[1]The Motorola Moto X is now running Android 5.0 Lollipop in most places thanks to a quick over the air update granted by the Mountain View company out of the Googleplex. It seems the Moto guys are high on Google’s list after becoming a Google company. Even though they aren’t a Google company any more and Lenovo owns the rights to the secrets behind closed doors, they still maintain a good enough relationship to get the Lollipop just after Google looked after their own nexus range of devices. If you are using the Lollipop and want to gain root access on yours, you can do that by following the guide below.
REQUIREMENTS
- There are two different Moto X smartphones. The latest is called the second generation 2014 edition. That’s the phone you want to install the following files during the guide. Do not use these files for the first generation handset as they are different and we are creating that guide soon.
- You should check that you are indeed running on the Android 5.0 Lollipop software update and not the older KitKat version. You do that by turning on the device and navigating to the Settings, followed by About Device and looking at the software version from there.
- Check the model number of the device matches up with XT1097 from the About Device menu.Install the official Motorola USB Drivers [2] for mobile phones.
BEFORE WE BEGIN
- Understand that applying the following steps does void the warranty and you won’t be able to send the phone away for free repairs. You can, however, unroot the device by using another guide and the warranty comes back to life. They’ll never know you tripped the flash counter and it returns back to zero.
- Make sure you have enough battery on your device before starting the steps. You can check that by turning on the phone and looking at the battery icon from the status bar.
- Navigate to the Developer Options menu from the Settings menu on the smartphone and enable the USB Debugging mode.
- if you cannot see any Developer Options menu from the Settings that means it’s not unlocked yet. Head to the About Device menu and tap on the build number seven times to unlock the hidden Developer Options menu. You should see it from the Settings now.
- Note: Enabling the Developer Options doesn’t mean you are running the device in a dedicated developer mode. You can still use the phone as you normally would; nothing has changed and you don’t need to turn it off again.
HOW TO ROOT THE MOTOROLA MOTO X RUNNING ANDROID 5.0 LOLLIPOP
- Download the CF-Root package from here [3].
- Boot the phone in bootloader mode. Press the Volume Down and Power keys together and then let go of the same.
- Connect the Moto X to the computer with the USB cable.
- Extract the contents of the CF Root folder to the desktop of the computer.
- Click the root-windows.bat executable file from inside the extracted folder.
- Refer to the on-screen instructions to finish the job.
- Nice one! You are done rooting the Moto X with Lollipop. To finish up, you can head to the Google Play Store and install Busybox [4]on your device.