Asus released the Zenfone 5 early last year, along with a line of other Zenfone branded phones. The Zenfone sports a not large, but not terribly small five-inch screen, a dual core GPU, and an 8 megapixel shooter. Although it is clearly a mid-range device, the physical design of the Zenfone 5 is somewhat redeeming of its specs. The phone runs a themed version Android KitKat 4.4. KitKat is locked down in some aspects and rooting the Zenfone 5 can alleviate that. Additionally, rooting the Zenfone 5 opens doors a significant level of potential customization and use within KitKat. This guide will help you root your Zenfone 5, in an effort to unlock that potential.

Before you can begin, make sure your Zenfone 5 is charged up to 80% or more, locate a MicroUSB to USB cable, and make sure you have the Zenfone 5 USB drivers on your PC.

Asus Zenfone 5

As most Android enthusiasts already know, rooting is what we call hacking up the internal system and hardware components of the smartphone. The original OEM starts with the system unlocked or unchained and they lock it up to prevent us from using it to its true potential. Root access is opening the ports up again and allowing us to use that potential that was locked away.

One you finish the Zenfone 5 guide below for unchaining the hardware, you can learn more about that by reading what things to do with a rooted Android.

The Zenfone 5 started with Android 4.4 KitKat and the toolkit we are using below was made with KitKat in mind. The guide should also work with Android 5.0 Lollipop, that includes most software updates after that which are still on the Lollipop name. However, we cannot guarantee that it works with the new Android M (whatever that word ends up being after writing this guide).

How to root the Zenfone 5 running Android KitKat or Lollipop

1. Enable USB debugging on your Zenfone 5. To do so: Settings > Developers Options > USB Debugging.

2. Connect your phone to your PC via USB.

3. Download the Zenfone 5 rootkit zip file.

4. Extract the zip file and open Root-ZenFone.bat. You will see a command prompt screen.

5. Press any key on your keyboard to begin the rooting process.

6. Throughout the process, your phone will reboot 5-6 times.

7. Finally, you will see a success message on the command prompt.

8. Disconnect your phone from your PC.

9. Check in your applications for SuperSU. If you see that, then your Zenfone 5 is rooted!

There’s no way to check the process for Zenfone worked unless you install the root checker app from Google Play. Once the root check application is installed, it will tell you if the SuperSU installation is successful.