How to Root the Motorola Electrify

The Motorola Electrify is the US Cellular version of the Photon 4G, but sadly it gets much less attention than its popular Sprint cousin.  Still, there are some developers who seem to want to take things up a level for the Electrify and now, we have a root solution which is only the beginning in a journey where custom ROMs and other goodies could be encountered.  We’ll show you in this post how to root the Electrify and take that ever-important first step.  This How-To is based on the solution for Photon 4G, so do not panic if you see filenames that are related to that device.

I.  Before You Begin

1.  As always, back up your data before you proceed.

2.  Download the photon-torpedo.tar root file.

3.  Make sure you have ADB setup on your Windows PC.  If you don’t know what this is, read through the Section I of our Setting up ADB Tutorial.

4.  Enable USB Debugging on your device. To do this, go to Settings -> Applications -> Development and check the USB Debugging box, when your device is connected.

5.  Install the Windows USB drivers (32-bit or 64-bit) before you start with the rooting procedure.

II.  Rooting the Motorola Electrify

1.  Download and install the Superuser app from Google Play (previously the Android Market), either on your device or using the web-based version here.

2.  Copy the photon-torpedo.tar file to C:\Android-sdk\platform-tools on your hard drive.  If you have followed our ADB How-To correctly, this is the folder where the adb.exe file should be.

3.  Connect your device and check that USB Debugging is enabled.

4.  Open a command prompt window.  To do this (on a Windows 7 PC), click on Start, type in cmd in the searchbox and then hit enter, which should bring up a MS-DOS Window.  On Windows XP, click on Start > Run and then type in cmd, to get the same window.

5.  Type in the commands exactly as you see below with the exact spacing.  Use the screenshot below to guide you if you run into any problems.

• cd C:\Android-sdk\platform-tools
• adb push photon-torpedo.tar /data/tmp
• adb shell
• cd /data/tmp
• /bin/tar xf /data/tmp/photon-torpedo.tar
• /data/tmp/photon-torpedo.sh
• /data/tmp/install-su.sh

If you followed the procedure above correctly, your Electrify should now be rooted!!  If not, make sure that USB Debugging is enabled and retry.

We thank edgan on XDA for making root possible on this device.  Feel free to donate to him if you think it has helped you in anyway!!