Well, bit of a bad run with phones this year - lost or stolen from me: S4, S5, Note 2, Asus Zenfone 5.
Had to make a bit of a rush buy on the weekend and got a Lenovo Vibe P1. Nice bit of kit - 3G RAM, 16G internal memory, up to 128G external, 5.5" screen. I bought it.
Of course, I’m in China, where all the fun apps are not on the phone, and loads of craptastic ones are. I’ve gotten rid of a few of the crappy ones, and now need to get on the ones I need - FB, YT, BBC, CNN, NYT, banking apps, all the Google stuff.
I managed to get a couple of Google apps on, and BBC, but an error/compatibility message comes up - how do I get around this? Get my VPN app onto the phone (transferred from PC), fire it up and get all my desired apps. Or root the phone, either putting on the same model’s software, but from say HK. Or go the CyanogenMod/Kingo route?
I don’t want to brick the phone, and would rather have somebody do it for me at the electronics market. Or is it reasonably safe to do?
Advice please!
I would say root the phone and go the CyanogenMod way. However, I don’t think doing that alone means that you won’t need VPN to get some of the blocked services in China (such as facebook and google). Getting rooted and installing a normal Android OS helps you get VPN on your phone more smoothly though.
The problem with getting such a uncommon phone outside of China is that resources are going to be hard to find.
I saw root applications here:
rootmyandro.blogspot.tw/2015/09/ … ting.html#
You could use the PC USB rooting installer, or the one click rooting apk. I stopped rooting my phones because back in the good old days, rooting comes in the form of clear step by step Linux command line instructions. These days they are seedy installers or apks hosted by some website in China. If the choices are no freedom either way, I choose not getting root but free in terms of keeping my info away from China. Since you are already in China, there’s no stopping them, so might as well just root your phone.
Had a look at that site - super dodgy. Links go through to shopping websites.
Have found a few others, but would still prefer a professional to do it.
How difficult is it to root a phone, for a first time ‘rooter’?