How to Root the Motorola Photon Q 4G Smartphone

If you have been looking for a QWERTY keyboard smartphone that runs on the 4G LTE network, then you don’t have to look further as Motorola has recently come up with the exact phone you were looking for. Motorola’s Photon Q 4G smartphone consists of a QWERTY keyboard and runs on the LTE network to provide super fast speed while at the same time, it provides you with great user experience. To let the full potential of your phone come out, you need to root it. The following guide covers how you can root your Photon Q 4G and flash a custom recovery on it.

I. Before You Begin:

1. You must have unlocked the bootloader of your device. You can do so from here.

2. Please make sure that your phone is charged fully. It is to avoid any interruptions during the process.

II. Downloading Required Files:

1. ClockworkMod Recovery Image (Download link’s given in the first post)

2. SuperUser ZIP (Download link is given in the first post)

3. Fastboot

III. Flashing CWM Recovery on the Motorola Photon Q 4G:

1. Download all the files using the links given above and place them on the Desktop of your PC.

2. Using a tool like WinRAR, extract files from the Fastboot ZIP archive to your Desktop.

3. Connect your smartphone to your PC using the USB cable. Make sure that your phone is ON and not OFF.

4. Now, open a Command Prompt window on the Desktop of your PC. To do so, press and hold Shift key on your keyboard and right-click on any empty area on your screen. A context menu will appear, choose Open command window here option.

5. Type in the following command into the Command Prompt window you just opened. It will reboot your phone into bootloader mode.

adb reboot bootloader

6. After your device has booted up into the bootloader mode, just issue the following command using the same Command Prompt window:

fastboot flash recovery cwmrecovery.img

7. It will begin installing the CWM Recovery on your device and should take a few minutes to finish the process.

8. When it has successfully installed the custom recovery on your device, just type in the following command to reboot your device:

fastboot reboot

There you have it. The CWM Recovery has now successfully been flashed on your device, now move on to the following section to root your device.

IV. Rooting Motorola Photon Q 4G:

1. Connect your smartphone to your PC using the USB cable.

2. Transfer the SuperUser ZIP file to the root folder of your device’s SD card. Just leave it in the topmost (root) folder.

3. After the file transfer is completed, just open up a Command Prompt window on the Desktop of your PC where Fastboot files are located. To open the CMD window, hold the Shift key on your keyboard and right-click on any empty area on the screen, choose Open command window here option from the Menu that appears.

4. Type in the following command into the Command Prompt window to reboot your device into the Recovery mode:

adb reboot recovery

5. When you enter the CWM Recovery mode, choose install zip from sdcard followed by choose zip from sdcard option.

6. Navigate to the SuperUser ZIP file you transferred to your phone earlier and select it to be flashed on your phone.

7. As soon as you select the file, it will start flashing on your device. Wait for a minute or two to finish the process.

8. After the file is successfully flashed on your device, choose reboot system now from the main menu of the recovery.

Your phone should reboot.

Congrats ! You now have both CWM Recovery and Root access on your Motorola Photon Q 4G smartphone. The option to install any root-only app is now unlocked to you and sky is the limit.

V. Flash a Custom ROM (Optional):

1. If you are ready to flash custom ROMs on your device, head to the next procedure to learn how to flash a Custom ROM on the Motorola Photon Q 4G.

If this procedure helped you, please thank/donate to the original developers here.

If you need help with this procedure, please ask in the comments below or in the forum.

This is part of our Android How To’s. We have how to’s on rooting, loading ROMs, and tons of other tips and tricks for your specific device or for Android devices in general! For all of our Android How To’s, head here.