I have recently purchased a second hand (pristine) HTC One Max as an upgrade from my existing Galaxy Mega 6.3. To this point I have *never* owned an HTC device (having mainly had Samsungs with the occasional Nexus), so it is a bit of a learning curve to cross over!
One thing that I really like about the Mega is the 240dpi setting of the device, which effectively meant that Launchers (such as Nova) and Apps behaved like they were on a Tablet. With the large display size of these devices I find that these tablet settings make for a much better experience.
In order to change the DPI settings I need to change build.prop, which requires root access.
Is there a way to get a temporary root on my HTC One Max 4.4.2 to just make this (permanent) change (without unlocking bootloaders or performing an S-off)?
The more I read about the process for root the more I am worried about how tricky things are to revert back when I eventually sell the device! It seems, that unlike Samsung phones where you can just flash back an original firmware using the PC Client ODIN, that you need to unlock the bootloader, which shows a red warning message on bootup that can only be removed if you are S-Off. Reverting back to a precise stock state seems even more tricky (although I may be wrong - I have only just started researching!).
Anyway, the full process for permanent root seems rather complex for just a "simple" change, so I was hoping there would be an easier way!
Thanks in advance!
Mike
Related
Last year I got annoyed that the Wishlist icon was repopulating itself to my Favorites every time I deleted it, so I got a wild hair to root my Kindle and take care of that junk for good. I did this before reading the numerous warnings about how this was an awful device to root on a whim. I proceeded to delete a bunch of system files related to Amazon ads and tracking. After a reboot, I found myself stuck at a flashing white Favorites screen. I could get to the Settings menus, but most choices didn't work and just took me back to Settings without changing anything. I couldn't connect to a wifi network, but I could see the networks, click on Connect to Network, and then it just took me back to Settings. I couldn't change any of the Developer settings. I did hard resets from that mode and from the boot up recovery menu. Nothing could get me out of this state.
Anyway, I posted thread about this when it happened, here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/kin...iles-flashing-favorites-screen-t3116682/page1
In the end, I didn't have the heart to scam Amazon, so I just bought a used HDX 7 and put the bricked one in the drawer in hopes of a future fix. Last night, my replacement Kindle's screen was crushed by some mysterious force, possibly a kitty cat or an adjustable bed. Though it's tempting to think about trying to swap the screens, I don't want to crack the screen and wind up with two broken displays (plus a bricked Kindle). So I thought I'd check back and see if there were any developments on the fixing-dumb-newbie-mistakes front for the bricked one.
The device does not show up in Windows XP, 7, or 8.1. The Kindle itself recognizes it's charging. As I mentioned in the old thread, I tried a Fastboot cable, but that apparently doesn't work on this model. So any hope? It's so frustrating because it seems like if I could just get the wifi to work I could download the latest OS update and it would fix this.
I understand if there still are no fixes for this. It was a dumb move to tinker with this in the first place. I was just hopeful something might have changed, since last I asked about it.
No adb access? That sucks, as it should be pretty easy to fix if you could adb push. Were it mine, I'd go ahead and try to replace the screen on the functioning tablet. Not what you want to hear, but I think that's the only way to get working again. Best of luck.
Valence1981 said:
Last year I got annoyed that the Wishlist icon was repopulating itself to my Favorites every time I deleted it, so I got a wild hair to root my Kindle and take care of that junk for good. I did this before reading the numerous warnings about how this was an awful device to root on a whim. I proceeded to delete a bunch of system files related to Amazon ads and tracking. After a reboot, I found myself stuck at a flashing white Favorites screen. I could get to the Settings menus, but most choices didn't work and just took me back to Settings without changing anything. I couldn't connect to a wifi network, but I could see the networks, click on Connect to Network, and then it just took me back to Settings. I couldn't change any of the Developer settings. I did hard resets from that mode and from the boot up recovery menu. Nothing could get me out of this state.
Anyway, I posted thread about this when it happened, here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/kin...iles-flashing-favorites-screen-t3116682/page1
In the end, I didn't have the heart to scam Amazon, so I just bought a used HDX 7 and put the bricked one in the drawer in hopes of a future fix. Last night, my replacement Kindle's screen was crushed by some mysterious force, possibly a kitty cat or an adjustable bed. Though it's tempting to think about trying to swap the screens, I don't want to crack the screen and wind up with two broken displays (plus a bricked Kindle). So I thought I'd check back and see if there were any developments on the fixing-dumb-newbie-mistakes front for the bricked one.
The device does not show up in Windows XP, 7, or 8.1. The Kindle itself recognizes it's charging. As I mentioned in the old thread, I tried a Fastboot cable, but that apparently doesn't work on this model. So any hope? It's so frustrating because it seems like if I could just get the wifi to work I could download the latest OS update and it would fix this.
I understand if there still are no fixes for this. It was a dumb move to tinker with this in the first place. I was just hopeful something might have changed, since last I asked about it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're done if device is running 4.5.2 w/no adb access. There are a few last resort unbrick methods/tools but they are geared toward older versions of FireOS (v3.2.6 and below). Replacing the screen on a 7" HDX is difficult; copious use of glue makes for a tough job. Might check auction sites; prices are pretty low for 16GB models. Also consider the latest 7" tab from Amazon (2015 Fire). Specs are awful vs HDX but it really isn't that bad, especially for video and with apps designed for lower resolution screens (many are). Fully rootable with option for custom roms. FireOS v5 is a nice step up from v4, faster and more 'android like' (although still heavily skinned).
I feel super awkward and a bit embarrassed to ask this question, but I'm asking for help from this community (see last 2 or paragraphs for ask if you want to skip the boring details) and I think I need to explain briefly why to define my ultimate goal and why I even have to ask rather than sift through searches and assemble the steps/versions I need, etc.
My 22 year old daughter died recently (unexpectedly). I obviously want to preserve everything I can of hers, but I'm not firing on all cylinders mentally. I was able take her ThinkPad and virtualize it to my ESX system and also yank and clone the physical drive for safe keeping. But even doing that took me a while (which it shouldn't, that's kind of what I do for a living - I should be able to do that in my sleep, but it took 3 days and a lot of screaming). I was able to access her google accounts, facebook accounts, etc. and preserve a ton of stuff from there.
Ultimately while I would want to do with her phone the same thing I did to her notebook - preserve it virtually so I could examine it without fear of changing/modifying anything, but I don't think the product exists that allows me to virtualize an existing Android phone with apps and everything intact into a PC environment. I think I could install a whole new Android emulator in Windows, but that's not probably what I want.
I had just given her a Samsung S5 SM-G900T running on Ting for her birthday about 2 weeks before she died. It was unlocked but unrooted, it's rare that I would do nothing to the phone prior to giving it to her - but I pretty much just turned it on and handed it over with no custom ROM or anything - mostly because I was pressed for time the day of her party and it was shipped late.
When I got it back from the police a few say ago (they held it for 2 months) and charged it and turned it on 2 days ago, it upgraded from Lollipop to Marshmallow 6.0.1 (baseband is PE1), which was apparently pending. I don't know if that complicates things. It pissed me off, though. I have copied off local photos off and videos and already took control of her Google and Facebook accounts as I mentioned.
My slightly confused brain tells me normally I might install TWRP or CWM and make a NAND backup and copy it off someplace and at least have a restorable copy of her phone. I haven't done much of this sort of thing with phones for a year or two, I don't know what's changed in the latest OS versions and beides, plus I sort of "lose it" a bit, especially going through her personal things.
I'm not an idiot, I'm just not all here, yet. I'm asking if someone can please give me steps to safely preserve an image of her phone (IE, install TWRP or CWM using specific version xxx, etc., using Odin version xxx, etc.) - If I can virtualize it, too, I'd love to know what product does that, but again, I don't think I can.
I don't know why I feel the need to do these things, I just do.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Bump. Somebody please help this fellow. This is too important for me to try advising him, I don't know enough.
So even though half my brain is addled, I did some more research and found out a few interesting things, should anyone care to try this. I found there are a couple of open source tools built for android forensics:
Open Source Android Forensics Toolkit
https://sourceforge.net/projects/osaftoolkit/
Santoku
https://santoku-linux.com/about-santoku/
And there are commercial products, , like NowSecureForensics, some (if not most) built on the toolkits I just mentioned. Another is the painfully ironically named (for me, anyway) Autopsy.
This interesting website verified (to me anyway) that rooting the phone and changing access is still fundamentally sound forensically:
http://freeandroidforensics.blogspot.com
And it confirmed there is no way (yet) to truly "virtualize" the phone entirely (unless you are the manufacturer and you have some proprietary software).
For a "live" example virtually, the best you can do is install an Android emulator and restore an ADB backup of an app. This obviously may or may not work if the app is very hardware dependent. But for a simple program it might work fine.
So in addition to rooting my daughter's S5, installing TWRP, and backing it up, I also got my daughter's HTC One M7 to finally power up, and I rooted it and installed TWRP for backup purposes as well. Many of the forensic tools I mentioned will then report from the standard TWRP backups, with no risk to changing the phone. Some want to look at the phone themselves, even offering to root them, which I find more risky.
I haven't found any one tool to fully provide what I need, you need a Windows PC, a Linux PC (or VM), one or more toolsets (each comprised of other toolsets) and then a lot of time/will to really piece together things. I haven't completed the examinations - even typing is harder now for some reason, but should anyone else need this sort of thing (hopefully for different reasons than mine), the above info is a good start.
Hey guys. I purchased this device a couple of weeks ago. I am not a power user of mobile devices. To give you an example what I mean, right now I have the device unplugged for 122 hours and still have 51% of battery left.
I had rooted all my previous devices for 2 main reasons: a) For changing font type and b) Installing Lucky Patcher (just to get rid of annoying ads). I noticed that rooting Z5c is quite a mess. And in my case (MM, 32.1.A.1.185) needs downgrading also which adds more to the messy puzzle.
So, all I want to do for now is to use Travel font from my previous LG G2 device as my system font, and a hint maybe on how to (safely-successfully) get rid of these ads that they are everywhere.
Is rooting the way to go or there is still a chance without rooting?
Thanks guys.
P.S. Here is the zip file with the font, in case someone has the knowledge to try and mess around a little bit with the system settings and tell me if I can do it without rooting.
To get rid of the ads you could try Adguard, which worked pretty well for me without root.
You cannot change system font without root. Current issue is when you root, you might lose DRM keys (unless you back up first) and unusual battery drain even in deep sleep. There's a thread in Z5C General discussing about this issue.
I recommend Adguard too for blocking ads on phone without root.
Thanks guys. The only application that appears to do a good job is Webguard. Let's see how it behaves.
Hi guys,
So after ages I finally unlocked my S7E Bootloader so I could root and be able to do a 'nandroid' backup instead of relying on 'the cloud' which is slow and does not restore my app data. My phone had gotten to the point where typing even was almost impossible 7 out of 10 times.
I used magisk for rooting, went through all kinds of shenanigans and apparently my knox efuse (while burnt) displays 0x0 to apps at least. Hid magisk, hid magisk from my banking app (Juice by MCB if curious) and it still would detect my device is rooted. I removed magisk completely thus removing root and still no go. Nothing I could do it appears (btw if there's a method to determine how a specific app is detecting root, I'd love to know).
So basically now I cannot use my phone anymore with the banking app... nice.
In the interval I was looking also at replacement phones and with the knox situation I was looking to leave samsung. I wanted a nice bump in battery life and camera performance and loved what the p30 pro is offering (still gapps compatible and amazing low light and zoom) even if I'm not a fan of the nano-memory expansion.
Eventually I found out that the p30 pro's bootloader was at one point unlockable then not anymore and I'm like that's a mess.
To me (I could be wrong) there's no way to plug your phone in a computer and backup completely (like an itunes iphone backup) or to do a nandroid type of backup from stock recovery.
I also love ACC (which you can use to charge your phone to 80% and no more). but apparently we're letting apps dictate how we use our phones now more and more.
So my questions are:
1. What's happening with the bootloaders? Are we more and more having locked BLs that mean we cannot root our phones
2. Is rooting (despite all the amazing efforts of magisk & friends) just not going to be invisible anymore to all apps
3. Are custom ROMs going to die off as people are more dependent on their phones to use banking apps (and tomorrow maybe more apps will want your phone to be 'stock)
4. Is there currently no way to trick those sensitive apps to think you're a stock phone, unrooted, etc?
I absolutely hate having to carry around a 2nd phone in my pocket which seems to be the only solution to this problem right now besides just plain not touching the phone's BL and/or rooting
Thanks for reading through guys
little no.5: What's the status of phones like the Realme Pro x2 which seem to bring great value but little to no community support?
I guess I'm talking about the camera system. It seems to have top notch hardware but no proper software, can this be improved substantially in software today, aka a special gcam maybe? < That is likely its own thread sorry
I have a A52 5g and a tab S7+ wifi, that are both remotely controled and monitored, and serve as gateway to my home network and basicaly every device connected to it. I noticed it at first and mew NOTHING related to this, didnt even know what open source was. Since then i have come to understand that, somehow, my phone seems to run a custom version of android, my guess is, built from AOSP and designed to disguise itself as oem samsung ui, but in background enables remote access and total takeover of every function. I have discovered, using total commander, that storage has been partitioned in 2 separate locations, and that one folder in there is called root system file, and filled with data/apk/installkits/etc.. this has me asking for help in 2 specific questions:
Am i holding a rooted device or is there another possibility that creates this situation? I was convinced its rooted untill i read here that root prevents from using samsung pass, secure folder etc.. and those seem to work on mine(or is it a version of those apps?) If its indeed rooted, will it wype everything if i flash it with the stock rom? And should i trust a small cell repair store to do that or learn how to do it myself?
2: i have bought 3 brand new phones since august, and made sure not to use my usual accounts, no use backups, not even set it up near my home wifi, and it almost instantly started self installing harmful software in background. I see no other way for it to link itself to be owned by me at initial setup, but for the sim card, new of course, but with my usual phone number and service transfered to it. Is that enough to make a breach and compromise a new device? If so, what would be different after fpashing the stock rom, if everything reinstalls itself? Do i need to change my number? Change cellular service provider even? I know its an unusual request but im a fast learner, i have compiled lots of technical info on specific apps, ip's, servers, build id numbers etc.. that i know would make more sense to anyone more qualified than me, and i am about ready to try and wype/flash the thing myself, i just would feel better with a little help since i have gone this far pretty much alone, since no service provider or manifacturer actualy feels like this is their problem to solve....
Here you can download firmware for your phone and flash with Odin, which you can also download at the bottom of the page, there are instructions on how to do it also.
Make sure to download correct firmware for exact device you have. There are few different A52 5G models.. SM-A526B, SM-A526U, SM-A5260, SM-A526U1, SM-A526W.
You will lose all data after flashing new firmware. After this your phone will be like brand new from Samsung..
If your device is rooted then that means your warranty is void and manufacturers and carriers are under no obligation to help you.
I'm trying to understand your situation but its so conflicting I don't know where to begin.
For example, you say your device runs a custom AOSP with a Samsung UI. Thats exactly how it actually works. Samsung take the AOSP, customise it with their own functionality, then overlay their own skin as the UI. Theres absolutely nothing unusual about that.
I'm conflicted as to whether your rooted or not. If the manufacturer or carrier has physically seen the device and won't repair it then that would suggest your definitely rooted. If you spoke to them virtually and told them your rooted then they will use it as an excuse whether you're truly rooted or not. The partitions you mention could be the internal storage and an sd card which can be seen non-rooted. I dont know what you mean when you mention a "root system file". Is it an actual folder called "root" or is the app you're using just telling you that you've reached the "root" of the filesystem? I can't quite work out what you mean. You also say Knox-powered apps still work which just adds to the confusion.
You stated you have had 3 new devices and they all self-installed harmful software. To get one device compromised is possible. To get three compromised means your either a high profile government target (which I doubt because they wouldn't be so sloppy as this) or your doing something to compromise your own devices such as continuously visiting dodgy websites.
Flashing will fix things but so would having a new device. The only common denominator is you so either you're doing something wrong or you truly are a government target in which case I wish you good luck!
First let me appologise for the long silence, i cut off most online activity for a while and just read your answers. To clarify, i have not solved my prolem yet. But ill try to explain better what you ask about my situation:
About de os version arobase40 got it right. I Asked google play help reps. And a stock samsung version of android would not trigger googles warning about running a custom version of android. So that point to a modified after-the-fact more than to the fact samsung has their propierary version installed.
About beeing rooted or not, ylwhat you are asking is what im not totaly certajn of, also. I know partition can happen without rooting, its seems to have created a "virtual sd card" since its named as such when sd card slot is actualy empty. About the root files folder, i cant say for sure, all i can say is that its holding a large amount of Gigs that dont get taken into account when looking at storage capacity and usage, and accessing that folder gives me a message that root files cant be access from this device. Does it mean my device had root acess privileges revoked to prevent viewing files that hide what is given control of the software remotely, so i dont find out or have the capacity to remove or alter those files?
What is absolutely sure is that if it is rooted, it wasnt done by me. As for the chance the devices were not factory brand new, 1 of them was not, got it opend box from amazon, a saudi arabia version, but my prkblems had started months before getting it, did not keep it more than 2 months, and all others before and since are 100% pure factory new, some directly from my cellular service provider, as financed device came with 2 year agreement of service,(actualy 2 of them i got this way) and the last one is my tab s7+ i got online directly from samsung canada website, on preorder, delivered on release day.
And lastly the fact i cant seem to shake those persistent leeches, is not from having reckless habbits online, but from having careless and uneducated habbits before that all started, usual older lazy dude stuff, like not changing my wifi password after a ruff breakup with bipolar psycho ex gf, or having only a few passwords reused on most my accounts. I have stopped doing those things long ago now that i know better, but i suspect that i could have been unaware something gettnng installed and staying dormant for a while, maybe? The ex had way more opportunities than needed to do something like this and is more than psycho enough to realy do it also. For having the skills to do it, lets say she has "assets" that can easily get her guys willing to help about that. It may also be coming from somwhere else, but as you say im not a super spy or a high ranking gov. Official. Im not even that interesting, and have absolutely no usable id for fraud or anything, my credit history would raise more red flags then there is in all china. So after so long struggling with this still very active, i cant even think of a rational reason to do so much effort into this, theres nothing to gain, i only can imagine that maybe a twisted mind seeking revege, or with a sick way of amusing themselves could see the point to all that, but i dont realy care. I only want to get rid of it.
As for the way it manages to be so much persistent, i can only see one option left i didnt remove from the process, and its through my phone number/account on the sim card, even a new sim on a new phone, still is linked to my cell service. I did initial setup with only that new sim card, accounts freshely created during setup, with no info or anythink linkable to my previous accounts, and even did it sitting outside, far from any building that could get me in range of a wifi network. And it still was no more effective at staying secure.
Thats why i did not yet try to flash a stock rom myself on my device, because it would, at best, become exactly like it was when brand new, and i know that this is not enough to keep it secure, and that means theres still something im missing in the whole picture.