Rooting the South Korea Motorola Atrix

Gaining root (administrative) access to Android phones abroad can be difficult. Often a crack or break made for a device in one country is incompatible with the same model in others due to differences in firmware. For this reason, I have been apprehensive about rooting my South Korean Motorola Atrix. Today, I finally found a method which does not brick the phone and works splendidly on the South Korea model of Moto Atrix.

I have compiled all of the prerequisite software into one downloadable bundle here, tools for the job.

The following instructions worked wonders for me. The following instructions are taken from BriefMobile.com.

How To: Motorola Atrix 4G Root

Root method found and executed by Brandon15811, the2dcour, and of course eval-! Make sure to thank them over at the forums.

Prerequisites [see above link, tools for the job"]

• Drivers installed 32-bit or 64-bit
• ADB-Fastboot package
• Root image (Mirror)

Outline

1. Extract the ADB-Fastboot package and root image to your C: Drive under a new folder titled “root”
2. Put your device into Fastboot mode: – Turn off your device. – Hold down the power button and downward volume button until you see “Fastboot” on your screen – Push the upward volume button
3. Open your command prompt (Start >> run “cmd” >> enter)
4. Type the following commands
   
   • cd C:/root
   • fastboot flash preinstall root.img
   • fastboot reboot
5. Enable USB debugging (Settings >> Applications >> Debugging)
6. Type the following commands
   
   • adb shell
   • /preinstall/dosu [dosu is actually not correct. instead, use "/preinstall/su" but without the quotes]
7. Type the following commands
   
   • /bin/mount /system -o remount,rw
   • cp /preinstall/su /system/bin/su
   • chmod 6755 /system/bin/su
   • PATH=/system/bin:$PATH pm install /preinstall/Superuser.apk
8. Congratulations! You are rooted!

So why would I risk bricking my phone in order to root it? First of all, Motorola pre-installed Swype and I wanted the newest beta version, a huge improvement. Secondly, I wanted to install Market Enabler in order to shop the U.S. Android Market with access to apps such as Google Music beta, Wells Fargo, Google+, Netflix and other U.S.-only content. Here are instructions to uninstall the pre-installed Skype from a Motorola Atrix in order to install the latest beta version.