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Previously Rooted Phone?

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owl1331
(@owl1331)
Posts: 18
Eminent Member
Topic starter
 

Hi All,

 

I have a Samsung Galaxy A10e. Was able to do a quick image and got some decent info including indication of prior Telegram usage and traces that Magisk was at one point installed. The device was also in Developer Mode when I obtained it, so I am of the belief that this person was somewhat tech savvy and attempted to root their phone, or that it was rooted at one point.

I myself have not rooted a phone yet because I do not feel like I have had the proper training and I don't want to accidentally brick one. The plan was to do an IACIS mobile device training this year, but obviously with COVID that is put on hold.

My questions to you guys are:

1. Is there a simplistic way to see if this phone was rooted previously?

2. If it was previously rooted, is there an easier way to implement the root access rather than starting from scratch?

3. Any advice as to what is the best rooting software is?

4. Any training or resources that I can look into for learning how to do this?

5. Last but not least, is anyone aware of a good resource to buy used old cell phones? I ideally would like to purchase some to practice on. It would be nice to get a mixed bag of like old androids, iphones, flips etc.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

 
Posted : 06/10/2020 8:18 pm
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(@droopy)
Posts: 136
Estimable Member
 

Check on download mode if flags shows 1 or 0

 

For rooting android , top1 page is XDA FORUM

i have personally rooted more than 1000 devices , all models.

 
Posted : 08/10/2020 1:44 am
owl1331
(@owl1331)
Posts: 18
Eminent Member
Topic starter
 

@droopy

 

I've been doing a lot of research and have been able to acquire phones previously but just have never felt comfortable rooting since I haven't necessarily had "training" on that yet. But, I feel like it's time to bite the bullet and figure it out. 

 

On this phone in particular, it's a tracphone - it's my understanding that Tracphones don't lock their bootloaders? In Developer Mode, the OEM unlock option does not appear. I'm wondering since he already had Magisk installed on his phone, if it doesn't appear because it's already unlocked.

 

I am using Magnet and spent yesterday trying to figure out the status of the bootloader. I kept trying to do the ADB OEM device-info command, but was not getting anywhere. The device is recognized when I do ADB devices,  but I can't get any info on th e bootloader.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks for the help and response.

 
Posted : 08/10/2020 1:41 pm
(@arcaine2)
Posts: 235
Estimable Member
 
Posted by: @owl1331

On this phone in particular, it's a tracphone - it's my understanding that Tracphones don't lock their bootloaders? In Developer Mode, the OEM unlock option does not appear. I'm wondering since he already had Magisk installed on his phone, if it doesn't appear because it's already unlocked.

Tracfone devices are out of my region, but from what i read and saw, they're usually locked a bit more than the others. It's also worth mentioning, that S10 series and new A series (A10, A20, A40 and so on) come with factory locked bootloader, also on international variants (F, FN in Europe). That's something new. You don't need any permission or code to unlock bootloader, it can be done straight from bootloader screen if you enable "oem unlocking" before, but they're locked from factory.

 

Lack of "oem unlocking" option in developers menu may suggest that this was disabled in firmware (could be done by Tracfone), or phone wasn't connected to the internet to verify knox guard status (KG). I noticed that on wiped devices, OEM unlocking shows up after you pass setup wizard, but only if you're connected to the internet at least using WiFi for couple of seconds.

 

I am using Magnet and spent yesterday trying to figure out the status of the bootloader. I kept trying to do the ADB OEM device-info command, but was not getting anywhere. The device is recognized when I do ADB devices,  but I can't get any info on th e bootloader.

That command you're trying to run is a fastboot command, not the one that you can run with adb. Samsung's devices doesn't have fastboot mode and it won't work in Download mode.

 

The general rule to check if Samsung phone was rooted before is to check Knox flag in Download on download mode screen (somewhere on the upper side). It's very uncommon to be able to root those devices in other way than flashing custom recovery (TWRP) and Magisk or using a custom boot image. Both of those options will switch Knox flag to 0x1 and this can't be reversed.

 

 
Posted : 10/10/2020 7:47 pm
passcodeunlock
(@passcodeunlock)
Posts: 792
Prominent Member
 

1. on certain Samsung devices the "OEM unlock" option appears only after several days after enabling developer options, that might be your case as well ?!

2. rooting devices is not a game to play, use a dummy device for testing everything before you do it on a device with real data

3. if a device was rooted, but then it got flashed with stock rom again, most probably you won't find much info about the previous rooted stuff, unless some things were kept in the userdata or the cache partitions, like modified scripts, etc.

4. if a device was once rooted, but now it is not, that won't make rooting easier, it just proves it was possible 🙂

5. don't expect a best software for rooting, there isn't one!

6. rooting new devices usually leads to total data loss, many mobile repair shops can do it, but if you need the data from the device, don't try to root it!

7. there are many older devices on ebay 🙂 but any corner shop will do it as well... Don't waste too much money on older devices, whatever you can learn there, it's not true anymore with Android 11, 10 or 9

I hope it helps a bit...

 
Posted : 12/10/2020 7:48 pm
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