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Hey,
I'm new to all this and am pretty amazed by the amount of knowledge and techniques applied by all the whizz kids on this forum. Anyway, I am receiving my first android tomorrow (Samsung galaxy S i9000) and I have a few questions to ask after being utterly confused all day about what each term means and what is best for me to do...
1) I have downloaded the 'super one click' rooting device where I use my PC in order to root the device. However, I also notice that this is designed for multiple android products and the alternative is to use the device specific methods. Is there any difference?
2) If I have rooted the device, do I need to then flash the device? I mean, is there any advantage to this?
3) If I flash the device or root it I understand that my warranty is void. Is there a way to back up my original files so if i have to return my phone i can reverse the rooting so it contains the original orange network settings?
4) I have downloaded the one click lag fix as recommended. It is sat on my desktop. Do I simply transfer it onto my phone using kies and then install?
5) By rooting/flashing I am assuming that I will loose my future network (orange) updates such as gingerbread 2.3 (assuming that they release it for the samsung galaxy s i9000). Is there any other way I can update in the future without my network or would I need to reinstall their original firmware and settings and go through the process of flashing/rooting again?
I know this is a lot to ask but Im super confused after a day of exhausting reading and attempting to understand whats what. I would really appreciate the help of some whizz kids here! Man I feel old!
Thanks so much
Cheb
So I've been reading all these articles about rooting the Samsung Captivate and they all seem to say that rooting gives you the equivalent of admin access and basically its really useful.
What I want to know is if it is safe? I'm not really good at these things and I'm afraid that if I root it I might just screw up my phone because I don't understand what I'm doing. Also I've read that rooting your phone can sometimes render your phone unusable...is that a serious issue for the captivate?
I mainly want to just be able to have a complete backup, and be able to download apps from third party websites. (I have AT&T) I think rooting lets you do all that.
Also, I see all this talk about ROM's or something and I really don't understand what that is.
If i root my phone, will it wipe any data I have stored on my phone, like contacts and apps or something? Will I still be able to receive software updates from AT&T?
Please help...Thanks sooo much!!!
Hello there,
In first place, ROMs it's the name we usually call for the OS images that you run in your phone. You have the manufacturer ROM, with (probably) operator stuff in it. You can have a very different OS image, with different layout, more options (there are beautiful things around like CyanogenMod), etc. So, installing new ROMs sometimes is like installing a new Android OS on your phone (not exactly but something like that).
Rooting your phone doesn't clean your data, but it's always a good practice to do an application/data backup. Backup software: Titanium Backup (i use it and i really like it).
By adding an Android Recovery loader, you will have the possibility to make a nandroid backup which really allows you to keep EVERYTHING! (that happens after you root the phone, of course).
Advantages of having a rooted phone:
* removing operator applications you don't like in the standard ROM
* run 'root-only' software
* installing new ROMS
* upgrading the OS version of your phone to higher than supported by the manufacturer (some features may not work in this case)
Disadvantages:
* you may void your warranty
* you may brick your phone
* you can be messing around for a long time before having your phone stable once again (if you are curious to keep trying different ROMS, and app2sd and other add-ons)
Bricking your phone may happen if in the procedure to root your phone you need to flash it. In my case, I have a LG P500 and had the Android 2.2.2 - to root it I had to flash a 2.2 version and that was the risky part (some people say that 1 in every 4 phones get bricked in this procedure which I find very exagerated!)
So read the procedures carefully and have your phone with battery full before doing any rooting procedures. Do things calmly, follow every single step and if your get unsure of something, stop, ask, and after that move forward. You will be really happy when your phone is rooted !!
thank you!
The previous responder was a little zealous with the warnings. I have a Captivate, which is rooted and running a custom ROM (CyanogenMod 7).
First, rooting will not brick your phone. In theory, you void your warranty by doing so, but it's really easy to restore to factory state.
I don't recommend a custom ROM for someone who has basic questions like you've just asked. I'd reccommend first trying to get root, and run apps like Titanium backup, SGS Tools, etc. Be careful, research what you're doing, and make lots of backups. So long as you can enter download mode, you can flash back to factory.
Sent from my SGH-I897 using XDA Premium App
I was right where you are last August. I agree with ADT who says that you should root first and then work with apps that require root. Titanium Backup has been the most valuable for me out of all of those.
The chances of bricking your phone when you only root it is minimal. I guess it's possible, but honestly, I cannot see how. There are 2 files that are required called Bootloaders. Think of these as the AT&T screen and then the Samsung screen in a stock Captivate. If you do anything that changes/replaces these, you stand a great chance of bricking your phone. You don't do this when you root, only when you do something like try a custom ROM.
When you root your phone, you won't really notice anything different at first. However, if you look at your apps you will see a new one called Superuser. It is the app that is needed to run "rooted" apps. Also, once you root your phone, you will be able to take advantage of Amazon's market which has a free app a day.
If you decide to "unroot", it can be done rather easily, and you will lose the ability to do things like run rooted apps and Amazon apps (including any you downloaded).
I would recommend that you read as many posts about rooting as possible before you finally make the plunge. Read, read and read again. Make sure you know what you are doing before you do it and the risk of damage is minimal. I have bricked my phone many times, including the power button not working and was lucky to get it back. I learned the hard way by not knowing to read, read and read again.
Good luck!!
One other quick point. If you decide to play with custom ROMs, I recommend you stick with the ones that run Froyo, not Gingerbread. The Gingerbread ROMs are just starting to come out and I believe are not for someone just starting out. The instructions are a bit more complicated and the chance of bricking your phone are much greater.
The Froyo ROMs are much easier to install. However, as said in my last post, I'd get used to rooting your stock phone first before going that way.
stick with froyo and play with custom roms. To install custom roms just flash the custom rom in the recovery mode.
You're right guys. I mean, changing the bootloader is the risky part of the process, not the rooting itself. But the risky part is flashing a ROM (if that's needed to root the phone)...
In my case I had to downgrade my phone (LG P500) before applying root, so it was risky from the start - anyway, depending on the phone model, rooting / installling bootloader can be more or less risky...
Samsung. Couldnt he always ODIN back?
Sent from my ADR6300
Hey everyone. First of all, thank you very much for your help here if you're able!
Now, on to this:
I have a Droid 2 Global right now, rooted and running Fission ROM. (Recovery is ClockworkMod v5.0.2.3) Fission is, well, out of commission as it would seem, and I'm looking to upgrade to some Gingerbread.
Thing is, I haven't flashed more than one ROM onto this phone before and I'm coming from the HTC EVO 4G -- so I'm a little nervous about messing anything up as there was a much heavier amount of steps involved in rooting and flashing to this D2G than there was for the EVO!
Needless to say, I'm terrified of messing up. Here's my question:
1. If I load a new ROM onto my SD card, do a factory data reset, clear cache and dalvik, can I flash a new ROM from the recovery, no problems? Or would there be more steps needed?
2. This isn't as relevant I guess, but is it possible to unroot this phone safely and update to the VZW OTA Gingerbread? I'm probably not gonna worry about this if it's possible to just flash another ROM as asked in my first question, but it's worth noting.
Thank you guys so much, I've been super antsy with this phone lately. Any help is completely appreciated!
If you really want Gingerbread, with corresponding kernel patches and stuff, you have to update to VZW's latest firmware (4.5.608) as all modern Gingerbread ROMs use it as the base. They won't work on Froyo base.
The safest and cleanest way to get the phone to update is to flash an SBF image and then update to 4.5.x. Do note that this will clear any CDMA programming you probably have done to get it to work on Sprint Nextel. You'll need to reprogram the phone while still running 2.4.x.
Please also note that using custom ROMs is always a risk as there's always chance you'll need to flash an SBF to recover from a bad build, etc., so if to flash the phone to Sprint you need to contact Sprint themselves (i.e. you cannot do it yourself), this might turn into a real hassle.
Stock 4.5.608 is very stable and fast, especially with bloatware frozen.
Ah, sorry, I should have clarified further! It's on Verizon Wireless right now, so it's operating on Verizon still and has not been flashed to Sprint. (I had to go and change my provider logo -- if only I could have two!)
Also, thank you for your quick reply! I do have two more questions now, though;
1. If I flash another Froyo ROM, would I be able to do so in recovery off of the SD card? Rather, is it only Gingerbread that would need to be done with an SBF?
2. I was reading about SBFs earlier and was about to try the process, but I found that it was in .exe format. Would I need to be using a PC to do this? I have a Mac currently, though I would have access to a PC certainly if it were necessary (since it seems like this might be my best bet).
Regarding the OS question: there's sbf_flash utility available for both Linux and MacOS X. It's more easy to use, and is overall more “sturdy” (no problems with missing drivers leading to SBF process aborting in the middle).
Going through SBF is only required to update to Gingerbread (which is indeed highly recommended; Froyo ROMs are mostly outdated), because for that, you need a clean 2.4.330 system. If you can access ClockworkMod on your Froyo ROM, you definitely can install any Froyo-based custom ROM.
Thank you again. I think I will flash an SBF and update through VZW, it sounds like my best plan!
I'm searching to see if I can find the right SBF utility to download (for MacOS X), but I'm having a bit of trouble--do you happen to know where I can find it or have a link? In the meantime I will keep going through the forums!
http://blog.opticaldelusion.org/2011/04/universal-binaries-running-same.html
Greetings all and thanks for any help offered.
I come from the world of pcs. I have several android devices, however have never tried to dive into the deeper workings of them. I am used to the pc world where if you want to install a new operating system you go buy or down load it then you install in. Brand of pc did not matter nor did the model. So I guess I am having a hard time understanding the concept of hardware specific roms. Can't I just get a stock kit kat rom and install it, and if not why not.
on another note does a stock kit kat rom even exist? All I find are things like cyanogen mod, or clockwork mod. I assume that these are essentially someone taking kitkat and adding stuff to it to customize it and then naming it.
I am looking to make a kindle fire hd look and feel like a nexus 7 with nothing but android 4.2.2 (or what even the number sequence is for the lates version of kitkat).
Thanks again for your replies
Hesperian9x said:
Greetings all and thanks for any help offered.
I come from the world of pcs. I have several android devices, however have never tried to dive into the deeper workings of them. I am used to the pc world where if you want to install a new operating system you go buy or down load it then you install in. Brand of pc did not matter nor did the model. So I guess I am having a hard time understanding the concept of hardware specific roms. Can't I just get a stock kit kat rom and install it, and if not why not.
on another note does a stock kit kat rom even exist? All I find are things like cyanogen mod, or clockwork mod. I assume that these are essentially someone taking kitkat and adding stuff to it to customize it and then naming it.
I am looking to make a kindle fire hd look and feel like a nexus 7 with nothing but android 4.2.2 (or what even the number sequence is for the lates version of kitkat).
Thanks again for your replies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same question i also want to ask...... they say android is open source.....where can i find the original kitkat
...and can i flash it to my device or not.......why does every phone/tab model need specific rom version.....
I think ram and cpu are enough......what is the deference between all device....
Hesperian9x said:
Greetings all and thanks for any help offered.
I come from the world of pcs. I have several android devices, however have never tried to dive into the deeper workings of them. I am used to the pc world where if you want to install a new operating system you go buy or down load it then you install in. Brand of pc did not matter nor did the model. So I guess I am having a hard time understanding the concept of hardware specific roms. Can't I just get a stock kit kat rom and install it, and if not why not.
on another note does a stock kit kat rom even exist? All I find are things like cyanogen mod, or clockwork mod. I assume that these are essentially someone taking kitkat and adding stuff to it to customize it and then naming it.
I am looking to make a kindle fire hd look and feel like a nexus 7 with nothing but android 4.2.2 (or what even the number sequence is for the lates version of kitkat).
Thanks again for your replies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Getting a new OS (in this case we call these OS's: ROMs) on android is a little similar to PC installation it just has a few things we have to get past. so if you know what Linux is (another OS its almost like OSX for macs) that's what android is built upon the only problem is is that we don't have Admin access or in other words, super user, rooting your Android device gives you root/admin/SuperUser Access so there are lots more things you can customize about your device in this case a New operating system. Clockworkmod is almost like booting into your Bios on a computer, its pretty much a fail-safe if we break something or want to install (our way of installing is called "Flashing") a mod or a new OS.
Now there are a few different types of ROMs its all the personal preference on what you want most roms are AOSP which is pretty much Stock android (Nexus phones/tablet look) with a few mods here and there. Cyanogenmod is one of the type of roms as well (most popular), its is basically pure android with a little here and there stuff that you wouldn't need to worry about and i would recommend if you do flash a new ROM on any device i would start with Cyanogenmod first if its available, it has the most work put into it and is stable for the most part. (not that other ROMs developers don't put hard work into their own ROMs but still Cyanogenmod is getting bigger and bigger) be advised that flashing a new rom deletes all of your data, its just what we have to do to make the rom install properly, if you bought kindle books you can still get the books back by downloading the kindle fire app on the play store when you do get a new ROM. WARNING: DO NOT Flash roms that are for other devices, it will brick your tablet making it unrecoverable.
Seeing that the kindle fire hd is a very popular tablet and does have a few kitkat roms. (Android 4.2.2 is Jelly bean, Android 4.1 - 4.3 is jelly bean as well, Android 4.4 is kitkat) so pretty much it looks like the kindle fire hd has a locked bootloader which can be a problem but seeing that there is custom roms it must have been unlocked. a locked bootloader pretty much means we cannot flash a new OS but we are still able to root it. so pretty much see herehttp://forum.xda-developers.com/kindle-fire-hd (there are two kindle fire HD's 7" and a 8.9" which is yours?) ask in the Q&A where you can start, i imagine you would need to do this stuff in this order: Unlock bootloader, Root the tablet, install a custom recovery (like Clockworkmod or TWRP) Wipe Data/Factory reset, Wipe Cache (these two actions are done in your recovery) flash a new Rom.
If you have any other questions or i left something out please ask
---------- Post added at 03:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:18 PM ----------
Killwish said:
Same question i also want to ask...... they say android is open source.....where can i find the original kitkat
...and can i flash it to my device or not.......why does every phone/tab model need specific rom version.....
I think ram and cpu are enough......what is the deference between all device....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have a kindle fire HD as well? Android is sorta open source sure we can root it and install new OS's and other mods but Google allows OEMs can lock boot-loaders and cause awful lot of mess by not letting us developers do anything. You CANNOT flash a rom that is not for your device, it has to do with the other Devices Specs.
why does every phone/tab model need specific rom version.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what do you mean here?
Trozzul said:
Getting a new OS (in this case we call these OS's: ROMs) on android is a little similar to PC installation it just has a few things we have to get past. so if you know what Linux is (another OS its almost like OSX for macs) that's what android is built upon the only problem is is that we don't have Admin access or in other words, super user, rooting your Android device gives you root/admin/SuperUser Access so there are lots more things you can customize about your device in this case a New operating system. Clockworkmod is almost like booting into your Bios on a computer, its pretty much a fail-safe if we break something or want to install (our way of installing is called "Flashing") a mod or a new OS.
Now there are a few different types of ROMs its all the personal preference on what you want most roms are AOSP which is pretty much Stock android (Nexus phones/tablet look) with a few mods here and there. Cyanogenmod is one of the type of roms as well (most popular), its is basically pure android with a little here and there stuff that you wouldn't need to worry about and i would recommend if you do flash a new ROM on any device i would start with Cyanogenmod first if its available, it has the most work put into it and is stable for the most part. (not that other ROMs developers don't put hard work into their own ROMs but still Cyanogenmod is getting bigger and bigger) be advised that flashing a new rom deletes all of your data, its just what we have to do to make the rom install properly, if you bought kindle books you can still get the books back by downloading the kindle fire app on the play store when you do get a new ROM. WARNING: DO NOT Flash roms that are for other devices, it will brick your tablet making it unrecoverable.
Seeing that the kindle fire hd is a very popular tablet and does have a few kitkat roms. (Android 4.2.2 is Jelly bean, Android 4.1 - 4.3 is jelly bean as well, Android 4.4 is kitkat) so pretty much it looks like the kindle fire hd has a locked bootloader which can be a problem but seeing that there is custom roms it must have been unlocked. a locked bootloader pretty much means we cannot flash a new OS but we are still able to root it. so pretty much see herehttp://forum.xda-developers.com/kindle-fire-hd (there are two kindle fire HD's 7" and a 8.9" which is yours?) ask in the Q&A where you can start, i imagine you would need to do this stuff in this order: Unlock bootloader, Root the tablet, install a custom recovery (like Clockworkmod or TWRP) Wipe Data/Factory reset, Wipe Cache (these two actions are done in your recovery) flash a new Rom.
If you have any other questions or i left something out please ask
---------- Post added at 03:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:18 PM ----------
Do you have a kindle fire HD as well? Android is sorta open source sure we can root it and install new OS's and other mods but Google allows OEMs can lock boot-loaders and cause awful lot of mess by not letting us developers do anything. You CANNOT flash a rom that is not for your device, it has to do with the other Devices Specs.
what do you mean here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry dude....... But I just want to say that on PCs I just need windows or Linux or any os image...... And I can install it on any brand cpu ram motherboard........ It doesn't depend on brand..... Then why they made android or phone devices like this.... I m not saying that they would have make android free but.. It should be installable on all devices with better confg than minimum requirement.... Thats all.
Killwish said:
Sorry dude....... But I just want to say that on PCs I just need windows or Linux or any os image...... And I can install it on any brand cpu ram motherboard........ It doesn't depend on brand..... Then why they made android or phone devices like this.... I m not saying that they would have make android free but.. It should be installable on all devices with better confg than minimum requirement.... Thats all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that a little harder to explain, from what i think its mostly because of the CPU drivers, these ROMs are non professional, anyone can make a rom but its a harder to make your own OS for a computer. i cant explain the most part of it for you but we just cant do it right now. you sure can port roms but it has to be from a similar device with almost every spec the same.
Trozzul said:
that a little harder to explain, from what i think its mostly because of the CPU drivers, these ROMs are non professional, anyone can make a rom but its a harder to make your own OS for a computer. i cant explain the most part of it for you but we just cant do it right now. you sure can port roms but it has to be from a similar device with almost every spec the same.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you sir......
Trozzul said:
that a little harder to explain, from what i think its mostly because of the CPU drivers, these ROMs are non professional, anyone can make a rom but its a harder to make your own OS for a computer. i cant explain the most part of it for you but we just cant do it right now. you sure can port roms but it has to be from a similar device with almost every spec the same.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand that the roms are not professional. That is why I asked for the "stock" kitkat as google released it. shouldn't the "stock google release work on any android device?? if not why not?? this is nothing like pc world ans mentioned above.
I have installed linux on pcs. It runs the installer and does its thing and a few minutes later you have a shiny new system to run. Why is this so different in the mobil environment since as you already mentioned android is essentially linux. None of this device specific ROM stuff makes any sense to me.
Hesperian9x said:
I understand that the roms are not professional. That is why I asked for the "stock" kitkat as google released it. shouldn't the "stock google release work on any android device?? if not why not?? this is nothing like pc world ans mentioned above.
I have installed linux on pcs. It runs the installer and does its thing and a few minutes later you have a shiny new system to run. Why is this so different in the mobil environment since as you already mentioned android is essentially linux. None of this device specific ROM stuff makes any sense to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
as for why Roms dont work on all devices and have to be made for specific only i cannot answer, i think it has to do with specs being so different, i think its the CPU that ruins it all because today there are so many different types of partitions for each kind of CPU given out, Rockchip, mediatek, samsung exynos, TI Omap, qualcomm there is quite a lot i cant list lol.
There sorta is a "Stock Google release" for some devices but that is only for Google play edition devices like a Samsung galaxy s4/HTC one M7/M8. if you bought a Non-Google play edition S4 or m7 you are able to install a official Google rom (different process not like flashing stuff in custom recovery's) please dont think that Just because Roms are non-professional does not mean that they are broken or dont work as good as stock material because Custom Roms most of the time get the bugs worked out and everyone is happy. i would recommend a custom rom over Stock kindle firmware, its very limited plus you dont have access to the google play store which has so much more stuff.
Hello everyone,
This is the first time I am going to own an Android Device so am new to Android devices (Coming from the Apple ecosystem)
I'm going to get my hands on the LTE version of the nVidia Shield Tablet over this weekend.
I read through Pichu's Rooting guide and a lot of it went over my head. Wish there was TowelRoot for Lollipop since most of the iDevices get a 'one click' Jailbreak option like TowelRoot.
The rooting and unlocking bootloader process seems to be quite cumbersome or probably I just need to do it a few times to get the hang of it.
So my questions are...
1. Could anyone explain to me what are the Pros and Cons of Rooting and unlocking the bootloader specifically for the Shield Tablet. (Will it cause any loss of nVidia stock Apps etc?)
2. Also a step-by-step guide for newbies of unlocking the bootloader and rooting the Shield Tablet would be of great help.
3. Can unlocking bootloader or rooting cause irreversible damage to the device (bricking it maybe)?
And just FYI,
I think that the Tablet will be on Kit Kat out of the box and will have a locked bootloader and won't have root access (from what I have googled so far).
Also, I will not have warranty coverage on the device since it is being shipped from the States to India where it hasn't yet launched.
I've heard about various touch screen, battery and 'cracked edges' issues and not having warranty coverage might be a big concern but I just couldn't wait to buy this since I am a heavy gamer.
Hopefully most of these manufacturing defects are fixed on the LTE version. *fingers crossed*
jigar7 said:
Hello everyone,
This is the first time I am going to own an Android Device so am new to Android devices (Coming from the Apple ecosystem)
I'm going to get my hands on the LTE version of the nVidia Shield Tablet over this weekend.
I read through Pichu's Rooting guide and a lot of it went over my head. Wish there was TowelRoot for Lollipop since most of the iDevices get a 'one click' Jailbreak option like TowelRoot.
The rooting and unlocking bootloader process seems to be quite cumbersome or probably I just need to do it a few times to get the hang of it.
So my questions are...
1. Could anyone explain to me what are the Pros and Cons of Rooting and unlocking the bootloader specifically for the Shield Tablet. (Will it cause any loss of nVidia stock Apps etc?)
2. Also a step-by-step guide for newbies of unlocking the bootloader and rooting the Shield Tablet would be of great help.
3. Can unlocking bootloader or rooting cause irreversible damage to the device (bricking it maybe)?
And just FYI,
I think that the Tablet will be on Kit Kat out of the box and will have a locked bootloader and won't have root access (from what I have googled so far).
Also, I will not have warranty coverage on the device since it is being shipped from the States to India where it hasn't yet launched.
I've heard about various touch screen, battery and 'cracked edges' issues and not having warranty coverage might be a big concern but I just couldn't wait to buy this since I am a heavy gamer.
Hopefully most of these manufacturing defects are fixed on the LTE version. *fingers crossed*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am familiar with android but I just purchased this tablet for my son for Christmas. he is 7 and I would not let him mess around with rooting or anything like that but I wanted the tablet to be ready to roll when he opened it on Christmas. I just received it on Sunday. This is what I did
I have a 64gb Samsung Class 10 sd that I formatted to NTFS and placed in tablet
Tablet came with Kit Kat. I used Towel Root to root and Flashify to flash Phil's Recovery. I chose this recovery because I have read that CWM has issues sticking with Lolipop.
Once I had recovery I went into recovery and did a backup to my external sd of my current setup just in case anything went wrong I could restore as long as I could still get into recovery
The tablet had 2 OTA updates to install so I let them both. I intended on unlocking my bootloader although I could of opted to not do so because I was rooted on Kit Kat. Having an unlocked bootloader gives you a better chance to recover in the case that something goes wrong. Yes it "voids" warranty although there has been some debate on if Nvidia will hold that against you as long as it is a hardware problem or if the bootloader is flagged once unlocked because you can always re lock it. It wipes your device but does not remove NVidia apps
I had ADB on my PC but it was not a version that liked my tablet. I had to download the minimal ADB package in order to communicate with my shield. I got the drivers from Nvidia and followed their instructions on making sure the tablet found it. Once connected I ran some simple commands to make sure the 2 devices communicated.
I followed unlock procedure then I flashed Phil's recovery following the instructions to flash CMW form the thread in development. Then selected recovery from bootloader menu. Once in recovery I did another backup to my external sd.
I could of downloaded the flashable supersu zip and push to my device via adb but instead I decided to just boot my tablet at that point. I downloaded the latest version of the flashable supersu zip and then put my tablet into recovery
I realized that my tablet no longer had phils recovery, possibly because I did not root so I had to go back to bootloader to flash recovery again then I flashed supersu and rebooted
I went to app store and downloaded foldermount and opened the app to make sure my device can write correctly to my external sd
all is well and I am rooted with full access to my external sd. Side note you need to go to app store to download the new Nvidia Hub. The one that was on my tablet did not have Grid on it and I was scratching my head a bit
not everything I did was needed it was just the steps I took to make myself comfortable. Unlocking or rooting your tablet alone will not kill your device. I opted to unlock because the version of supersu for lolipop is relatively new and although no real issues have been reported what if I flash it and I get boot loops? No I am panicking trying to get ADB/Fastboot to see my device so that I can unlock my bootloader. I wanted to make sure I could establish a connection between the devices prior so I knew I could make corrections if needed
I did not take the time to link anything and it is all there to be found but if you can not find something ask away
Alright, have successfully updated KitKat to 1.2.1 via OTA and even have root now. I even got a 64GB Sandisk Ultra SD card and moved some huge game files via the 'Apps' tab under settings
The battery life, however, is so bad on this while playing games like TWD/Trine 2/Half Life 2... doesn't charge while playing... I read reviews that Lollipop does improve the battery so I'm going to try to upgrade to L and hopefully have a root without bricking the device.
Thank you for the info, appreciate the help.
Now comes the confusing part... I am going to try and unlock the bootloader but before that, is there a tool to backup my entire device? Currently I have nothing important on the device except a few nVidia Hub games... but I'd like to learn the back up process since unlocking the bootloader will completely wipe the device. It is really a pain and a waste of bandwidth to re-download entire 1+ GB games again from the Play store/nVidia Hub.
Also, nVidia hasn't yet uploaded Lollipop recovery images officially that I could use for a clean install... or flashing the device with it (I need to get acquainted to the android terminology now... lol). Flashing recoveries is the same as restoring ipsw firmware files on Apple devices right? Which in turn gives you a clean/fresh install.
What exactly is CWM and Philz recoveries? Should I wait for nVidia to upload Lollipop factory images officially?
The battery life, however, is so bad on this while playing games like TWD/Trine 2/Half Life 2... doesn't charge while playing...
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a 2A charger (such as the one included with the tablet) seems to be enough to keep my tablet alive while gaming
Now comes the confusing part... I am going to try and unlock the bootloader but before that, is there a tool to backup my entire device? Currently I have nothing important on the device except a few nVidia Hub games... but I'd like to learn the back up process since unlocking the bootloader will completely wipe the device. It is really a pain and a waste of bandwidth to re-download entire 1+ GB games again from the Play store/nVidia Hub.
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Click to collapse
Try Titanium Backup
Also, nVidia hasn't yet uploaded Lollipop recovery images officially that I could use for a clean install... or flashing the device with it (I need to get acquainted to the android terminology now... lol). Flashing recoveries is the same as restoring ipsw firmware files on Apple devices right? Which in turn gives you a clean/fresh install.
What exactly is CWM and Philz recoveries? Should I wait for nVidia to upload Lollipop factory images officially?
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Click to collapse
This is a good explanation, and you can just flash KitKat and upgrade to Lollipop through the OTA update (and factory reset afterwards if you want a clean install, maybe even backup your system partition to use that instead until they release the factory image).
CWM or Philz Recovery?
Wow! Thank you for those links Bogdacutu. That was a good read. Will try out Titanium Backup over the weekend. I wish droid manufacturers come up with a backup/restore software of their own. Coming from the Apple ecosystem, this was the only time I missed iTunes... for backup/restore. Otherwise iTunes is crap!
Does Titanium Backup also take backups the huge OBB application files? I need to back those up because I have purchased games like The Walking Dead Season 1/Wolf Among Us etc and the episode downloads are humongous... wouldn't want to waste time (on a slow connection) and bandwidth downloading them again.
Is there any other reliable backup software on the play store that does not require a rooted device?
Heading back to rooting the Shield Tablet on Android Lollipop, I don't think there is a way to root it without installing a custom recovery/ROM... currently I'm rooted on 1.2.1 KK (LTE US Version)
Which custom recovery would you suggest... Philz or CWM? So that the OTAs from Lollipop don't cause any future issues and I can go ahead and root the tablet.