Stuck with an old smartphone that you just can't throw away? With nothing to lose, and no warranty, why not hack it? Here's how.
And if you were too afraid to hack your smartphone when it was under warranty, what's stopping you now from trying your hand if you've an 'old' smartphone lying around to play with? With nothing to lose, and no warranty, why not hack it? Here's how.
The methods discussed in the following pages will not only
help you extract maximum performance and unlock advanced features on
your latest smartphone but also help resuscitate older devices making
them more usable. In this section of Tips & Tricks, we’ll cover all
the dominant mobile platforms in the market, detailing how to
jailbreak/root the devices on which they run. The hacks mentioned here
will allow you to sideload, i.e. install third-party apps on your
device, install a custom/modified ROM and give super-user access to the
system which will enable you to tweak the innards of the device.
With great power, comes great responsibility
[DISCLAIMER]
The
tools and techniques discussed here provide you with high privileges
allowing you to alter low-level settings and data on a device. If not
handled properly, such changes may result in unexpected and undesired
behaviour which in turn may lead to damaging your device. Nine Dot Nine
Media Interactive Pvt. Ltd is not responsible for any damage to your
phone resulting from your actions based on this guide.
This
article is accompanied with the customary disclaimer. What we’ll
discuss here is dangerous and if not done carefully, you may brick your
phone. Jailbreaking/rooting your phone is not illegal as long as it is
limited to non-copyright infringement purposes, but jailbreaking/rooting
your phone will void your device’s manufacturer warranty so proceed
with extreme caution.
Before trying out any method mentioned
in these pages, make sure that you take a full backup of your phone data
using the method(s) mentioned for each OS. Please follow all the
instructions provided here or the guides to which links are provided for
a particular model or device to a tee. Not doing so can lead to
extremely dire consequences.
Android
Android
is much more relaxed as compared to other platforms when it comes to
allowing the user to install third-party apps which is perhaps the main
reason for rooting/jailbreaking other mobile platforms. Rooting is the
first step in extending the functionality that your phone has to offer –
wireless tethering for older phones, custom ROMs, CPU overclocking and
so on. Rooting in Android is very much akin to running a program as an
administrator in Windows or running a program with the sudo command in
*nix systems.
Back up your phone:
All
your contacts, mail, calendar and other Google account specific data
will already be in sync with Google’s servers, so you need not worry
about that. As far as the system data, apps and app data is concerned
there are two ways to go about backing them up – using either the
Titanium Backup app, available in the Google Play Store or ADB (Android
Debug Bridge), a command-line utility included with Google’s Android
SDK. The problem with the first tool is that your phone needs to be
rooted to use Titanium Backup as it requires root permissions, and
brings into existence the classic chicken and egg problem. Titanium
Backup is useful on rooted phones that you plan on installing a custom
ROM on. You’d want to make sure that all your installed applications,
settings and the original firmware are available to you in case you run
into any problems. Another advice here is to go for a Nandroid backup
provided by the Clockwork Recovery Mod or your own custom ROM which
saves an entire image of the device to the disk for future use.
For
Android 4.0 and later, you can use the ADB backup. Just download Holo
Backup, a GUI wrapper for conducting the backup, from its homepage at http://goo.gl/Ya4sL
Once you get the app running , hit “Backup all without system apps” and
you’re set. Since this functionality doesn’t exist for Android 2.3 or
lower, your best bet is to use an application like MyBackup Pro to back
up your other data to the SD card or online and ASTRO File Manager to
copy your application APKs to a safe location.
Root your phone:
The
complication for Android is that there are a large variety of phones
available in the market today. Now, while some methods do work for a
very large cross-section of handsets, there’s no universal
one-size-fits-all rooting solution for every phone out there.
We’ll
start with the one tool that’s able to root a lot of models, especially
the older ones – it’s called SuperOneClick. The catch is that it may or
may not work for your phone, so you’ll have to dig a little deeper for
another tool, especially for older phones as they have their own little
quirks.
Download SuperOneClick from http://goo.gl/QMOIZ
and extract the downloaded zip file. On your phone make sure that USB
Debugging is enabled under settings and then connect the phone to your
PC. The next step is very important: make sure your SD card is not
mounted before proceeding. Once your phone is detected by SuperOneClick,
click on “Root” to begin the rooting process and wait for it to
complete. That’s it! Once the process completes, your phone will be
rooted and you can then proceed to the post-rooting section of this
guide. In case you face any problem, search the SuperOneClick support
thread on XDA Developers at http://goo.gl/tzReR for others with the same problems as you.
SuperOneClick in action
This
app is known not to work with the following phones. You can use
unrevoked.com instead to circumvent the NAND lock used by these phone.
• Sprint HTC EVO 4G (Supersonic)
• HTC Droid Incredible
• HTC Desire GSM
• HTC Desire CDMA (BravoC)
• HTC Aria
• Droid Eris (HTC DesireC)
• HTC Wildfire (HTC Buzz)
One
thing to note here is that there may be other methods as well by which
you can root your phone. You’ll have to find the one that suits you the
best. For example, all phones from HTC released in and after 2011 are
allowed by HTC itself to unlock their bootloader (http://goo.gl/YyWIu).
The only step you need to perform after this is flashing a custom ROM
to your device to get the root access. Now other methods may exist which
may do this for your phone in one click, it’s entirely up to your
discretion to select the method that you’re comfortable with.
Some
of the latest phones have different exploits and one-click root tools
specifically made for them. They’re listed in the table below along with
links for the respective phone’s guide.
You’ll find that
nearly all links point to XDA Forums. It is infact the mecca of
smartphone hacking, rooting and development. Nearly all the developers
congregate and collaborate here, making rooting toolkits and apps
possible. Whenever in doubt just head over to XDA Developers forums.
You’ll find that someone usually has had the exact same problem as you,
and in all probabilities you’ll find an excellent solution here.
| Rootable Phones | Links |
| Samsung Galaxy Note | http://goo.gl/LJfzz |
| HTC One S | http://goo.gl/PLfYj |
| HTC One X | http://goo.gl/OLJlu |
| Sony Xperia S | http://goo.gl/WtunD |
| LG Optimus 4X HD | http://goo.gl/pNHfj |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 2 | http://goo.gl/CGdxX |
| Google/LG Nexus 4 | http://goo.gl/KtTXz |
| Samsung Galaxy SIII | http://goo.gl/XHt82 |
| Samsung Galaxy SII | http://goo.gl/7k8gp |
| HTC Desire | http://goo.gl/4nWr4 |
Things you can do post rooting:
Once
you’ve rooted your phone, it will open up a host of hidden features on
your phone. For starters, you’ll be able to flash custom ROMs such as
ParanoidAndroid, LiquidSmooth, Android Open Kang Project, Cyanogenmod 10
and Xylon to name a few. You’ll find many threads online which deal
with installing/flashing these ROMs on your phone after rooting. You’ll
also be able to install applications which need root access such as
Titanium Explorer, ES File Explorer, ROM Manager, CPU Master for
overclocking and so on. There’s this excellent thread at Stack Exchange (http://goo.gl/8h0Rm) that will blow you away with the possibilities post rooting of your phone.
Paranoid Android running on Nexus 4
CyanogenMod 10.1 which provides a customized Jelly Bean experience
iOS
Hacking
your iOS device, on the other hand, is called jailbreaking. In an
ecosystem which is under tight control by the iron-fists of the
Cupertino-based giant, jailbreaking allows the user to install a
modified operating system by unlocking the bootloader, sideloading
third-party apps apart from those from the App Store and provide root
permissions to the user.
Back up your phone:
Backing
up your iPhone is quite straightforward. You could either have your
phone synced with iCloud or just manually create a backup from iTunes by
right-clicking on your phone icon and clicking on “backup”. An
advantage of doing it this way is that you can restore it much faster.
If you’re upgrading from a jailbroken phone, make sure that you back up
your Cydia apps separately so that they can be easily restored after
you’ve upgraded and jailbroken your phone.
You can back up
your Cydia apps by downloading OpenBackup from Cydia’s official
repositories. The app is quite easy to operate: simply open the app and
hit the Backup button; this backs up your Cydia data to either iCloud or
iTunes. You also get a local copy if you want to manually save the
backup file to your computer’s hard drive. You’ll find the backup file
at private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/OpenBackupFiles, and can use
iFunBox to copy the files to your hard drive.
Root your phone:
As
opposed to Android, not many methods are available for cracking your
iPhone (infact this works for any iDevice, but we’ll be limiting our
discussion to the iPhones here). The table below details the various
methods available for the different versions of the phone at different
operating system versions.
The highlighted jailbreaks are
tethered jailbreaks, i.e. you need to plug in the phone at every restart
so that the jailbreak can be loaded; this patches the kernel in real
time. This might sound quite cumbersome but it’s the only way to go
about doing it for the older versions of the operating systems. If you
update your phone now, you’ll be updated to iOS 6.1.3 and you won’t be
able to downgrade to 6.1.2 or lower so if you’ve not updated your phone
you’re still in luck, as you’ll still be able to use evasi0n or the
respective jailbreaking tool for your version of operating system. The
evad3rs team is hard at work at bringing out a jailbreak for iOS 6.1.3.
Follow them on Twitter (@evad3rs) for latest updates.
These
jailbreak tools are incredibly easy to operate. For e.g. consider
evasi0n. Just grab the latest zip file from the tool’s download page and
extract the file. Make sure that you remove the lock screen password
before proceeding and avoid all iTunes related tasks when evasi0n is
running. In case the process freezes at any time it’s safe to restart
the program and reboot the device to try the process again. To jailbreak
your device just run evasi0n and click on the jailbreak button for the
process to begin. Your phone will restart a couple of times during the
process, be patient. Eventually, the process will run its course and
you’ll be able to tap on the exit button. The phone will restart and
Voila! You’ve just jailbroken your iPhone.
Both the other apps
function in a similar way. When in doubt, visit the forums on the
respective app’s pages, and you’re bound to get help there. Make sure
that you find the exact version of your firmware and use the recommended
jailbreaking tool from the table above.
| Jailbreaking Tools | Download Links |
| evasi0n | http://evasi0n.com |
| Greenpois0n/absinth | http://greenpois0n.com |
| Redsnow | http://www.redsn0w.us |
Access features post jailbreaking:
You’ll
now have access to an amazing set of features which will let you modify
the phone in some very interesting ways, the first of which being
Cydia. This amazing little app will allow you to download a host of
third-party apps hosted on both, Cydia’s own and other repositories.
You’ll be able to personalize the menu and its appearance along with the
background and lock screen images.
OpenBackup to back up your Cydia apps
Advance
task switcher, mods which let you run tasks in the background, folder
enhancer, SSH and GCC are just some of the apps which form the tip of
the iceberg. You can find quite an interesting list of possibilities
compiled by Big Boss over at http://goo.gl/KYhmY.
It lists some of the app mentioned here and many more interesting ones
which can be installed once you’ve jailbroken your phone.
UI Overhaul using WinterBoard
Windows Phone
Rooting
a Windows Phone is comparatively trickier. There are three ways by
which you can root/unlock Windows Phone: Developer Unlock, Interop
Unlock and Full Unlock.
1. Developer
Unlock: This allows you to sideload third-party apps on your phone. The
number is restricted to 10 and you need to register yourself at App Hub
at $99/year to unlock your phone. There’s also a student account which
allows you to sideload up to three apps for free.
2. Interop
Unlock: A new lock was introduced with the earlier builds of WP7 Mango
which required apps to have this lock to be able to access device
drivers and other restricted areas such as the registry, root access,
the file system and so on. Called the Interop Unlock by its finder
Heathcliff from the XDA Developer forums, this unlock used exploits to
target the vulnerabilities in some of the manufacturer specific software
to unlock the phone.
Full Unlock: As of now this is only
possible for first generation HTC and Samsung phones. After unlocking
the bootloaders and installing custom ROMs, you need to install Full
Unlock packages which patches to remove the policy checks and gives you
full access to the system. The problem here is that all apps then have
full access to your system, even the bad ones.
Back up your phone :
There
are two ways you can go about backing up data on your Windows Phone.
You can either use the WP7 Easy Backup Tool or the WP7 Backup app. You
can grab WP7 Easy Backup Tool at http://goo.gl/qM9bu. The process is quite straightforward and the app is laid out like a wizard to guide you through the backup process.
The
app is a very clever piece of software and uses the Zune updater tool
to back up your phone. This backup can be used by Zune to restore the
device when you use the “Update” option under settings. This will save
everything right from the application settings to your texts inside the
update. One downside is that any file changes, updates or other user
specific data won’t persist if they weren’t present at the time of the
backup. Check out the apps’ XDA Developers thread here http://goo.gl/305YK for the download and exact deployment instructions.
WP7 Root Tools to tweak WP performance
Unlock/Root your phone:
Different
brands, different OEMs and different versions will have their own
unlocking method(s). We’ve compiled a list of brands and devices which
can be unlocked in the table below. One important thing to note here is
that Windows Phone 8 users won’t be able to unlock their phones as there
are no unlocks available which allow you to root your phone.
Use WP7 Easy Backup to save all your files on your PC hard-drive
Another
possible method is Policy Unlock. Once you manage to get an Interop
Unlock activated on your phone you can sideload WP7 Root Tools into your
phone and then use the bundled exploits to attempt a full unlock of the
phone. You can grab the latest copy of WP7 Root Tools from http://goo.gl/OYwTj You’ll
also need the Windows Phone SDK to deploy the app file (.xap) to the
phone. You’ll find the deployment program at the location C:Program
Files (x86)Microsoft SDKsWindows Phonev8.0ToolsXAP Deployment. You can
either use this or XAPDeployX which can be downloaded from its XDA
Developers thread here http://goo.gl/bvhCb.
Note that this will only work once you’ve interop-unlocked the phone or
on the 1st generation Windows phones with Developer Unlock.
| Unlockable Phones | Links |
| Samsung 1st Generation Phones | http://goo.gl/mvk35 |
| Samsung 2nd Generation Phones (OS Version 7740 and below) | http://goo.gl/iYIsL |
| LG | http://goo.gl/eauag |
| HTC 1st Generation | http://goo.gl/YREop |
| HTC 2nd Generation | http://goo.gl/jJGMO |
| Nokia 710 and 800 | http://goo.gl/o8Snj |
Things you can do post unlock/rooting:
A
host of brilliant applications are made available once you’ve unlocked
your phone, starting with Jaxbot’s WPH Tweaks, which enables you to
carry out a smorgasbord of much needed tweaks to the OS. Other
applications include the installation of new themes, dynamic
backgrounds, lock screen widgets, orientation lock, file explorer,
screen capture, certificate installer and much more.
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