How To Root An EVO

**discdoc** · 07-13-2010, 07:24 AM

I'm fairly tech savvy, so I can follow instructions fairly well. One question I have is... is there any downside to rooting your phone? I had a Palm Pre and I'm very familiar with the homebrew community an all of the patches that are available. With the Pre, there wasn't much downside. With the EVO, will I still be able to get OTA updates and other services? Is there anything you CAN'T do once you root your EVO? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

**t0ast3d** · 07-13-2010, 05:26 PM

Your answer is the SEARCH button

**trooper54** · 07-13-2010, 05:46 PM

take it easy comrade T0ast3d, as they would say in the old country, "oospakoicya, nechevo strashnavo" (phonetic english-russian spelling)

disdoc, there are 2 threads stickied above on the principle of how to root, one for mac and one for windows. Neither will work if you installed the OWA but should get you in the right thought process. Then if you look in the main body of this hacks forum, you will see the adjusted guides that will work with the OTA.

**t0ast3d** · 07-13-2010, 05:50 PM

Originally Posted by liquidjesus

take it easy comrade T0ast3d, as they would say in the old country, "oospakoicya, nechevo strashnavo" (phonetic english-russian spelling)

disdoc, there are 2 threads stickied above on the principle of how to root, one for mac and one for windows. Neither will work if you installed the OWA but should get you in the right thought process. Then if you look in the main body of this hacks forum, you will see the adjusted guides that will work with the OTA.

Well it's not that hard.

**trooper54** · 07-13-2010, 06:34 PM

i know, but we're not the forum police either

**S4Rs** · 07-13-2010, 06:50 PM

The biggest problem with trying to Root your evo right now is that there are 1 million threads on how to root with each update.

I had a Pre that I homebrewed as well. Basically the difference is this,
The pre had an awesome patch ability which allowed you to customize your phone. With android people manually patch their systems and then save it as a rom, and then give it you. Its not as sweet as the pre was at all. I just rooted yesterday, and am trying to figure out how to get the lastest update on there cause now i dont have the touchscreen grounding fix or the nice gallery app fix and other tweaks. If you root you should not OTA... you need to wait for your custom rom to incorporate the update. I wish there was a preware like system. maybe there is, but its probably for android blackbelts.

**trooper54** · 07-13-2010, 07:07 PM

Originally Posted by S4Rs

The biggest problem with trying to Root your evo right now is that there are 1 million threads on how to root with each update.

I had a Pre that I homebrewed as well. Basically the difference is this,
The pre had an awesome patch ability which allowed you to customize your phone. With android people manually patch their systems and then save it as a rom, and then give it you. Its not as sweet as the pre was at all. I just rooted yesterday, and am trying to figure out how to get the lastest update on there cause now i dont have the touchscreen grounding fix or the nice gallery app fix and other tweaks. If you root you should not OTA... you need to wait for your custom rom to incorporate the update. I wish there was a preware like system. maybe there is, but its probably for android blackbelts.

revert to stock, and root using the new OTA method, or flash the stock rooted OTA. Or one of the numerous stock roms that has it incorporated. All you have to do is look around and stop talking out of your rear end if you haven't taken the time to search.

**t0ast3d** · 07-13-2010, 08:03 PM

Originally Posted by liquidjesus

i know, but we're not the forum police either

Yeah but it doesn't hurt to help.

**lnong** · 07-16-2010, 12:20 PM

Originally Posted by S4Rs

The biggest problem with trying to Root your evo right now is that there are 1 million threads on how to root with each update.

I had a Pre that I homebrewed as well. Basically the difference is this,
The pre had an awesome patch ability which allowed you to customize your phone. With android people manually patch their systems and then save it as a rom, and then give it you. Its not as sweet as the pre was at all. I just rooted yesterday, and am trying to figure out how to get the lastest update on there cause now i dont have the touchscreen grounding fix or the nice gallery app fix and other tweaks. If you root you should not OTA... you need to wait for your custom rom to incorporate the update. I wish there was a preware like system. maybe there is, but its probably for android blackbelts.

Thanks for this great info. I totally agree with you about there being so many threads out there on how to root the EVO. Even if some threads are ultimately referring to same method of rooting, if you don't read them carefully, you might get lost and think it's just another different method. Because everyone has their own way of describing the process.

The EVO is my first Android phone, and my previous phone is the PRE as well. I also rooted the PRE (via command-line Linux method, ughhh) and used the WebOSQuickInstall tool to add customization, so coming to the Android world of ROMs, Unrevoked, etc was all new and different for me. I never understood the idea that rooting an Android actually means replacing the whole image of the OS (ie. installing a custom ROM). Your post above made it all clear to me, and I now understand why there are so many ROMs being passed back and forth and updated, etc.

I guess this is analogous to how I used to create image backups of my entire Windows OS back in the day using DriveImage or something similar. With Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, installation never works right the first time, and especially after installing drivers and apps, and I kept on having to uninstall the OS, reinstall the OS, then reinstall drivers, then apps, etc. I got sick of this so I decided to create an image of the entire OS right after I installed the OS and drivers. So later if I had to re-do the installation process, all I had to do was install the backed-up image file and this gave me a clean and readiliy available OS + drivers to start with.

But anyway, I have not installed any custom ROMs on my EVO yet. All I did was root the EVO using UnRevoked3 (and it put whatever ROM it came with on my EVO). Now, I'm just deciding whether I want to replace it with another custom ROM. This one works fine for me currently, dont see anything wrong with it.

**discdoc** · 07-16-2010, 06:11 PM

Originally Posted by lnong

Thanks for this great info. I totally agree with you about there being so many threads out there on how to root the EVO. Even if some threads are ultimately referring to same method of rooting, if you don't read them carefully, you might get lost and think it's just another different method. Because everyone has their own way of describing the process.

The EVO is my first Android phone, and my previous phone is the PRE as well. I also rooted the PRE (via command-line Linux method, ughhh) and used the WebOSQuickInstall tool to add customization, so coming to the Android world of ROMs, Unrevoked, etc was all new and different for me. I never understood the idea that rooting an Android actually means replacing the whole image of the OS (ie. installing a custom ROM). Your post above made it all clear to me, and I now understand why there are so many ROMs being passed back and forth and updated, etc.

I guess this is analogous to how I used to create image backups of my entire Windows OS back in the day using DriveImage or something similar. With Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, installation never works right the first time, and especially after installing drivers and apps, and I kept on having to uninstall the OS, reinstall the OS, then reinstall drivers, then apps, etc. I got sick of this so I decided to create an image of the entire OS right after I installed the OS and drivers. So later if I had to re-do the installation process, all I had to do was install the backed-up image file and this gave me a clean and readiliy available OS + drivers to start with.

But anyway, I have not installed any custom ROMs on my EVO yet. All I did was root the EVO using UnRevoked3 (and it put whatever ROM it came with on my EVO). Now, I'm just deciding whether I want to replace it with another custom ROM. This one works fine for me currently, dont see anything wrong with it.

Does Unrevoked 3 work with the latest OTA update? Is it as easy to install as the previous version of Unrevoked? Does it wipe-out your phone or just works like an app as the previous version did? Thanks!

**hk-usp45** · 07-16-2010, 10:21 PM

Originally Posted by discdoc

Does Unrevoked 3 work with the latest OTA update? Is it as easy to install as the previous version of Unrevoked? Does it wipe-out your phone or just works like an app as the previous version did? Thanks!

Just did it, and as far as i see nothing wiped out yet...

**lnong** · 07-16-2010, 10:25 PM

Originally Posted by discdoc

Does Unrevoked 3 work with the latest OTA update? Is it as easy to install as the previous version of Unrevoked? Does it wipe-out your phone or just works like an app as the previous version did? Thanks!

It was my first time rooting an Android phone, and it was rather very easy and quick using Unrevoked3. I cant comment much about previous versions of Unrevoked because I not used them. From what I've read, version 3 is actually a full root, not a partial one. I guess this means that it doesn't have an app that you have to run each time after you restart the phone. It's "permanent". but it also doesnt really "wipe out" your phone. Before I rooted the phone, I read that ppl were saying their phone's apps, settings, etc remained unchanged after rooting via Unrevoked3. Some ppl made backups of their phone before rooting. I took the risk, took their word for it, and rooted without first backing up my stuff. It was successful as everything remained intact after I ran UnRevoked3.