Rooting the Motorola Cliq

Yesterday, I took the leap and rooted my first Android device. I really like the Android operating system and plan to remain loyal to it, and this is my first foray into rooting. I chose to do so because of a completely bogged down Cliq that I had to get a replacement for. The replacement immediately was the subject of this rooting. I am not going to say that it was simple, as I did not use (or really find) a good one click root method, so I did it the old fashioned way which I think is probably better anyway!

Below find links that will certainly help you out. These will give you most everything that you need to know to complete the root. A couple of tips and tricks for some of you out there as you may struggle with what I did.

1. Installing ADB was a breeze and recognizing my phone was simple. You shouldn’t have issues there.

2. I encountered issues with loading the custom recovery image (tried a couple and ended up using the one created by jr0dd.) However, take note that when inserting the command to flash the new recovery image that your sd card needs to be unmounted (turn off usb on your phone [or so I read]); alternatively you can do what I ended up doing and download Droid Explorer, turn off usb on your phone, connect your device and use the Flash Custom Recovery Image Button with your recovery.img file (this could be named something else, but I recommend renaming to this.) Anyway, that should save you some major annoyance.

3. Wipe, wipe, wipe. Be sure that after you load the custom recovery image (you may have to remove the battery and reboot to get it to go to the proper screen – for me it was the Android mascot with rays pouring out from behind him) you wipe all. Load your custom rom and reboot. Did you catch that? Wipe the phone. Wipe it. If you don’t wipe it, reboot into recovery mode by turning the phone off and then back on while holding the camera and power button. Once the phone begins to power up, release the power button and continue to hold the camera button. You will then be directed to the Recovery screen. Press down on the volume key and you’re in. I cannot emphasize the benefits of wiping the phone enough.

4. This has to do with ADW Launcher (which is awesome by the way) – if you accidentally remove your App Drawer from your Main Dock, you can get it back by simply going to your home screen and hitting menu –> add –> Custom Shortcut –> Pick Your Activity –> Launcher Actions –> Open/Close App Drawer. Then, just hold down on that shortcut and drag it back to your dock! I did this and found this fix elsewhere so thanks to them!

I think that these are the most common problems that I ran into while trying to root this phone, and I hope this helps you out! For your reference I received the following errors in CMD to begin with (there may be more but these are primary) -

usage flash_image partition file.img

error opening /sdcard/recovery.img : No such file or directory

package has no signature and cannot be verified – install aborted (this I think that I got before I was loading a custom recovery image at all, so if you solve one problem you likely solve the other).

Also, I really like jr0dd’s rom. That’s why I reference it below. I recommend his recovery image as well. Good work and seems to be very active on forums and with furthering development.

Here are your links. Go crazy!

http://modmymobile.com/forums/548-motorola-cliq-roms/557636-rom-j_r0dds-theofficial-v1-2-1-netfilter-swap-ext3-ext4-tun-multitouch-11-30-10-a.html

http://modmymobile.com/forums/562-motorola-cliq-general/526681-setting-up-using-adb.html
http://modmymobile.com/forums/548-motorola-cliq-roms/554535-rom-j_r0dds-cliqmod-beta11-apps2sd-bluetooth-fix-9-30-10-a.html
http://modmymobile.com/forums/562-motorola-cliq-general/530518-how-root-motorola-cliq-any-bootloader.html
http://modmymobile.com/forums/562-motorola-cliq-general/524986-setup-android-sdk-jdk.html
http://modmymobile.com/forums/562-motorola-cliq-general/530518-how-root-motorola-cliq-any-bootloader.html

Here is a quick video that is also useful for a few things (at least a visual of some of the steps).

Disclaimer – as usual, rooting your phone can be risky I hear and everyone puts disclaimers about it out there, so I will too. Be careful.

And for those of you wondering about it…well so far, so good, I enjoy it! The rom is much faster, sleek, works great, and is up to date. (Fingers crossed, my battery life seems pretty good as well…checking it now….it’s been 13 hours since it was plugged in (and when it was plugged in it was not fully charged) and I have 20% left.