How To: Root the Motorola XT701

I. Before You Begin

1. This only works on the XT701 NOT the XT720 (as far as we know).

II. Install the Drivers and Setup ADB

1. Download the drivers for your computer and unzip them. Then double click the program inside to install the drivers.

Motorola Drivers

Unzip the drivers folder you downloaded (32 bit OR 64 bit), then double click the Motorola Consumer Driver Installer application and install the drivers.

2. Follow our How To Setup ADB Procedure until you get the serial number to pop up then return to this procedure.

III. Flash the Rooted Kernel with RSDLite

1. Download RSD Lite and the rooting files.

RSD Lite
XT701 Rooting Files

2. Unzip the rooting files and copy the su and superuser.apk files to the AndroidSDK\tools folder on your computer (that you setup using our ADB procedure).

3. Install RSDLite by double clicking the RSD Lite.msi file you just downloaded.

4. Once RSDLite is installed, plug in your phone to the computer via USB cable.

5. Turn the phone off while it is plugged in.

6. Turn on the phone by holding down Power and Volume Down and Camera at the same time on the phone.

7. Open the RSDLite program by right clicking it and selecting Run As Administrator.

8. Click on the “…” button next to the filename box and select the .sbf file that was inside the rooting files zip folder you extracted earlier.

9. Once it is selected, hit Start and wait for it to finish flashing the phone.

IV. Finish Rooting the Phone

1. With the phone on and plugged in via usb cable, open the command prompt on your computer by going to Start then typing in cmd and hitting enter in the search box.

2. Now, in the command prompt type the following with hitting enter at the end of each lin:

cd\
cd c:\androidsdk\tools\
adb remount
adb push su /system/xbin
adb push Superuser.apk /system/app
adb shell
chown 0:0 /system/xbin/su
chmod 6755 /system/xbin/su

chown 0:0 /system/app/Superuser.apk
chmod 644 /system/app/Superuser.apk

reboot

3. After the phone should reboot and you should see the superuser permissions app in your application drawer. If you do, you have root access!

V. (Optional) Load a Custom ROM

1. Head over to our How To Load a Custom ROM on the Motorola XT701 procedure.

Thanks to Skrillax_CZ!
Thanks to JBoogie3!

21 thoughts on “How To: Root the Motorola XT701”

  1. hi guys,

    Thanks for this exemplary tutorial….
    i have successfully rooted my phone (xt701, which i bought from HK)and i do have superuser access now…
    but now when i try connecting to the internet thru wifi…..
    the wifi connects successfully but i still cannot get internet access on my phone…
    do u know if this problem is specifically caused by rooting the phone???

    pls help!!!!

      1. Joel and Jermyn,

        Thanks for the feedback, didn’t have that issue at all when doing this procedure on the phone we had, but seems it’s not random.
        2 questions to help solve it:

        1. What country and carrier are you using on the phone?
        2. If you go to Settings > About Phone what build are you guys using? “STCU_U2_31.05.4” or something else?

        1. I had the same problem with a XT701. If I rebooted, after connecting to wifi, then it would access the Internet but then it couldn’t find my SDcard. If I turned the wlan off and rebooted then I’d get my SDcard back but couldn’t browse any Internet sites. I reverted back with a stock service flash and got it working again, so I decided to try it one more time but it was the same results.
          The phone is on firmware 2.1-update1 and the build number is STCU_41.07.0.1277272334

  2. Hello, thanks for this tutorial, I just received this phone, bought it at the US and I am in the Dominican Republic, I want to install Android 2.2 froyo, is this possible once I root the phone? can I install this update if I don’t root it? sorry, ultra noob when it comes to smartphones, this is my first one 🙂

    1. Christian,

      Unfortunately, it won’t be possible until someone makes a custom ROM with 2.2 in it. Then you can root and flash the custom ROM. It should happen eventually, but because the XT701 isn’t the most popular device, it’s slow going.

  3. Problem happens after adb shell. Could you help on this matter?

    C:\xt701-root>adb shell
    # chown 0:0 /system/xbin/su
    chown 0:0 /system/xbin/su
    No such user ‘0:0’
    # chmod 6755 /system/xbin/su
    chmod 6755 /system/xbin/su
    # chown 0:0 /system/app/Superuser.apk
    chown 0:0 /system/app/Superuser.apk
    No such user ‘0:0’
    # chmod 644 /system/app/Superuser.apk
    chmod 644 /system/app/Superuser.apk
    # reboot
    reboot

  4. i have loaded this custom rom to my phone but its keeping giving such error:the application moto input method has stopped please try again later
    and then i have to force close it
    what should i do about it?

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