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How To Jailbreak and Upgrade Old Android Phones
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp provides an in-depth tutorial on how he rooted and upgraded his Motorola Cliq XT, one of many Android phones made infamous for not receiving further Android updates beyond 1.5. 'It turned out to be quite an odyssey, with twists and turns I describe here in order to help those who wish to embark on a similar journey,' Yegulalp writes. 'Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it. '"
Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it.
The time spent doing this could have been spent on a billable (or freelance) project that would have paid for a new phone (and then some).
Yes, it's a good feeling to know you beat the technology. And yes, it's your phone and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But how many times will you have to root the same phone model? Will the process be similar or completely different with your next model? Sometimes the upgraded features are worth your time & effort, and other times it's worth the cost of a better phone.
Many older phones let you install a recovery partition, which should give you access to the phone via ADB. From there you can do most of the work (AFAIK, YMMV)
Unlock bootloader/or root it. There's a linux core there, rooting seems to make more sense than Jailbreaking.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
I rooted my HTC Magic, a long time ago and have been running aftermarket ROMs on it.
It's kind of cool that I have current generation Android running on 2008 spec hardware which was abandoned by carriers at version 1.6 and the community has lost interest in updating Android for such decrepid hardware (CyanogenMod has stopped supporting this past 6.1). It's a testament to how awesome the OSS & modding community is.
Was it worth it? The phone works fine for calls and texts, has 90% of it's battery life, and is still working flawless after some horrific abuse that would have seen a iPhone 4 shatter into dust. (They don't make Droids like they used to). But increasingly many new Apps just don't work on such a old phone, let alone run acceptably. Many crash due to lack of RAM unless I enable a swap partition on a SD card (yes it's linux after all, can do that easily).
Ultimately I learned a lot about how the OS works, and learned quite a lot about how an OS should be done. Innovative multitasking and memory management and security too. Puts desktop OSes to shame. Somehow, it's Linux, yet you can make a lot of changes to your OS above and beyond installing apps without ever having to punch in a password to elevate to root. After decades of desktop OS practice, this is refreshing security practice.
It is always worth it for the learning and the insight.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I had to do the same with my wife's Cliq. I was told when I bought the phone it would get 2.1 in less than 2 months. I told them I wouldn't get it if it wasn't going to get the update. 10 months later and Motorola is telling me 2.1 will not work because it only has 256 Mb RAM. Well XDA and Simply-Android to the rescue. I was rocking Gingerbread in no time and with a little tweaking the phone is stable and fast. Somebody handed me a stock G1 yesterday and I'm thinking it's just not fast enough or enough RAM. 2 hours later I have it rocking a custom Gingerbread ROM and it is quite snappy. My son replaced his dumbphone and is enjoying Android goodness via WiFi.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
They would much rather your phone become so unusable as time goes on due to advances in software, that you have to buy a new phone every 18 months. This is why Verizon never carried the Nexus One. Another good example is that Samsung Galaxy S 2; it's not available in the United States yet because of the stranglehold the US carriers have on the market.
android was open, and all this jailbreaking malarkey was something only iphone users trapped by steve jobs had to deal with
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I ask why do we need to jail break an android phone? Wan't the point of Android that it was supposed to the alternative to the evil Apple phone that trapped people in a walled garden. Doesn't it seem that android is the worst of both world. No benefit of the security of the walled garden, but no benifit of automatic upgrades and protection from the telcos.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I too have a Cliq, and I got tired of the overall sluggishness and instability of the thing. Yeah, I could have gone out and gotten a new phone, but I still have 8 months to go on the contract, and I would have to buy my way out. The installation of Cyanogenmod was kind of an experiment to see if I could make the thing more tolerable. Worst case, I brick the thing and go out and get something else.
The only thing time consuming for me was to back things up ahead of time. Using different forms of backups that most people have never even thought of. Including
a) First use Sprite Backup (a paid app) to backup things like text messages and so forth.
b) Back up all of my contacts out of MotoBlur, and then import them into Google. I would never buy another Moto phone again, so I would have needed to do this anyways..
c) Use "Astro" to back up all apps installed on the phone.
d) Root the phone. Cyanogenmod instructions for my phone were pretty clear, and this was easy.
e) Then back up the recovery partition. Basically use the "dd" command to back up the partition to the SD card.
f) Install custom recovery code "ClockworkMod".
g) Use the custom recovery to again back up the phone - this backs up the MotoBlur version of software currently running.
h) Download and install the new ROM. There were a couple of other important steps I needed to do as well - flushing caches to make sure things are stable. The Cyanogenmod instructions were pretty clear as to what needed to be done in which order.
After that, I was done. And it was like a new phone. Quite responsive, and it seems quite stable.
Can old Palm Treo (680, Vx, etc.) be jailbreaked/hacked?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
A few weeks after the Captivate (Galaxy S i897) 2.2 update got pushed back several times, I decided to take the leap into custom roms for my phone. I found XDA, which had a decently understandable guide on how to root your phone, and a list of roms that one could use, along with tons of different kernels and modems one could use to make various tweaks to your phone. I tried a few different roms, and settled on an older, slightly more stable 2.2 rom names Firefly.
The hardest part of the whole process was rooting the phone initially. Once you can put Clockwork Recovery on, you're set.
More to the point, I lucked out and the Cyanogen Team started development of their lovely AOSP based rom for my device. Even better, it was based off of version 2.3.4, and the group has a great track record for getting updates made, stabilized, and out eons ahead of carriers. I took the dive, and dropped a nightly build of the rom onto my device, and have loved every minute of it. Besides having Netflix on my device, I can customize tons of aspects of the OS, and all I give up are some of the proprietary things that Samsung/AT&T bundle with the phone (like codecs and video players that utilize the graphics hardware to play video).
Outside of very minor complaints that are easily worked around (Hello Rockplayer, and soon VLC), it's the best thing I could have done with my phone. If you don't find yourself using any of the bundled stuff from your carrier or manufacturer on your android phone, I suggest you head over to XDA to Cyanogen and try out a couple of roms until you find out one that works for you.
Standard Disclaimer: YMMV, follow instructions closely so you don't brick your phone. While hard bricks are rare, they happen, and all of this stuff voids your warranty!
There's a reason there is no "Disagree" mod...
I ask why do we need to jail break an android phone?
You dont, you can do everything you can do on a jailbroken Iphone on an un-rooted Android phone.
You only root when you want to properly tinker with the OS itself, not the programs running on it.
Make sure you understand the distinction between jailbreaking and rooting:
Jail Breaking: Getting around the manufacturers restrictions on what you're allowed to install on your phone. Hence you're "breaking" your phone out of its "jail".
Rooting: Gaining root level access to the OS itself allowing you access to change (or break) every part of the OS.
Jailbreaking does not grant the level of access Rooting does.
Most people root as a precursor to installing a custom ROM, last time I checked there were not custom IOS ROMs out there.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.