Do you own a Droid Incredible? Open up the possibilities of your Incredible by rooting it. Rooting the Incredible is now easier than ever. This simple step-by-step guide will help you root your device! This guide now supports the rooting of AMOLED and SLCD Incredibles with the latest Nov OTA!

Why root?

The question is, why should you not root? Do you want to be able to customize your phone? Do you want to increase your Incredible’s performance? Rooting allows you to do some remarkable things to your phone like running custom performance-enhancing apps and flashing custom ROMs.

A reminder to some, a disclaimer to most

Making unofficial software and firmware changes to your handset violates the warranty of your phone; therefore, if anything goes wrong during this process or in the future, you will be unable to return the phone for a replacement unless you are able to return the phone back to its original, factory settings. In addition, if something does go wrong, there is a chance you can “brick” your phone. Basically your phone becomes nothing more than a brick, a paperweight. Therefore, if you are not confident or skeptical in any way, I advise you not to continue.

Backup

Make sure you backup everything you need on your phone (contact list, applications, etc.). A full wipe is recommended when installing a custom ROM, which will wipe the existing data from your computer (this does not include the files in your sdcard). You can find many backup utilities on the Android Market.

Before you continue…

You need to determine what type of Incredible you have to prevent yourself from bricking your phone and gaining proper root.

  • There are 2 different Incredibles (AMOLED and SLCD screens).
  • You need S-OFF to root, but your device is S-ON.

Is my Incredible AMOLED or SLCD?

A majority of the devices out there are AMOLED; however, if you recently purchased a new Incredible in the last couple of months, it may be SLCD. To check:

  1. Turn the phone off. Walk into a pitch black room.
  2. Turn the phone on.
  3. If you see ‘light’ coming from a black screen as the device turns on, you have SLCD. If you don’t see any light from the screen until you get images, you have AMOLED.

Root and get S-OFF

Updated January 5, 2011 Thanks to the Unrevoked team, you can easily obtain S-OFF and root on your Droid Incredible in a matter of seconds! The Unrevoked team has made it possible in version 3.31 to provide the proper recoveries for AMOLED and SLCD owners. Rooting is now easier than ever.

  1. Download and install Unrevoked for your OS (Operating System) from www.unrevoked.com/recovery. *NOTE: If you are running Windows, you must uninstall HTC Sync if you have it installed and install HBOOT drivers at http://www.unrevoked.com/rootwiki/doku.php?id=public:windows_hboot_driver_install.
  2. Disconnect your phone from your computer.
  3. Make sure “USB Debugging is enabled.” (Settings > Applications > Development > USB Debugging)
  4. Run Unrevoked.
  5. **If you own an SLCD Incredible, please follow these directions. If you own AMOLED, skip to step 6.
    5a. Download the custom recovery mod for SLCD at anyhub.net/file/13db-cwm-mod-dinc-slcd.zip.
    5b. Unzip the contents of the file.
    5c. In Unrevoked (On your computer, not your phone), go to the menu > File > Custom Recovery and select “recovery.img” from the .zip you extracted.
  6. Connect your phone to your computer and follow directions to root your phone.

Blank Recovery screen

There have been people having trouble getting into Recovery and mentioning that the Recovery screen is blank/black. Do not boot straight into Recovery using Volume Up + Power. Make sure you boot into HBOOT first by Volume Down + Power. Then highlight and select Recovery.

Enjoy

I realize there are that many people out there who have been frustrated by the Nov OTA and have lost root or have been unable to root their device. Now you should be good to go!

Were you able to successfully get S-OFF and root? Let me know how it went.

Sources

  • Unrevoked
  • g00gl3 on XDA for providing cwm-mod for SLCD