all the updates from samsung or google specially when ICS will be launched.
after unlocking and installing custom root. can i unroot it
and lastly which is best custom kernel and which is the best rom availble.
since been a blackberry user i have very basic needs. i don't play any games or download much apps and if an app is paid..i'll pay for it.. i don't want to jailbreak anything .
all i need is better battery life, gps and network coverage.
Thanks for taking time to read and reply.
Hi there.
I'll try and get through your questions as simply as possible,
Imagine your phone is like a car
A kernel is like the engine of a car - it's the low level machinery that keeps it going.
The Rom is like the body of the car around the engine. Roms can be official (or Stock Roms), or they can be customised by other people.
So, when you install a stock rom - you're installing the kernel, but you're also installing the radio (called a modem or baseband) and the registration (or the CSC which is location specific information) as well as the unique 'body' of the car for that rom - tweaks, default software, etc.
You don't have to have rooted your phone to install a Rom. When you update your phone via Kies, you are, literally, installing an stock rom. You can even install stock roms from elsewhere without rooting your phone. Because stock roms are released in different regions at different times, lots of people update their phones to the latest official roms via this method - no root required.
However, to install a custom, unofficial rom, you will need to root your phone as they will require access to the 'root level directory' of your phone's file system - which is what root really means.
You can find everything you need to know about that, how to root and also lots of stock roms you can install without rooting here:
Some shops will root you phone for you if you want to go down that path and don't want to risk it. But it's easier than you think and the galaxy s2 is very hard to break. There's lots of help available on XDA - just remember to search before you ask so you don't ask a common question the millionth time.
If you have installed a custom rom you can easily re-install a stock rom over it that will still work with Kies and thus be updateable when ICS turns up.
There is no 'best' Rom or kernel. Some Roms go 'as is' and some are customisable to the nth degree if you like fiddling with your phone non-stop. I personally use CheckRom because I like the kitchen app that lets you swap kernels, modems and mods with ease - but check out the Original Android Development threads and see which other roms you like the sound of.
Depending on what you are currently running, a new rom - even a stock one if you're running a very old one - could easily help with battery and range issues. For GPS - try installing FasterFix from the market and see if reassigning your GPS fix to a closer location helps.
Best of luck - it's a great phone once you open up its possibilities
Thanks a lot for the reply
well your reply did help me a lot...
my phone is been already rooted by someone else already from the person i bought it....
as for searching i did a lot.. and its been confusing me more and more ..well thanks for your answer
also as u said S2 is hard to break..i guess u mean is that the JIG thing on EBAY
and as for flashing the stuff i've played with other stuff just not android thing ive replaced the os on BB and jailbreaked iphones and installed macintosh on HP PC and also worked on most of the languages 10 years ago... and i believe nothing is impossible so going to someone else is never an option for me
just want to know as much as stuff i can before going further
well i have few more questions
how can i find which rom or kernel is already installed...
i mean is it possible to tell if its stock or its customized and its customized by which group.
and one last thing.. u know the words u used modem and baseband...
i read about it before...
but my question is ...
IS THE BASEBAND ANYTHING LIKE IPHONE BASEBAND???
u know in iPhones when baseband is updated u r screwed sometimes its hard to jailbreak and definately hard to unlock and reverting changes to baseband....
is it the samething in Galaxy S2 as well...
Thanks a lot for replying...i really appreciate all the time you took to reply.
Thanks once again.
Yeah baseband is the code that handles the phone part of your smartphone. Talking to your wireless provider, 3G, texts all these things are done by baseband.
Flashing a different baseband won't screw your root, and you'd still be rooted. Samsung doesn't make it hard to root as Apple does to jailbreaking. Even if something goes wrong with a new version, you can always revert back to old one using Odin(Samsung ROM flashing tool) and you are good to go.
Thanks a lot... about that quick reply...
i'm gonna collect more information and hopefully i'll be flashing it on weekend...
but how can i find which rom or kernel is already installed...
i mean is it possible to tell if its stock or its customized and its customized by which group
Everything you need to know can be found here. Most of it, anyway.
Backup your device with cwm when rooted ... So you can always restore to previous state. ;-)
Good luck there. But reading is a must.
SGS II - XDA
blackberryfan said:
thanks a lot... About that quick reply...
I'm gonna collect more information and hopefully i'll be flashing it on weekend...
But how can i find which rom or kernel is already installed...
In your dialer type *#1234#
info will apear. Now read chainfire's tutorial how to root your device ....
I mean is it possible to tell if its stock or its customized and its customized by which group
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Setting went wrong when quoting
sgs ii - xda
also you can go settings - about phone - then look at the bottom fields to see kernel, baseband and build. Quote those and we should be able to tell what you have.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
Hi everyone,
I am new to the android world having just bought a galaxy s2, so please be gentle. I'm a previous iphone owner and always hated the restrictions apple put on their phones and dictated the way I could use my handset! I've since moved over to android and my first impressions are OMFG, how confusing is all of this!! I'm not techphobic by any means but I am struggling to piece together how the world of android works and I have spent a lot of time reading various things about ROMs, rooting, flashing, kernels etc... but I am getting more and more confused!
I recently bought a Galaxy S2 which is running a custom ICS ROM on it (resurrection remix 1.0) and also has CWM on it. Having looked at the forums i can see that another version in out (1.3 i believe) but i'm very hesitant to try a flash as i dont want to screw my phone.
The way I see it i've got two choices, either try and reset the phone to stock so that warranty etc... remains uneffected and then update to ics through kies when its available or try and install a later version of one the ics ROM's that are availabe. I was wondering to that end if you lovely people coudl give me some guidance.
If I were to reset my phone to stock how do i do this bearing in mind i am confused about
a) what kernels are in the first place and
b) which one i woudl need for my phone and will I need a usb jig for this?
c) -i need to unroot my phone to return it to stock and if so how do i do this
also:
-what is the difference between an insecure and secure kernal
-if i flash my phone to a newer version of ics can i revert back to 1.0 as at the mo apart from the odd app crashing here and there I'm not having any probs with it.
I'm reading about GAPPS and APKs and dont know what the hell these are either but they keep popping up every so often.....basically i'm confused and on the verge of a breakdown!!
Please could somebody help mw with this and massive apologies if i've posted where i shoudnt have.
Thanks in advance
Saf
If you had taken the same time took for typing here to search and read you would have learnt almost everything...
go through these stiky threads
also see my links in singnature.......read as much as possible....no other substitute for reading and learning, nobody will answer you in essays like you typed
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1544657
Appreciate what you're saying mate and thank you for taking the time to reply. I have been reading various threads over the last day or so but the problem is when something like this which is quite techinical is completely new territory you dont know where to start. Google throws up page after page of stuff that doesnt make much sense and i've searched on the forums here and read up on quite a bit but again am not sure if i've grasped it.
problem is I didnt install the custom ROM on the phone, i bought it like this and to do anything further with it i dont know if i need to go back to the original owner with more questions or can i just go ahead and start tinkering with it without knowing what software was originally on the phone? (bearing in mind that various posts state that you need certain software which is as close to the original one as possible)
Thanks anyway
Saf
this is the stage which passed by all the noobs including me, dont worry
Your strating treble will only be over when you start flashing a ROM,
cool.
ima go ahead and try and install version 1.3 of resurrestion remix! Wish me luck hehe!!
Good luck,
dont forget to follow the steps mentioned the ROM thread atleast...
Hi All,
Please excuse the particular noob nature of this post. I have been doing a lot of digging and I just want to make sure I know what I'm doing before I launch into this amazing world of custom software and updates.
I very luckily won myself a Galaxy Tab 10.1 3g wifi (no idea exact model until it comes, as it appears there are a few....)
I have a galaxy nexus, but I've not mucked around with it at all really. A free galaxy tab though, is too much of a temptation not to.
So, in what order should I be doing stuff? From what I can gather it would be:
Root
Download ROM Manager
Install Clockworkmod Recovery
Make a NANDROID backup
From here, I'd like to use an AOKP rom, so I guess I flash that next, then install GAPP's.
Can you change kernel's when you like, or do they have to be done before the custom ROM, or after? Do they effect the custom ROM much?
Once both are on, make another NANDROID if stable?
There's a lot of guides on each step which I'm reading through at the moment, but the overall order isn't discussed that much. Hopefully I have a good jist of whats going on, and I apologise for bringing up such a basic issue yet again.
If it saves me bricking my new toy though, hopefully it will have been worth it.
I also currently use Widgetlocker and ADW launcher on my nexus. Will these work on ROMs? Are they needed? I notice that people post themes up so is there a seperate way of theming when on custom roms?
There's a lot of questions there, so I apologise for spamming. As long as I have the right order of doing things to start with, I'm sure I'll pick up ther rest on the way.
Thanks all.
If i were you . I follow this guide http://galaxytabhacks.com/galaxy-tab-10-1-hacks/how-to-root-galaxy-tab-10-1-the-easy-way/
once you have the Clockworkmod Recovery. Make a backup and install any custom rom you like. Yes, you can change kernel's after installing custom rom. Good Luck
Awesome. Thanks for the reply.
Can't wait to start mucking around with it.