Root Your Samsung Galaxy Note.

Learn how to root your Samsung Galaxy Note in a few simple steps and enable your handheld

to accommodate custom built ROMs and kernels

Rooting a mobile phone is not for everyone, but is also not too diicult. While some Android handsets can be rooted in a single click, others need a tedious procedure. Still, it is worth the trouble. Why root an Android mobile? The answer is pretty simple—rooting Android is a method which allows you to gain Administrative rights to the main operating system, folders and files, and to allow you to tweak, delete, replace or add custom files. This helps to increase productivity, performance and also taps into hidden areas of the phone to reveal additional features that the manufacturer does not disclose. In short, take an example of the PC as the Android phone. If you have Administrator or super user rights, you can install software,replace operating systems with the one of your choice, tweak the performance, add or delete files and applications and a lot more. The one good thing about Samsung Android devices is that they never have locked bootloaders, which is the key to gaining root access. Usually, the root method is online almost immediately after the release of the product. This helps amateur developers create custom ROMs (Android operating system) for the device. Installing custom ROMs can actually be a good option as you can have a very light operating system—useless applications and eye-candy removed, tweaked kernels for faster processing, additional applications for better tweaking and productivity and a list of other possibilities. In this section, we shall show you how you can go about rooting your Samsung Galaxy Note in a few steps.

This method does not increase the flash counter in the phone’s firmware and you can switch back to the stock ROM if you need to claim for warranty. Here is a list of all the tools you will need to keep ready to get root access to the Samsung Galaxy Note.

# A fully charged Samsung Galaxy Note: Not necessary that it should be charged to 10 %, but around 60 % and above should do fine.

# The device set to USB debugging enabled: you can do this by going to the following section on your phone’s settings: Settings -> Applications -> Development.

# The Micro USB cable of the phone:This cable should be bundled with your device. If you don’t have one, any other Micro USB cable would do.

# A PC with Windows installed: We don’t think this needs any explanation, do we?

# Drivers for your Samsung GalaxyNote: you can download the latest version of Samsung Kies and install it. Another method is to simply connect the phone to the USB port after USB debugging is enabled and Windows should automatically install the drivers. But Kies is a safer alternative.

# The flashing utility: you will need the latest version of the Chain Fire Root Flasher (CFRootflasher.zip) which can be downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/7k9p8ro. This utility will do the necessary flashing of the phone.Download the file and extract the contents to a folder on your desktop.

 # The Kernel: In order to root the SGN, the correct Chain Fire Root Kernel is needed. Download it from http://tinyurl.com/d5hhg39. Now this is where you need to carefully download the exact kernel for your phone. Got to Settings -> About Phone on the Note and check the kernel version. It should be something like ‘2.6.34.7-N7000XXKJ4-CL641703’. The important area here is after the two ‘X’ characters (in this case “KJ4”). Note this down, go to the URL mentioned above and download the file that corresponds to your firmware which has the characters you are looking for (for example “CF-Root-SGN_XX_XEN_KJ4-v5.0-CWM5.zip”). Download the file and extract the contents to a folder on your desktop.Now that you have kept ready what you require, let’s get started. Make sure your phone is not connected to the PC at this time. We shall inform you when it is needed.

STEP 1: Open the folder which contains the kernel. You should see a .tar file there. Unzip that too and you should fine a Zimage file. Right-click on the file and select ‘Copy

STEP 2: Now open the folder which contains the Chain Fire Root Flasher utility and browse to the folder ‘Zimage’. Right-click in this folder and click ‘Paste’. This should create a copy of the kernel file in this folder.

STEP 3: Now hit the backspace key and you should go back to the parent folder. Here you should find the file ‘Not-rootedyet.bat’. Double-click this file to execute it and the flashing process will begin.

STEP 4: Now make sure your phone is charged, switched on, has USB debugging enabled and then connect USB cable to the phone and to the PC. Warning: Don’t do anything else as yet.

STEP 5: Next, take a look the PC screen where the application window is running. You will find a list of steps displayed there that you need to do confirm you have ready. Make sure you have done all of it as stated and do not ignore or skip any step there. Double check again and once done, you can proceed further. Finally, only if you are satisfied with the necessary requirements you should press any key to continue.

STEP 6: Now, on the PC screen, you will find the utility doing a load of jobs scrolling across the window. Let the utility do the needful while you wait and watch.

STEP 7: This is an optional step which you need to manually do in case it is needed. If you look at the process carefully, you will come to a stage where the utility will highlight a text which states “if the process gets stuck here for a long time . . .BLAH!! . . .BLAH!!! .”. if the process continues further, nothing is needed to be done. But if the screen is stuck there for a long time, you need to go to the Settings -> Applications -> Development section of the phone (do not disconnect the phone) and disable and re-enable USB debugging. The utility will find the device and proceed further. If you did not need to do this, ignore this step.

STEP 8: If the above was successful, you should see a message stating that temporary root has been obtained and the new kernel will be flashed. You can now press any key to continue. Next you shall see the new kernel being pushed to the phone.

STEP 9: If all goes well in the above step, you should get the message stating that the procedure is complete and the phone will be rebooted. Once the reboot happens, you can disconnect the phone from the PC and check if you have a new icon (application) installed on the phone in the application drawer called ‘Superuser’. If this exists, then you should have a successful rooted phone. If not, you can try the entire process again. To check if you have root access, you can download any application from the Android Market that requires root privileges and test it. Titanium Backup, Root Manager, ROM Manager are a few example apps that require root access.Since this utility also pushes or installs Clockwork Mod recovery on your phone you can start installing your favorite custom ROMs immediately. To check if CWM has installed on your SGN, power of the phone and press the combination keys ‘Volume up + Home + Power’ to enter the recovery mode.

TIP

Since CWM is already installed now, it is recommended that you initially take a backup of the phone and store a copy of the backup on your PC for safety. This can be restored back to your phone in case there are any mishaps while installing custom ROMs or if you want to simply revert back to your previous ROM.

DISCLAIMER: These procedures are risky and can permanently brick or damage your phone, we will not be responsible for any damage caused to your phone. A bricked phonecan result in warranty issues. Root your phone at your own risk