When you buy an Android smartphone it comes with ordinary user access and as such you are not able to access the system areas of your Android device. In order to access the system area and functions, you have to run the Android OS with root user access. Modifying the bootloader of your Android OS to allow it to run with root user (also called super user) access is called rooting an Android device. Rooting your Android smartphone has many benefits – you can remove blaotware installed by the manufacturer, try out custom Android ROMs, and run all those apps like Titanium Backup that run only if your Android device is rooted.
Since rooting an Android phone is not officially supported, people use a combination of different methods and tools to root their devices. Usually rooting an Android phone involves, installing proper drivers so you can access your Android device in Windows in the USB debug mode, connecting the phone without the battery so that you can modify its ROM, change its recovery to a publicly available one, modify the bootloader and finally installing the SuperSu app that manages the super user permissions.
But if you do not want to go through all that trouble, then you can simply use the Kingo Android Root program for Windows to root any of the Android devices. After installing Kingo Root, you can connect your Android device to your Windows PC through a USB cable. Before connecting it to the PC, make sure that you have enabled the developer options in Android and enabled the USB debugging within the developer options. You can learn how to enable developer options in Android from one of our previous articles.
As Kingo Root identifies your device, it will begin to download and install the proper USB drivers so that it can connect to the device through the ADB interface. The downloading of the drivers, their installation and reconnecting and disconnecting of the device may take five to ten minutes.
Kingo Root keeps giving you directions during the while drive installation step, so there is no confusion. After the drivers have been installed, and you have reconnected the Android device to your Windows PC, it will ask for ADB access permissions in your Android device – you have to tap on OK to allow access permissions.
After the USB debugging and ADB access is allowed, it will try to determine whether your phone is already rooted or not. To do so, it tries to access a system area. If your phone is already rooted, you will get SuperSu prompt in your Android device else you would see nothing. In the latter case, you will be see the ROOT button in Kingo Root clicking on which it will start to root the device.
The rooting process involves many complex steps and will go on for many minutes. You have to patient during this time. You should never remove the USB cable, shutdown Windows, close Kingo Root etc., during this rooting process – any attempt to do any of these will brick your Android device (i.e. will make it dead). In the end, you will see the Finish button. You can reboot your Android device by clicking on this Finish button.
After your Android device is restarted, it should be rooted. You can check whether your Android device is rooted or not, by using the simple Root Checker app that you can get from the Google Play Store. You can read our article about how to check if Android has root or superuser access for more information. Also do not forget to update/install the SuperSu app from the Play Store as well – this app controls the root permissions for all the other apps.
Rooting a device voids its warranty and you may not receive the OTA updates for your Android OS. For example, if Samsung releases Android L update for all KitKat smartphones, you may not get it because your device was rooted. So for these cases, you may have to unroot the Android device back. Kingo Root makes it very easy to unroot your phone. The whole process is similar to rooting the Android, only this time you have to grant the SuperSu permissions and click on the Remove Root button.
Conclusion: Kingo Android Root is one-click solution for rooting your Android smartphones. It can root almost all the popular brand Android smartphones from Samsung, HTC, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Micromax, Sony, Acer, Motorola and more. Even more interesting feature of Kingo Root is its ability to unroot the device with equal ease.
You can download Kingo Root for Android from CNet.