Last Updated on July 20, 2022 by Mathew Diekhake
Gaining root-access on the HTC Desire 500 is not a big deal as long as you have a custom recovery up and running on your device. The recovery lets you flash SuperSU on your device which then gains the root-access for you to enjoy root-requiring apps on your device.
Once you have root access to the HTC Desire’s internal system and a custom recovery installed is what helped you get the root access, you can then check out the custom ROMs that are available to install on the HTC Desire 500 smartphone. The root access is not a requirement for installing ROMs and kernels, but the custom recovery is. All you need to do is boot the device into its custom recovery and then click on the install button that is available from the menu. And, as long as you have the ROM file on the internal storage SD card it will install. Alternatively, you can use the root access you have to begin installing some of the root apps such as the ROM manager and use the ROM Manager app to check out the ROMs that are available to install on your device instead. All it takes is a couple of minutes, and your HTC Desire 500 should be rooted. Here’s how:
Files You Need
1. You must have a custom recovery installed on your device before you can root it. Please follow our how to install a custom recovery on the HTC Desire 500 tutorial to learn how you can flash one on your device.
2. This should flash SuperSU on your device to gain root-access.
3. Download SuperSU to your computer.
Rooting the HTC Desire 500
1. Plug in your phone to your computer in data transfer mode using a USB cable.
2. Copy SuperSU from your computer over to the internal SD card storage on your device.
3. When SuperSU is copied, disconnect your phone from your computer.
4. Turn off your phone.
5. Turn your phone back on in recovery mode. To do that, hold down Volume DOWN and Power buttons together.
6. Select Recovery from the options that appear on your screen.
7. Once in recovery, select Install and choose SuperSU .zip to be installed on your device.
8. Wait for it to install SuperSU on your device.
9. When it’s done installing SuperSU, reboot your device.
10. You’re all done!
Your HTC Desire 500 should now be rooted. Use Root Checker to confirm proper root-access on your device. As soon as the root checker app verifies the root access, nothing is stopping you from installing the root applications that are available for your Android operating system. You can check out our guide on what we think are the best root apps for the Android operating system and remember the names of the ones you want to see. Most of them are available from the Google play Store, and the rest are typically available from developer website of the XDA-Developers web forum.
Root is the username that has an all access pass to run all commands and access all files on the system. The root username is also known as the Superuser, the root account or the root user. Everyone who knows Linux operating systems knows of the root username because most of the distributions have it. They offer the root user account to the person who first sets up the computer just like Microsoft offer the admin account to the first person who sets up a computer that is running on Windows.
Android operating systems are based on the same Linux kernel as the Linux distributions, and thus they have the same root user account on them too. The reason people don’t know about it is that they block off the access to the root user account before they ship it off to devices because they don’t want people to be the root user on the mobile operating system by default—or for there to be a way to access it from the settings. That doesn’t mean you can’t get in control of the root user account. It just means you need to do more work than toggling a switch from inside the Developer Options menu. Luckily for you and everyone else out there who wants root access on their Android operating system there are many third-party developers looking out for you. The most popular third-party developer these days looking after rooting Android is probably Chainfire. He is the guy behind the SuperSU that you are flashing from the custom recovery image to come up with the root access on the Android operating system.
The SuperSU is an app that gets installed on the smartphone, and it blocks root access to the system by default so just because you have it installed does not make your device any different yet. The point in time when things change is after you install the root applications and then open the root application as if you were to run it. It’s at that point that SuperSU gives you a message on the phone’s display asking if you are sure you want to grant that app the root access it is requesting. Here is the only point where you need to stop and think for a second and make sure you notice the name of the app that is asking for the root access. If you grant root access to malware by accident, then that becomes a potential problem.
Apart from that, all malware is blocked by default, and nothing is given root access until you grant it which makes your system no less secure that say when you install anti-virus on the computer and allow an exception for an application that the anti-virus is blocking. The anti-virus lets you let malware through to if that is what you want to do. In that respect, the SuperSU application works much the same way the anti-virus would and therefore there really isn’t anything to fear apart from the fact that you need to know what you are choosing to grant root access when you run apps.
November 6, 2016 @ 19:39
Also remember to disable the fast boot option from the smartphone battery settings to be able to enter the recovery mode. Thanks for your clear guide.