This will come as a surprise to no one…
HTC lock their devices to prevent users who don’t know what they’re doing from messing with the system and doing silly things that could lead to bricked devices.
On an HTC device, there’s two kinds of lock these days. First is the locked bootloader. In a nutshell, this ensures that the phone only boots a signed version of the operating system. Unlocking the bootloader is widely considered necessary to obtain root access, and is definitely required to load up a custom recovery.
For many, an unlocked bootloader is all that’s required, and HTC allow you to do this self-service style through the HTC DEV website.
However, this doesn’t unlock everything. Some key partitions are still write protected, and to modify those (eg. To gain write access to the system partition while the OS is running) you need to achieve S-Off.
Here’s the news: S-Off for the new HTC One M8 has now been achieved, as shown in the video below:
There’s a few things you’ll need to ensure are working, installed or uninstalled first so make sure that you check all of the prerequisites that the dev team have laid out for you.
Prerequisites
Working adb on your PC. Yes, that means OS X, linux, Windows, etc. are all supported.
HTC drivers installed and working
HTC sync removed (not closed – REMOVED)
All other phone software removed or disabled (Samsung Kies, PDANet, etc.)A working internet connection ON YOUR DEVICE – wifi, 3g, 4g, etc. are all supported. There is no way around this requirement, don’t ask.
USB debugging enabled on your device
Your device must be HTCDEV unlocked/rooted or have a working temproot. A temproot that works with many modern (not all) HTC devices is provided below.
Do not attempt to run firewater from a terminal emulator on your device. You MUST use adb along with a PC.
A supported device. firewater *should* work with most modern HTC devices, including (but not limited to) the htc one, droid dna, one s, one max, and many others.
If you’ve got a working knowledge of ADB and a device you want to have a bit more of a play with, check it out in the source link below. As always, we’re here to present the news to you not decide if you should or shouldn’t root, ROM or otherwise make system alterations to your device. Ausdroid recommends that you do plenty of research before attempting anything like this and ensure you fully understand the instructions first.
Have you had any root fails in the past? Share your horror stories with us
