Last week I got a Samsung S5 – I like it a lot, but it was impossible to root. I won’t run unrooted due to ALL THE CRAP VZ (my carrier I have to stick with) forces on your phone. For the S5, AT&T and VZ both fucked with the simple root process pretty much any other carrier can run with.
In frustration, I swapped out the S5 for a M8. I dislike the lack of battery control, but a totally useable phone in all ways. Unlocking the bootloader was NOT simple, since VZ stepped in here too to fuck with HTC’s policy of allowing phones owners to unlock the bootloader. Luckily, there are ways around this.
- Temp root via weaksauce the phone then install supersu
- Install s-off via firewater (which requires root to run correctly)
- Change CID to 11111111 – this allows you to bypass the restrictions VZ put on HTC to unlock your bootloader
- THEN you can use HTC Bootloader Unlock Instructions
Once you do that, it wipes your phone, but your bootloader is unlocked. Then you can have fun.
Tricks:
- You have to uninstall the HTC App after you get the USB drivers set up
- You DO NOT have to update the Android SDK ADB/Fastboot you can download from HTC that are found in the sdkplatform-tools directory
- You DO need to know how to issue both fastboot commands (with the phone in fastboot) and adb commands