A group of developers have been very resourceful and found ways how to unlock root access for almost every Ice Cream Sandwich-operated smartphones, which they made available in a forum in XDA Developers.

The procedure requires flashing of the rooting zip and accesses the rooting privileges of the device. Right now, the root zip is open to most targeted devices like S2 and other Samsung units, but there is no exact list for other brands.

The universal rooting method is to bypass the use of custom kernels and it is currently being developed for the rest of mobile phones running Android ICS.

Safety and Guidelines

  • As a general rule, users should not play with device firmware or else if the device malfunctions, warranty will be void if the device owner wants to have his phone fixed in the service centre.
  • Users who wants to experiment on their devices must read how to and the risks involved, especially about Bricking which can lead to disabling the phone.
  • Basic knowledge about mobile firmware, kernels, and rom is a must.
  • Only experienced users should try doing any rooting access or customisation of rom; otherwise, study first.
  • Always backup files, contacts, and everything else before doing so; developers must always warn users about possible failure.
  • Never ever skip a step; no one knows what might go wrong during the procedure no matter how easy it is.
  • Follow the steps carefully, if nothing seems to make sense about the terms being used, research them.

Possible things needed when rooting Android devices

  • Clock Work Manager - handles the flashing and restoration of roms for the phone.
  • Nandroid Back Up - back up of the entire phone's content including its rom for restoration use. SD card contents must be backed up in another way such as storing in a computer.
  • BusyBox - Unix Tools which are called also as the Swiss Army Knife of the Embedded Linux. BusyBox may appear as a requirement.
  • SuperOneClick - simple rooting and unrooting tool for Android
  • Mobile ODIN - application which allows flashing of firmware straight the device itself
  • And of course, the rooting tool itself which will set the device with Super User privileges

Pros of this Rooting access for ICS phones

  • Designed as universal and working for any ICS phones.
  • I9100 and other phones like N7000 can root from the stock recovery without Clock Work Mod required
  • No PC needed. The target device and the zip files only will do
  • Fully reversible unroot without PC required
  • No Yellow Triangle found in devices that used a zip CWM image
  • No custom counter increased also found in devices using zip CWM image
  • Superuser +/- busybox are only touched
  • Brisk risk is very low if flashed using CWM

Cons

  • So far, none yet as been reported, except the fact it may not work some devices yet
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