Galaxy S III Gets Rooted Before Hitting Shelves

Galaxy S III, Samsung’s latest flagship device, is set to arrive on shelves in less than two weeks from now, and is expected to become highly popular right from the beginning. 

In fact, the device already attracted a lot of people on its side, and the latest reports suggest that over 9 million units have been  pre-ordered all around the world so far. One thing that should make the phone even more appealing than it might have initially seemed is the fact that it can be easily rooted. 

It fact, there is one developer who claims to have managed to root the device, using a simple trick. He explains it all in a post on XDA-Developers. Apparently, Samsung used the standard boot.img format for Galaxy S III, which made the rooting and repackaging much easier than expected. Moreover, the handset vendor is said to have used the recovery partition as well, thus allowing for recoveries to be flashed separately from the kernel.

The developer did not release the "insecure" kernel, fearing that it might be traced back to leaks, but said that the process is so simple that any user/developer with knowledge in the area will be able to root the device in several minutes when it is released. He also says that Samsung hid the boot partitions, and that Triangle Away did not work. While no warning triangle was displayed at boot-up when flashing the modified kernel, a custom kernel flash counter was displayed in download mode.

All in all, it seems that Samsung has made it even easier for users to benefit from boot access on its Android handset. Although other vendors don’t take a similar approach in unlocks, Samsung has taken users’ side on this one. However, it should be noted that the root was achieved on a development firmware and not on the final release, and that Samsung might make some changes in the official software for the device.

Posted in: Mobile Phone, Preview, Software