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Despite its official launch still being a good 10 days away – or 9 days if you pre-order with Samung – an enterprising developer has managed to gain root access to the Samsung Galaxy S3.
Some developers and tech bloggers have now received review samples of the hotly anticipated gadget, and one such developer who goes by the name of Chainfire discovered an unsecure kernel, which was then modified, allowing him to access all adb root commands and then install SuperSU.
The developer reports that strangely Samsung has opted to use a less secure boot image format than it has on previous devices such as the Galaxy Note and S2, which made the rooting process much easier than usual. This doesn’t mean that the device is any less secure in general, just much easier to tinker with yourself.
With root access of an Android phone you can do almost anything the manufacturer wouldn’t really want you to. This includes installing custom versions of software – known as ‘ROMs’ – remove and disable unnecessary apps and widgets in order to increase battery life, and much more.
The developer who discovered the root had originally refused to share the unsecure kernel for fear of Samsung tracing it back to them, but it has now been shared for anybody fortunate enough to have an S3 with the guts to root it. It’s a fairly simply process of downloading the kernel and extracting it to gain the .tar file, then connecting the phone to a PC and using the Odin software to flash it onto the phone, making sure you use the ‘PDA’ option within the Odin software.
There’s a small chance that the final retail version of the S3 will have slightly altered software, but the chances are this root method will still work, so it’s bound to be useful for those who want to root on day one.
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Via: XDA-Developers
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