Update: A better and safer rooting method for the Spice Mi 355 has been posted which doesn't require you to flash the buggy Karbonn A7 ROM.
Spice Mi 355 aka Stellar Craze was launched about 3 weeks back. The phone packs a 3.5 inch capacitive screen, HVGA resolution, a 800 MHz ARMv7 processor, and on top of all, a promise for an ICS update. The ICS update promise might be materialising soon as the ICS update for Mi 425 was made available by Spice this thursday.
The development for this handset has been quite active on its XDA thread. And the only thing that's missing is a complete rooting guide. Before starting off with the guide, I would like you to go through What is Rooting? guide to get a sneak peek of the rooted world.
As usual, I won't be responsible if you end up bricking your device using the tutorial below, though the chances of a brick are really slim.
Let the rooting begin:
To get your phone rooted, you have to install the rooted ROM of Karbonn A7. Because both the devices are rebranded versions of almost same devices, the A7 ROM works great on the Mi 355. Before continuing with the steps below, backup your current ROM through the recovery (Boot into recovery by pressing volume up & power button till the screen turns red). If something goes wrong during the process ahead, or you don't like the new ROM you're about to flash, you can restore the backup you just created. Even if you don't backup your stock ROM, don't worry the stock ROM is available somewhere on the internet. To root your mobile:
- Download the A7 ROM.
- Copy the file you downloaded above to your sd card.
- Install MobileUncle Tools from Google Play.
- Reboot to the CWM recovery either through the MobileUncle Tools app you had installed or first switch off your mobile, and then press Volume up +Power key simultaneously until the recovery screen appears red.
- Select "Apply update from sd card" and select the ROM you downloaded and pasted to your sd card.
- Let the flashing process complete.
- Reboot into your new Rooted ROM.
That's it, your mobile is rooted now. Proceed further only if you want to flash the cwm recovery to your device which is an easy to use tool to help you flash even unsigned zip. Let's flash the Clockwork Mod recovery to our device:
- Download recovery-english.img file here. (~4.5 MB in size)
- Move this file to the root of your sd card i.e. to /sdcard/
- In the MobileUncle app, select flash recovery from sd card.
- Select the recovery-english.img file you downloaded in step 1.
- The phone will boot into CWM recovery.
- CWM recovery has been flashed successfully.
Congrats, You just rooted your phone. This method has been tested OK on XDA.
After you have flashed the new ROM, the capacitive buttons below the screen will be randomly remapped. To get them to work again, use Button Remapper.
Warning: As reader Vinu Felix commented below, and also from a feedback on xda, it is confirmed that button remapper is not working. As I don't have the phone, I can't offer any workaround as of now. Continue with the tutorial only if you backed up your stock ROM.
Update: Get the backup of stock ROM from here. Unzip the package you downloaded, and place the backup file in /clockworkmod/backup on your sd card. Boot into cwm recovery and restore to get back to stock.
Warning: As reader Vinu Felix commented below, and also from a feedback on xda, it is confirmed that button remapper is not working. As I don't have the phone, I can't offer any workaround as of now. Continue with the tutorial only if you backed up your stock ROM.
Update: Get the backup of stock ROM from here. Unzip the package you downloaded, and place the backup file in /clockworkmod/backup on your sd card. Boot into cwm recovery and restore to get back to stock.
