It’s been a big week in the world of rooting, and we are pleased to announce if you are the proud owner of the HTC One S, you have not be forgotten. The talented team over at XDA Developers have worked out a way to root the HTC One S on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) all thanks to the developer Paul-o-Brian. Check out the guide below to get your hands on ICS on your HTC One S.

Read our home-made list of essentials for the HTC One S before starting, so you know everything you need in preparation for opening up the smartphone away from the OEM restrictions.

HTC One S

Details of Note

  • We recommend you head directly to the Google Play Store and download one of the third-party backup apps to help you store the sensitive data you don’t want to lose such as phone contacts, SMS texts, music files, videos of you and your friends and Settings. Helium for Android is one of the most popular choices out there today that helps you store most of those things.
  • You want to turn on the HTC smartphone and navigate over to the Developer Options to enable the USB Debugging Mode. Without permissions for the USB Debugging, you cannot connect the device to the computer.
  • Some people cannot see the Developer Options menu coming off the Settings menu because it’s hidden. If you are one of them, you must head to the About Device menu and tap on the build number seven times.
  • You lose the warranty after the steps below. You must unroot the device by using one of the third-party applications from the Google Play Store, or by flashing official firmware updates manually. Sometimes flashing software updates doesn’t remove root access. For those times you want to wait for a future OTA release or pay the price for the app from Google Play.

Rooting the HTC One S Running Android 4.0.3 ICS

1. You need to head over to the XDA Developers website (here) and download the Superboot .zip file. Once downloaded you need to extract its files.

2. Turn off your device, then restart whilst holding down the Volume down button. This will put the device in bootloader mode.

3. From the .zip file you downloaded in the first step, you will need to take the contents from the r3-ville-superboot.zip and save it in an easy to find location.

4. Using your USB cable, connect device to your computer.

If your on a Mac you can go straight to step 6. Or Linux users can go straight to step 7.

5. For Windows users – Double click on ‘install-suberboot-windows.bat’ which you can find in your folder with earlier extracted files.

6. For Mac users, run the Terminal app pointing it towards the extracted files directory that contains the download. Type this command:

chmod +x install-superboot-mac.sh ./install-superboot-mac.sh

7. For Lexus users, run the Terminal application pointing it towards the extracted files directory that has the download. Type this command:

chmod +x install-superboot-linux.sh ./install-superboot-linux.sh

Your HTC One S should now have root access. If you did have any problems or got stuck at all whilst working through this tutorial, we strongly suggest you re-visit the XDA Developers thread (link in step 1). They are generally more than happy to lend a hand and get you pointed in the right direction, they are after all the experts.

There’s only one thing left to do now on your HTC smartphone: download and install our recommended root checker application from the Google Play Store and test your method worked on your phone. It’s also a great way for checking if you’ve successfully unrooted the device in future if you decide to do that next. However, for now, you are free to install a custom ROM or app from Google Play which require root access.

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