{GUEST AUTHOR} And I finally rooted my NexusHowdy Readers,
We, Team AndroidNova started with this in June 2012, and in no time you all made us a part of your lives. And for this, we thank all of you from the core of our heart and promise to keep you updated with the latest moves of Android Universe.
We, on the occasion of new year eve, thought of thanking you, and for that, we picked and invited a regular visitor as the guest author Arti Kamath to share her experience of first flash with her, and we thank her from the core of our for being the first Guest Author of AndroidNova. The post below is what she wrote, and we hope you would love to read this.
Once again, we thank you all for making us a part of your lives and we wish you all have a great year ahead.
Happy New Year 2013!!!!
Thank You,
Team AndroidNova
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Until a few months ago, playing with a phone meant changing themes, installing apps, and maybe saving it from falling off of the table. Actually messing with the operating system (haw!) was unthinkable. And I’m pretty paranoid about not wrecking any gadget I own (on purpose, at least :p) Being the extremely proud owner of a Nokia E5, I was still honeymooning with Symbian around the time Android made its entry into the mobile world. I was happy with what Symbian gave me. The phone was functional, survived nasty falls(initially unintentional, which later on progressed to homicide attempts on the phone) and it lulled me into the comfort zone familiarity often brings. Hell, as long as Whatsapp worked, the world was a beautiful place. And then, slowly, I began to feel like something was missing, like I was settling for less. Which made me peek at the new sensation flirting with every gadgeteer around. And that sensation, was Android.
A friend had recently got a Samsung Galaxy S Plus. After the first few weeks, he took to keeping me up nights, (ALL night, mind you) about how he rooted this, flashed that, and uncontrollably spewed jargon which sounded mildly abusive (woohoo! supernoob me). Patiently, with the air of a martyr, I listened to it all. And one fine day, I held the rooted beauty in my hands. Played with it, explored it. It was love at first touch. It was time, I realized, for my own Android.
My first droid was the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. There was no way I could have made better use of my first salary, I must say. My Nexus which came pre loaded with ICS, received an update to Jellybean within a few hours of activating my device. And for the first few weeks I played with stock ROM, and got familiar with what a droid felt like.
By now, I had lost my friend completely. He’d morphed overnight into a feverish flash fanatic. All I could hear from him was custom ROMming , Kernels, AOKP, AOSP, XDA and other such gibberish. Finally, to end the assault to my ears, I gave in to all that nagging. And I resolved to root. (Plus, wasn’t receiving updates early enough, and it finally got the better of me).
After a LOT of mental preparation, self pep talk, and the courage of a chicken, I set myself to the task. Step One, was unlocking the bootloader. Bootloader is basically code that is executed before any Operating system starts to run. Every Android phone has a bootloader that instructs the operating system kernel to boot normally. But you need to understand one thing here that as Android OS is an open source OS and is available on a variety of different hardware, every manufacturer has their own version of bootloader specific for the hardware present in it’s environment. The bootloader, is generally locked, ‘cause the manufacturer wants you to stick with the android version they’ve provided. With a locked bootloader on Android devices, it is virtually impossible to flash a Custom ROM and forced attempts void warranty as well as usually end up in bricks. This, is the most important and slightly confusing part of the entire rooting process, but definitely isn’t rocket science. With a little tinkering around with the command prompt, my baby was unlocked.
Next, you need to install a recovery tool, so you can extract .zip files from your SD card. I started off with something called ClockWorkRecoveryMod , which had an amazing UI, with a matrix-esque feel. But switched over to TWRP later on. Both are safe, and equally functional tools, and it’s completely upto you, the kind of feel you’d like on your device.
The next step was to get root access. OH, NO WAIT! The next step is to reboot your device, and pray really hard you haven’t bricked it. Which is a very real, and very valid concern. With my heart in my mouth, I waited an agonizing three minutes, for the entire booting process to make up its mind about whether it wanted to put me at peace. And voila! the tiny unlocked icon glowing impishly under Google made an appearance. Sweet.
And now, when the above phases are a success, we aim for root access. To get root access, you need to flash something called a SuperUser. This basically gives you the admin rights to your device.Once all of this is done, it is just a matter of downloading custom ROMs and kernels (Xylon 011 being my current favourite, supported on a Franco kernel) , copy pasting it to your device, and flashing the zip. And once you’ve rooted, you’ve tasted blood (not a vampire, or a twilight fan, mind eet) and you want to keep going back for more.
The very idea of being able to make your gadget do everything you want it to (well, almost everything- it can’t cook or do the dishes. Yet. ) is very exciting. And very empowering. My droid is now three months old, rooted for one. The kind of confidence you get about your gadget being in your control is something no other gadget can offer quite yet. Right from customizing the way it looks, to how it responds to you, this is one love story, which can ONLY have a happy ending.
Must Have Customizations/Apps for your Google Nexus 7 tablet
). So basically you have your Android system permissions, permission that you accept every time you install an android app. Well, what root does is allow you to bypass those permissions, basically your android device instead of being stuck inside the box, you issue a command that lets your android device to jump outside of that box and elevate your permission. Your device becomes Superuser. You see, linux has many layers of permissions just like real life, when you execute su –c, that’s the same as linux’s SUDO command that we all familiar with from running linux.
