Howto root HANNSpree SN97T41W

Some days ago I won the Hannspree SN97T41W in the summer giveaway of TabletCommunity.de. It’s a nice and budget-friendly tablet, featuring a InfoTMIC IMAPx800 Dualcore CPU @ 1,2Ghz (ondemand governor for those who care) and Mali400 GPU. I was a bit surprised about how solid the tablet feels, no „Galaxy-feeling“. Also it’s running an almost stock Android 4.1.1. Only modifications I could spot are some device specific calibration apps etc, a filemanager(?) called Documents and a OTA updater from MoDaCo. It has the stock launcher, no bloatware and Play Store access. In Antutu it scores around 5600 points, comparable to Nexus S. 2300 points in Quadrant, almost matching the LG Optimus 2x. Tested EAs Real Racing 3, it’s playable – but lagging a bit, some frame skips too.  Didn’t tested any other games.

Only caveat I found so far: no tool I found could root it. But it’s possible anyway. You need a working ADB setup for this. On my Windows 7 some already installed adb drivers picked it up, labelled as „ACER ADB“ in the device manager. On Linux (Ubuntu ’sausy‘)  it identifies itself as „Nexus S (debug)“. I’ve done the rooting procedure on Linux, but it should work on Windows too.

How it works:

It’s possible to get a root shell on `adb shell`. From this point it’s possible to do anything you want. All files you will need in the process are in the attached archive. For comfort be sure to have some MicroSD ready, any size will do.

WARNING:

Be aware that there are no factory restore images or tools available (afaik, correct me). We’re messing with /system here. Any mistake you do has a chance to brick the device. This will for sure void the warranty! If you don’t understand the following steps, you shouldn’t follow them. I take absolutely no responsibility for bricked devices, lost data or anything else that could happen.

Step by Step:

1. Boot the tablet, enable USB debugging and installs from other locations. Also download and extract the archive, and put it on a MicroSD for easy transfer.
   ↓ Download below ↓ Root-Files for HANNspree SN97T41W (1546 Downloads)
2. Connect it, make sure adb works by using `adb devices` or grabbing a logcat.
3. Get a shell on the device with `adb shell`.
4. You should see a „$“ prompt now. Now get root by running `su`, this should result in the prompt changing to „#“.
5. Remount the /system partition with `mount -t ubifs -o rw,remount /system` for read/write access.
6. Run `busybox cp /system/xbin/su /system/xbin/su.orig`. This will backup the original su binary, just in case.
7. Now you need to get the updated files (based on SuperSU 1.34) from my download to their places. Since Superuser isn’t installed yet (it wouldn’t work anyway) this needs to be done on the shell, too. Replace all occurrence of „example“ with the folder name on your card where you put the extracted files.

   busybox cp /sdcard1/example/xbin/su /system/xbin/su
   busybox chmod 06755 /system/xbin/su
   busybox cp /sdcard1/example/app/Superuser.apk /system/app/Superuser.apk
   busybox mkdir /system/bin/.ext
   busybox chmod 0777 /system/bin/.ext
   busybox cp /sdcard1/example/bin/.su /system/bin/.ext/.su
   busybox chmod 06755 /system/bin/.ext/.su

Superuser should now work, easiest way to verify is trying some root app. I’ve used Titanium Backup for that, but anyone will do. Now install latest busybox,sqlite3,zipalign and zip by using „Busybox Installer„. You should be fine without, but it won’t harm either. That’s all, you’re rooted now.

In case you have any questions feel free to use the comments. Please don’t use IM or mail, since everybody wins by public visible questions & answers

Update #1 / 09-18-2013: Fixed shell commands ending with backticks.