The Always Up-To-Date Guide to Rooting Any Android Phone

  Whitson Gordon — With all the different devices out there running different versions of Android, the rooting process can be a little different for every phone. Here's a one-stop guide that should get you up and running with root access, no matter what device you have.

Rooting, for those of you that don't know, means giving yourself root permissions on your phone. It's similar running programs as administrators in Windows, or running a command with sudo in Linux. With a rooted phone, you can run more apps (like backup or tethering apps), as well as flash custom ROMs to your phone, which add all sorts of extra features.

Just like our always up-to-date guide to jailbreaking iOS, we're going to keep this guide up to date instead of publishing new guides every time the rooting process changes—it's one page to bookmark that will always have the latest or best method. It's a more hefty undertaking, what with all the different Android phones and rooting methods out there, but we're up to the challenge. Currently there are two main rooting methods that cover most devices, with a few outliers that require more work. To find out which method works for your phone, you can probably just hit Ctrl+F and type in your phone's name (e.g. hero). If you find your phone isn't listed, read through the first method, as it's probably the one you'll want to use.

Note: Our goal is to keep this guide as accurate and up to date as possible, but we can't test every phone out there, so we're relying on you guys a bit to help us out. If you have an outlier device who's method isn't listed, or one of these methods becomes outdated for a specific device, please let me know by emailing me at whitson+rootingguide@lifehacker.com (if you can help me out by providing the correct method, that's even better). I'll do my best to maintain this guide as much as possible, and if anything big changes, we'll be sure to let you know. Be sure to check out the links at the end of each method that link to the appropriate thread on XDA Developers, too—they'll have a lot of info and will answer any questions you have about that particular rooting method.

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