Root Cricket Vitality Rooted with tethering

[jfuginay]

Ok, just a reminder, please have adb all set up on your pc, and make sure you've downloaded and installed the samsung vitality drivers.

Also, I have no clue if this process erases all of your data. I only came upon this method because I had bricked my phone, and in my attempt to bring it back to working condition, I achieved full root with tethering abilities.

You'll need to download "ODIN + OPS" and "SCHR720_EH02_Prerooted-PDA"


https://www.asuswebstorage.com/navigate/share/YY4FNYKNA
http://oeo.la/GY4YY7YSX4




Download and run the Odin program. It will ask to load "OPS". OPS is contained in same folder as Odin.

On the bottom right you'll see buttons such as "Phone" and "PDA" etc etc. On the PDA section, click the button to load "PDA" and direct it toward the "SCHR720_EHO2_Prerooted-PDA" folder.

Once you have those files loaded, you must load your phone into download mode.

After much trial and error, and a lot of searching, I found the best way for my phone was to make sure it's turned off and unplugged from computer. Then you hold down the volume down button, hold down the Muve music button, then plug the phone into the computer's usb port. Keep holding down both the volume down and Muve button for 3 seconds, then release the volume down button while still pressing in the Muve button. You'll see a screen asking if you'd like to continue, press the volume up button to enter into download mode.

You should see a notification on your Odin that a device has been connected, you may now press "Start" on Odin and sit back and watch the magic happen.

Once it's done, you can start up as usual, and you'll likely have no service, then you'll have "metro pcs service" but your phone number will be some odd 999 number.

Open up your dial pad and press *228 then press send or call. The phone will then call cricket and begin programming your phone for use on cricket network.

Upon completion you'll see your data come back to life ( you may need to restart phone)

Link your google account, then make sure you have super user installed, if not, just download it from market.

Next step is to download titanium to check your root and remove bloatware, then bam, download wifi tether for root users, and you have a fast, responsive, bloat-free, tethering money saver.

In the end I have android 2.3.4, baseband s:r720.06 x.eh29
kernel 2.6.35.7
build number GINGERBREAD.EH02

I'll post a link to the pre-rooted rom in a bit, but you might be able to google search it and download it from where ever I downloaded it by then.

*edit*

Please note I did NOT create or code any of this. This is all made possible to you by the awesome people who worked hard to make these softwares for us to download and try to use.

 

[jfuginay]

90 percent sure it's *228

if not, it might by #228 then send, or the "dial" button.

 

[CaseyLynn317]

Will that work even if my phone is completely unresponsive? Thank you

 

[jfuginay]

Depends at which state it is unresponsive. Do you mean when you boot up it is unresponsive to touch, or that it won't respond to any buttons being pressed?

You'll need to be able to use the hardware buttons to place it into bootloader mode, so if your buttons don't work you'll likely need another phone.

My phone was essentially a paper weight. I could press power and be stuck on loading screen until battery died, until I did this procedure to my phone.

A side note, I've not paid my bill yet, and last time that happened the service was cut off quickly, data, texts, calls, nothing worked.

Ever since doing this to my phone, my data continues to connect and work, even though its been over a week since my bill has been due.

 

[android4ever91]

I have a clean (data/wipe) nandroid backup (CricKet) that i can post up for anyone that has the cwm recovery and a bricked device that can still access cwm or is on the metropcs version...i wouldn't have this backup if it wasn't for therockof2004 he made a nandroid for me to fix my phone...idk if it was just luck or what but is what i did to get the phone back to life was done a data/wipe in the recovery menu, made a nandroid backup (by accident ) lol restored the backup i had just made, then restored the backup that therockof2004 had sent me and it worked...before doing all that i couldn't get the backup to work it kept saying md5 mismatch i hope this helps out and works for you all as well!!

 

[zag]

Please post the stock rom from your Vitality! It isn't available anywhere, and I'm trying to flash an Admire to Cricket and want the full ROM on there.

Thanks!

zag

 

[Syriel]

Please post the stock rom from your Vitality! It isn't available anywhere, and I'm trying to flash an Admire to Cricket and want the full ROM on there.

Thanks!

zag

In order to create a proper, flashable ROM I'll need a partition map of the device. Just picked up a Vitality to play around with (thanks to the Best Buy super sale) but can't assume anything about the hardware, so I'm just poking around on the internals right now.

 

[Sanzenbacher]

Does it allow for Infrastructure mode?

 

[theevildead84]

I did this and even with *228 no data. Calls/Texts work. Lists me on the metro service. Also seemed to kill my Wi-Fi. Would be better to go with a CWM recovery pushed by Odin, which I have posted in this forum.

 

[westhamunited]

hello,

can someone please tell me how to root this phone.

just switched from an iPhone after many years, and to be honest, the on board memory is anything but impressive. $55/month from cricKet is a little nicer than the minimum cost of $110 to run an iPhone from ATT.

So I want to delete all the crap that came on the phone and be able to save anything and everything to teh SD card.

can anyone show me how? Like I said, I'm new to android.


Thanks.

 

[theevildead84]

You do know they can flash your iPhone over to Cricket, right? Pretty sure all of them will get calls/text/data.

Short of that the thread for rooting is here:

http://androidforums.com/admire-all...e-sch-r720-windows-mac-linux-9-12-2011-a.html

If you're going to goof around with your phone you should also push CWM to it with Odin and make a Nandroid backup before tweaking anything in case you mess something up and need to recover.

http://androidforums.com/admire-all...-recovery-not-compatible-rom-manager-yet.html

I realize those say for the Admire, but the Admire is the MetroPCS version of our phone and identical outside of a few things.

 

[westhamunited]

You do know they can flash your iPhone over to Cricket, right? Pretty sure all of them will get calls/text/data.

Short of that the thread for rooting is here:

http://androidforums.com/admire-all...e-sch-r720-windows-mac-linux-9-12-2011-a.html

If you're going to goof around with your phone you should also push CWM to it with Odin and make a Nandroid backup before tweaking anything in case you mess something up and need to recover.

http://androidforums.com/admire-all...-recovery-not-compatible-rom-manager-yet.html

I realize those say for the Admire, but the Admire is the MetroPCS version of our phone and identical outside of a few things.

yea but ATT is GSM and cricKet is CDMA.

yea, i found that out after a little research. i rooted it, i just don't know what i can do with it now lol.

i've never had an android.

 

[theevildead84]

Right now none of the roms are really stable for the Vitality. They work alright on the Admire but we're waiting on a data fix for CM7 for Admire so it works alright with our Vitality. At that point you'd definitely want to flash that rom if you want a smoother android experience.

For now you what you can do is clean up your phone a bit with the root access.

Push CWM to your phone with Odin and make a nandroid backup of your current rom. This way in case you break anything you can restore it at any time with ease.

At that point you should download Titanium Backup from the market. This program will help you remove any unwanted programs that won't otherwise uninstall. Removing the " bloatware " as it's so called will help your phone free up some internal space and make it a bit zippier.

If you're unsure about what effects something may have before removing it, back it up, or if you really screw your phone you have your CWM recovery. A hint about removing stuff, don't remove anything that seems important and you should be fine. Useless bloatware programs like games and what have you that can't otherwise be removed from your phone, feel free to throw them out. I uninstalled the Muve Music app because I'll never use that crap, for example. You can't do that otherwise without root.

Outside of that we are waiting for the CM7 ROM mentioned in the Admire forum to be updated so it has data for Cricket Vitality users. Once that happens you will be able to use a third party custom rom called Cyanogen Mod ( Google if you want to know more ) that rocks and will have custom kernals so we can overclock the phone and such.

 

[charssun]

Right now none of the roms are really stable for the Vitality. They work alright on the Admire but we're waiting on a data fix for CM7 for Admire so it works alright with our Vitality. At that point you'd definitely want to flash that rom if you want a smoother android experience.

For now you what you can do is clean up your phone a bit with the root access.

Push CWM to your phone with Odin and make a nandroid backup of your current rom. This way in case you break anything you can restore it at any time with ease.

At that point you should download Titanium Backup from the market. This program will help you remove any unwanted programs that won't otherwise uninstall. Removing the " bloatware " as it's so called will help your phone free up some internal space and make it a bit zippier.

If you're unsure about what effects something may have before removing it, back it up, or if you really screw your phone you have your CWM recovery. A hint about removing stuff, don't remove anything that seems important and you should be fine. Useless bloatware programs like games and what have you that can't otherwise be removed from your phone, feel free to throw them out. I uninstalled the Muve Music app because I'll never use that crap, for example. You can't do that otherwise without root.

Outside of that we are waiting for the CM7 ROM mentioned in the Admire forum to be updated so it has data for Cricket Vitality users. Once that happens you will be able to use a third party custom rom called Cyanogen Mod ( Google if you want to know more ) that rocks and will have custom kernals so we can overclock the phone and such.

Thanks for your clear update on the current status of the Samsung Vitality. This past week or so I've been researching and learning about rooting, nandroid, ROMS, etc. Though there are a few clear and well-written resources out there, it's difficult to find them; most have bits of information you have to piece together in order to make sense out of them. For example, one forum thread will describe "easy custom ROM installation for Samsung Vitality" (or something to that affect), only to list as its first step in the process, "Make a nandroid backup". Well, hello -- making a nandroid backup for the Samsung Vitality is not an easy process itself, particularly since we can't follow the general steps that work for many other Android devices.

I wish I had a ticker on my wall that I could program to simply deliver me the latest status of Android ROM development. Whenever a ROM is available it would scroll across, letting me know my Vitality is ready for modding.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying the latest -- and for doing so in a more clear manner than a confusing one (as so many others do).

 

[theevildead84]

Unfortunately a lot of the helpful steps get lost in translation as at some points a lot of the guys behind the roms and what have you just assume you know what you're doing, or you can figure it out/google it, whatever.

Basically you'll just kinda have to take the plunge and figure things out for yourself ( I've been messing with Androids through 2 phones and thought I've bricked them both a handful of times, but have always been able to bring them back from the dead. ) . It definitely seems overwhelming but once you get in the hang of messing with your phone, you'll be a lot more comfortable with it, and have a way better Android experience.

Using Odin to push CWM to your phone is actually as easy as the steps provided to you say. Just follow them exactly and then you'll be on your way to making a backup and then you can really start messing with your phone.

BUT I also understand being new to it and not wanting to mess with it. Honestly there's not a huge rush to get CWM/Root on your phone unless you want to clean up the crapware that comes with the Vitality, which there really is very little anyway.

Sorry for the long winded replies GL with your phone.

 

[charssun]

yea but ATT is GSM and cricKet is CDMA.

Just today a fellow posted a story about getting his AT&T iPhone working with Straight Talk. At $45/mo for unlimited voice, text and data, that even beats Cricket. I'm diggin' Android but if I had an iPhone I might look into Straight Talk.

Here's a link to the article:

Thinking of a Prepaid iPhone? Here's a Moneysaving Trick For You Enterprise Workers | ZDNet

Here's a link to the method he used to setup his iPhone for Straight Talk:

http://wiki.howardforums.com/index.php/Straight_Talk_iPhone