Root Motorola CLIQ Android Phone [How To]

Recently the Motorola Droid phone with Android 2.0/2.0.1 was rooted successfully. This time it is Motorola CLIQ‘s turn to get rooted. By rooting a phone, you remove the restriction set by the manufacturer (Motorola in this case) and allow all core files of the device to be edited or changed by the user. This way you can install any third party apps such as themes, custom ROMs (for example installing Android 2.0.1 on HTC Blackstone Windows Mobile) etc.

Thanks to forum member TheDudesAndroid of ModMyMoto, here are the steps for rooting Motorola CLIQ:

1. First download drivers from Motorola.com

Motorola 4.2.0 Driver with MotoConnect* (for 32-bit versions of Windows®)
Motorola 4.2.0 Driver with MotoConnect* (for 64-bit versions of Windows®)

2. Download and install RSD-Lite 4.5.7 or later version.  (Google for ‘RSD-Lite’ if needed).

3. Download the SHX file. [UPDATE] Boot + Amon_RA Recovery SHX file is available here for download. Unzip the file. In case you want to check for file integrity, the SHA1 Checksum is 31bd6055e0865deedeba14cba2bca75a557ff3a7.

4. Now that you have installed the Motorola drivers as well as RSD Lite, select the unzipped shx file, choose the phone model and click ‘Start’.

Your phone will reboot into bootloader and apply the flash. A second reboot happens, this time into the Setup wizard.

5. Run these commands from adb shell:

adb remount
adb shell chmod 4755 /system/bin/su

To fix Superuser,

Download, extract and then run the .sh or the .bat

NOTE given by TheDudesAndroid to all those who want to root their Motorola CLIQ with Android:

cyanogen roms WILL NOT RUN on your phone yet. DO NOT TRY TO FLASH G1 roms, hero roms, etc yet. This does not make your phone ready to flash update.zips I will be creating custom ROM’s with improvements upon 1.5 and hopefully a 2.1 port.

DEXT Users: This will work for your phone, the radio is not flashed as part of the update, HOWEVER, your internet pay not work. I didn’t setup the proper APN’s. This update is geared toward Cliq, but I will be releasing a proper dexted update based on the orange update.zip

Motorola CLIQ is popular due to it’s MOTOBLUR feature. This will not work once you root your Motorola CLIQ. So wait till there is a solution to get MOTOBLUR working on a rooted Motorola CLIQ.