Rooting Tutorial here .. posted with permission T-mobile Galaxy S 4G/GINGERBREAD

[WacoJohn]

DISCLAIMER

This specific PHONE is NOT supported by this website. Hence, this appears in the OFF TOPIC section. This is solely my post and only I am responsible for posting this.

Rooting a phone has risks. Neither I nor ANYONE from this forum are liable for any diseases, nervous break downs, errors, omissions, disasters, failures, damage, oversights, divorces or any other event besides success. Rooting this phone WILL void the warranty if SAMSUNG finds out. UNROOTING it probably won't prevent them from finding out either unless you read the following link .. and even THEN, .. they MIGHT.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1402286

To UNroot your phone, click below:

UNrooting Tutorial here .. posted with permission T-mobile Galaxy S 4G/GINGERBREAD

CREDITS: The gentlemen of this website are too humble for me to give the credit they deserve. I probably could not give enough anyway.

For this TOOT, you will need access to a 64-bit Windows computer, the same phone:
T-mobile Galaxy S 4G NOT S-II
Model: SGH-T959V
Firmware: 2.3.6
Baseband: T959VUVKJ6
Kernel: 2.6.35.7-T959VUVKJ6-CL694230
Build Number:
Gingerbread.VUVKJ6

and a MINI USB cable (one came with my phone).

T-Mo Galaxy S 4G officially launched with Froyo, you must be on Gingerbread 2.3.6 in order for the steps in the tutorial to work. If you are on FROYO, you can upgrade to GINGERBREAD using KIES MINI from the TMOBILE website:

http://tinyurl.com/KiesMini1

FIRST ... go to the following link and download the .rar file ... it will not be used to root but if you need to UNroot, this file will restore your phone to 'out of the box' .. so hang on to it:

Download Team Acid from SourceForge.net

1) If you have Samsung Kies MINI on your computer, I advise you to UNinstall it. Can't use it anyway if phone is rooted. Why? All it does is update firmware from Samsung. That can undo a ROOT.

THE FOLLOWING 4 FILES CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE:

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=18FD569F3D54E7E7&id=18FD569F3D54E7E7!1783

2) Download Odin_1.7.zip, and unzip it to someplace you can find it on your computer.

3) Download and install the drivers usb_drivers_GalaxyS_x64.zip.

4) Download this kernel stock+Voodoo-T959VKJ1.tar. (You will flash it in Odin).

5) Download this kernel sms-T959V-KJ6-v0.1.1-rc1-unsigned-update.zip and put it on your SDcard. (You will flash it in CWM recovery mode a little later).

2 ways to put that on the SDcard:

A. Phone off and not connected to computer, remove back and eject SD card (gently push in with thumb and it will eject out when you release your thumb .. spring loaded .. don't lose it). Put it in an appropriate adapter (one came with my phone), don't touch anything GOLD, gold fingers go in facing DOWN .. both card and adapter. Insert that assembly into a 'reader' .. which is found on many/most computers. Computer will recognize it as a disk drive and you can copy that ZIP file to the root of the SDcard. Once copied, right click on Drive Letter in Explorer, left click EJECT, and remove the assembly from the computer. Remove SDcard from adapter. Replace it in phone .. just in reverse of how it came out.

B. We will do it with the SDcard remaining IN the phone. Turn on phone, Press HOME, tap Settings, Applications, USB settings, Mass storage. Press HOME.

Connect phone to computer with MINI usb cable. Wait a few seconds and open Windows Explorer where you will see TWO new drive letters. They may be E: and F:, or F: and G: .. or whatever .. but the one ID'd before the other (alphabetically) is the root of your SDcard and that is were you want to copy the zip file you downloaded earlier to. If F: and G: ... it is F: that you want to copy the file to.

Then .. right click on the Drive Letter on the left and LEFT click EJECT. Windows will tell you it is safe to remove. Unplug phone from computer.

6) Turn phone on, launch Settings, Applications, Development and enable USB Debugging. Power phone off. Do not have it connected to your computer.

7) On your computer launch Odin in Administrator Mode (right click the exe, select run as administrator)

8) On the left side of your phone is the VOLUME button. Push on the lower 1/2 lowers the volume/Push on the upper 1/2 raises the volume. Push in the middle, and I believe the entire button depresses. I pushed in the MIDDLE ... and held it. At the same time plug your phone into your computer. Do not use a USB hub. Use a USB port on the back of the computer IF THERE IS ONE; otherwise, use what ya got.

Odin should recognise your phone and your phone screen should say that you are in download mode.

9) In Odin, select PDA and browse to stock+Voodoo-T959VKJ1.tar on your computer .. not SDcard. Select it. Select start on Odin.

Let Odin do its thing and phone should reboot.
Should have an extra icon on your phone "Superuser". Ignore it for now.

10) Power off phone and disconnect from computer.

11) This is probably the hardest part of the whole tutorial. It is a contentious subject. One person says do this, another says do that. This is what works for me (lately). While holding the volume button in .. ALL of it .. not just the lower part nor just the upper part .. all of it .. press in at the middle of the button and hold it in. Then press the POWER button and HOLD IT TOO. Hold everything about 10 seconds and THEN let go of POWER BUTTON. Your phone should boot into CWM (red text on black). Let go. If you end up otherwise, power off phone and try again.

12) In CWM, use your volume up/down positions to navigate, scroll down to "Install Zip From SDcard". Select with a click of the power button. Navigate to where you put sms-T959V-KJ6-v0.1.1-rc1-unsigned-update.zip (in the root of your SDcard) and select with the power button. Confirm you want to install.

After it is finished, reboot phone by pressing and holding the power button or navigate to POWER OFF and push POWER BUTTON.

You should now be ROOTED.

TESTING:
1) Check to see if you have a POWER USER icon on your phone. If yes, good sign (you should not really need to 'touch/run' it. It is there more or less as a signifier).

2) Go to Android MARKET and install ROOT CHECKER BASIC.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.joeykrim.rootcheck&feature=search_r esult#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5qb2V5a3JpbS5yb290Y 2hlY2siXQ..

It is free. Once installed, press on it (run it) and it will tell you if your phone is rooted. If yes ... good sign.

3) Go to Android Market and install ANDROID TERMINAL EMULATOR

https://market.android.com/details?id=jackpal.androidterm&hl=en

Run it. In the 'terminal window', type su and hit return. The ? prompt should change to a # prompt. If it does .. good sign. You are very, very very likely rooted.

When you have time, I strongly suggest you read through this entire thread:

http://www.galaxyforums.net/forum/galaxy-s2-development/5033-rooting-tmobile-galaxy-s-gingerbread-2-3-6-help-please.html

It is an ad hoc source of this tutorial along with a lot of other info such as about Freezing, OTAs, risks, and liabilities of having a rooted phone. That thread will continue to grow, I expect .. so I will probably learn more from it too.

Peace!

[Ads]

[TheMusiKing]

Great job on the tutorial. It worked PERFECTLY. Why the hell is this not the first thing to pop up in Google?


Anyways, while it did work, you should specify whether or not to replace the SD card after removing it to put the .zip file on it (if method A is used). I became aware of it immediately after I booted it and it started yelling at me (literally) that there was no externally media xD.


Also if it is a new Samsung Galaxy S 4G (at least my new one), the first time it enters download mode, it will have a big flag describing how custom OSes might mess up the system, etc. You should tell the readers to go ahead and hit the Volume Up button to continue (if it shows up; it might not).


Last but not least, if you REALLY wanted to be awesome, you'd set up a DropBox account solely for re-hosting the files that are required. This means that in case the links to the files you posted go down, they will have another "mirror" to fall back on. Definitely keep the existing links to and add your "Public" DropBox links after in parentheses.


Those are just my little tips and, other than a few grammatical mistakes and typos, it was a very good tutorial that was fairly easy to follow.


Thanks again,


Karl ( TheMusiKing / TheMusiKid )

[WacoJohn]

Great job on the tutorial. It worked PERFECTLY. Why the hell is this not the first thing to pop up in Google?

Most likely because it doesn't register many hits(?) This phone S4G is not even supported on this website (it's a long story). I am delighted it worked well for you. The credit goes to the amazing 'team' of experts who actually provided the info. I simply reiterated it all into a tutorial.

Anyways, while it did work, you should specify whether or not to replace the SD card after removing it to put the .zip file on it (if method A is used). I became aware of it immediately after I booted it and it started yelling at me (literally) that there was no externally media xD.

Hmmmm, the last sentence of method A says to put the card back in the phone.

Also if it is a new Samsung Galaxy S, the first time it enters download mode, it will have a big flag describing how custom OSes might mess up the system, etc. You should tell the readers to go ahead and hit the Volume Up button to continue (if it shows up; it might not).

And this has me worried. This tutorial is for a Tmobile Samsung Galaxy S 4G. I don't know all the models, but it COULD be you performed the WRONG ROOT procedure .. and/or downloaded the wrong .rar file. You do not mention 'S 4G'.

Last but not least, if you REALLY wanted to be awesome, you'd set up a DropBox account solely for re-hosting the files that are required. This means that in case the links to the files you posted go down, they will have another "mirror" to fall back on. Definitely keep the existing links to and add your "Public" DropBox links after in parentheses.

Sure .. I wanna be awesome. That skydrive account is mine .. and it is pretty secure. Thanks to you letting us know those old links were no good, I put the files there ... they will be available for as long as I live (or technical catastrophe).

Those are just my little tips and, other than a few grammatical mistakes and typos, it was a very good tutorial that was fairly easy to follow.

Thanks again,

You are quite welcome.

[TheMusiKing]

Hmmmm, the last sentence of method A says to put the card back in the phone.

Derpderpderpderp.

I feel like a derpderpderpderp. I most definitely do not not feel like a derpderpderpderp.

That skydrive account is mine .. and it is pretty secure. Thanks to you letting us know those old links were no good, I put the files there ... they will be available for as long as I live (or technical catastrophe).

Well uh, that's cool too then I guess. (I guess.)

I guess. (No but really, thanks for that; it helps a bunch and it would seem it is much more reliable than all of these other file hosting sites that are dropping like flies.)

You are quite welcome.

Awesome! There is good in the world !

Anyways, forgive my incompetence on the few things that I completely missed; was a bit anxious when trying this out.

Thanks again for the work and I'm glad I could help the forum with the links issue :-)

Have an awesome day (or two, or three),
Karl ( TheMusiKing / TheMusiKid )

[TheMusiKing]

Hey there. It's me again and being the dumbo that I am, I messed something up with Titanium Backup when derping around with the Dalvik cache. Now the phone restarts once it gets to the "Samsung" logo and repeats over and over. I have attempted to boot into recovery mode (which works; it goes into CWM) and do a 1) factory reset and 2) cache repartition and 3) reinstall the ROM using the "Install ROM from SD card" option. However none of these work.

I know, I know. A n00b messing around with settings on a device he has no business touching is always a terrible issue to solve, but I was wondering what I could do. I was going to try to flash the original stock ROM back onto the device and re-do all of this mess, but I don't know where I am supposed to put the Stock ROM file in ODIN, exactly (CSC? Phone? PDA? etc.).

Sorry for the trouble. Thanks for the help.

Karl ( TheMusiKid / TheMusiKing )

[Ollie]

It goes in the PDA section

[seroster]

edited my previous post.

I had *thought* I had the drivers installed properly from when I had a previous Android phone (which I'd lost) and Kies (which I'd uninstalled) but Odin didn't work properly. I reinstalled the drivers and everything in this guide then worked like a charm.

WacoJohn, thank you for an excellent guide. And thanks to everyone whose advice fed into the guide.

[WacoJohn]

Hi, Seroster. I am sorry you are having problems. I don't know what a USB JIG is .. but your problem MIGHT be the USB port you are using on your computer. People have had failure using one port and success by trying another. I DO NOT KNOW if this is your problem .. but thought I would mention it.

Otherwise, I imagine Ollie or one of the other GURUS here will reply to your post with more talent than I have in fixing your problem.

[Ollie]

The USB Jig automatically boots your phone into download mode when you insert it and start the phone up. Very handy to have.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[WacoJohn]

The USB Jig automatically boots your phone into download mode when you insert it and start the phone up. Very handy to have.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

I learn something new every time I come to this forum.