At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical old bastard I have to say that kids these days have it easy when it comes to rooting their Android devices. Granted in real life terms the operating system has only been around a few short years but we all know that by technology standards that is a lifetime, and anyone who went through the process of rooting the original Motorola Droid on Verizon knows what I’m talking about.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining. It is a credit to the popularity of Google’s OS and the hardest working developers in the business that we don’t really need to get our hands dirty anymore because it’s typically the guys posting over at XDA Developers that do all the heavy lifting for the rest of us. All this in exchange for a few bucks in donations although I doubt any of them are really in it for the money.
Well don’t look now but they have worked their magic again. This time thanks to the hard work of XDA members sextape, djrbliss, cnlson, and ChainsDD, as well as open1your1eyes0 who put everything together, the Verizon Galaxy S IV has been cracked. This is obviously great news for those of you out there who like to personalize your devices, and since you are reading this I assume you are one of those people.
So without further ado here is the method that will get you well on your way to rooting and ROMming your Verizon Galaxy S IV:
Step 1 – Preparation
Download and Install Samsung Official USB Drivers – Link
Download and extract ODIN v3.07 – Link
Download the VRUAMD2 Prerelease Kernel – Link
Download the VRUAMDK Stock Kernel – Link
Download and extract the Motochopper Root Exploit Tool – Link
Step 2 – Flashing VRUAMD2 Prerelease Kernel to remove Root block
Boot phone into ODIN mode (See here for how-to)
Flash the VRUAMD2 Prerelease Kernel using ODIN v3.07 ***in PDA section only*** (See here for guide on flashing)
Boot back to Android and verifying everything is still working and kernel has flashed successfully
Step 3 – Rooting Your Device
Verify in Security setting on your device that you have “Unknown sources” checked
Verify in Developer options setting on your device that you have “USB debugging” checked
Verify in Developer options setting on your device that you have “Verify apps via USB” unchecked
Connect your phone to your computer and open “Run.bat” file from the location you have extracted motochopper to
If successful, after your phone reboots, open SuperSU app and let the binary update itself to the latest***IMPORTANT***
Once complete, just open a root application and verify that is able to access root properly
Step 4 – Restoring VRUAMDK Stock Kernel
Boot phone into ODIN mode (See here for how-to)
Flash the VRUAMDK Stock Kernel using ODIN v3.07 ***in PDA section only*** (See here for guide on flashing)
Boot back to Android and verifying everything is still working and kernel has flashed successfully
After your phone boots back to Android, you should now be fully rooted and on the fully original stock firmware as the device came
Be sure to hit up the thread in XDA for any support needs and questions that may arise and of course drop the fine developers over there a few loonies for their time and amazing efforts. It is their hard work that keep pushing this community forward.
Source: XDA Developers Forum