Rooting ZTE Blade/San Francisco & installing Cyanogenmod

published Sep 26, 2011 09:56   by admin ( last modified Sep 26, 2011 09:56 )

Quickly and easily root your ZTE Blade to get access to interesting apps on Android Market.

Subsequently flashing the phone with Cyanonogenmod Gingerbread 2.3.3 gives you besides the newer Android, some interesting features such as gestures and the ability to edit permissions for all applications individually. My ZTE Blade had some teething problems with Cyanogenmod 7.0.3 Stable, less so with 7.1.0-RC1.

Quick how-to

  • First in order to root the phone, go to
    http://android.modaco.com/topic/337262-permanent-root-for-22-blades/
  • Register at the modaco site in order to download the file
  • Unpack the zip file into its own folder on your computer
  • Mount the phone as a USB storage unit to your computer and copy the folder over
  • Disconnect the phone from the computer
  • Use the "Files" application on your phone to find the folder and tap the z4root file in the folder. Install it.
  • On your phone, go to Settings->Applications->Development  and enable USB debugging
  • Turn the phone off and back on again
  • Start the now installed z4root app and the phone should get rooted. If rooting the phone was the goal, you are done!
  • To continue installing Android Gingerbread 2.3 from Cyanogenmod, follow the instructions at the bottom of this page:

    http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/ZTE_Blade:_Flashing_CyanogenMod#Method_via_ROM_Manager

    or if you'd rather have the instructions in a video tutorial format:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=XZ9VgyaIT4w (It works on gen2 Blades despite what the video byline says, mine is a gen2)

 

Well, I am pretty happy with my recently purchased ZTE Blade, but the call quality is lacking when it comes to the sound of the phone's internal earphone speaker. Cyanogenmod 7 with Android 2.3 contains an equalizer and with a bit of luck it may patch itself into the call chain I thought (no such luck in hindsight).

I did hesitate to install Cyanogenmod for a while due to the unwieldy install instructions on their wiki. After having written down and analyzed all the steps (see further down in this post) I realized all steps bar one, were for rooting the ZTE Blade.

Happily the user "Kallt Kaffe" has made an app that roots the Blade in one step! His being on my phone operator network (Telia SE) made it feel safe and compatible (although I believe the root is universal across languages and operators). If you want to root the Blade/San Francisco, it then seems to be the easiest way:

http://android.modaco.com/topic/337262-permanent-root-for-22-blades/

 

According to Kallt Kaffe's guide, USB debugging must be enabled. I found it under Settings ->Applications->Development->USB debugging

 

I had to reboot the phone to get the rooting app to accept that the setting was indeed enabled.

Here's a Youtube film on Cyanogenmod tweaks (untested by me)

And here's a review

 

 

Impressions

The Cyanogenmod 7.0.3-Blade stable running on my ZTE Blade has not come out completely smelling of roses.

  • [upgrading to Cyanogenmod 7.1.0-RC1 seems to have solved this problem] The phone seems to switch itself off when charging after a couple of hours. I do hear notification sounds for incoming e-mails, but come morning the phone is dead and does not respond to phone calls. At 8.50 everything is fine, but at 10.20 the phone is dead and needs to have the battery pulled out and back in again when I'm out and about. This happens every night when phone is being charged. However, when not having it charged overnight, everything is fine. Pulling out the USB charger's cable helps sometimes, reinserting it helps at other times. Or the old battery reset method. I do have silent hours enabled, but the phone dies well after the silent hours are over.
  • [update: download this to fix it] It doesn't reconnect to WiFi. Disabling and re-enabling WiFi makes it reconnect. This is a general problem for ZTE Blade and not just when it runs Cyanogenmod it seems, I have just learned
  • It reboots occasionally while entering text into Google Maps.

 

The cumbersome by me untested way

Below the steps to root and flash a ZTE Blade as it currently says on Cyanogenmod's Wiki.

 

 

1) Cyanogenmod may be installed just as in this video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=XZ9VgyaIT4w

thusly:

 
 
2) but the phone needs to be rooted first. Described here:
 
 
 
3) ...but in order to root it one must install adb. Two pages show how, this one where you need to install the entire development environment for Android:
 
 
It links to a page for just adb:
 
 
That one currently essentially just points back  to the big SDK install page however
 
4) ...aha but to install Android SDK you need to have Java installed:
 
 
5) And then you need the Java Development Kit:
 
 
6) If you happen to run Linux on your computer you furthermore need to configure udev (if udev is on your flavor of Linux) to recognize and handle the device in Normal, Debug, Recovery and Fastboot mode. These modes the phone can enter by on-boot button combinations apparently, and you can use lsusb to find them out while pressing and waiting:
 
 

phonix232 has done that work for you though:

:
 
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="19d2", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1353", MODE="0666", OWNER="[username]" #Normal Blade
 SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="19d2", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1351", MODE="0666", OWNER="[username]" #Debug Blade
 SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="19d2", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1354", MODE="0666", OWNER="[username]" #Recovery Blade
 SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="d00d", MODE="0666", OWNER="[username]" #Fastboot Blade

[username] should be changed to your username. On the Linux computer that is I gather .