How to : Root T-Mobile G1

You bought the latest and the hottest gadget in the market, the Android powered T-Mobile G1 with high hopes. But, you found that there are many things, some very essential and basic functions like taking screenshot, which you cannot perform? If the answer to the question is “YES”, then you have landed at the right place.

All you need to do, is follow some steps carefully and root your device to reveal the true potential of the great device. But, perform these steps at YOUR OWN RISK, as a slightest mistake could brick your device forever.

You need to have firmware version RC 29 (for the US users) or RC 7 (for the UK users). If you have RC 8 or higher (for the UK users
) or RC 30 or higher (for the US users), you need to downgrade to firmware version RC 7 or RC 29 before proceeding to gain root access. To know how to downgrade your firmware version, click here.

The steps that need to be followed are :

  1. Download recovery.img and Hard SPL to the root of your SD card. Click here to download recovery.img and click here to download Hard SPL.
  2. Restart your device. Then, press Enter twice, and type “telnetd” and press Enter again.
  3. Download and install a Telnet application on your device.
  4. Type the following commands into the application :
  • mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
  • cd sdcard
  • flash_image recovery recovery.img
  • cat recovery.img > /system/recovery.img

Congratulations !! now you have root access on your T-Mobile G1.

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