Thank you for such a detailed step by step guide, Petrah, this is awesome!
Phone bought with ZV4, upgraded to ZV9 by mistake. ZV9 rooting is more painful
; phone currently running ZV9, stock ROM, no root, no recovery.
Follow OP instructions, now phone is rooted, with recovery. Nice!
Succeeded on 1st try. Like to jot down a few notes, in case I have to do this again.
Stage 1 - check recovery on your phone.
1) Reboot into recovery. This is your built-in recovery, even if you have done no mod to the android phone, this recovery comes with your phone. Press Vol down + home (house icon key) + power. This booted into a blue screen, the built-in recovery. Navigate with vol up/down and select with home key. This is different than the CWM recovery key, see below.
If you already have ZV9 installed, skip to Stage 2 -
Stage 2 -
Turn on your phone, connect with USB to your PC, make sure ADB is working.
Perform 10) - 12), if your phone reboot, likely you have succeeded. You are done with PC. Unplug your phone from PC, and turn off your phone
13) On your phone, boot into recovery, vol down + Home +power. It takes a few seconds. This should boot into a yellow screen, the CWM 4.0.1.5. On CWM, navigate with vol up/down, and the select key is camera key, on the side of the phone. If you press home key by mistake, it will give you a yelow icon with no reaction. Press the back key (icon curve arrow) to get back to main menu. If for any reason you back out now, either press the wrong key, or out of battery or what-not, you will not be able to get back to this CWM 4.0.1.5 as you have NOT rooted your phone. If it happened, you just have to redo 10) - 12), and you will then able to boot into this yellow menu, the CWM 4.0.1.5
While you are at the yellow menu, the CWM recovery menu, I would make a backup now before anything, and this is the backup of your stock ROM without root.
14) Now let's root the phone:...
Now the phone is rooted. Even if the phone got turned off for any reason, you should be able to reboot back into CWM. And continue with the rest of the steps.
My phone is now rooted and with recovery, running CM 7.2 IHO 07072012_MiRaGe. It is smooth like silk and has working Wifi hotspot. I also changed the lcd density from 160 to 120 to gain screen estate. pics attached. I bricked my JB phone when mod screen density.
Again, Petrah, thanks for the awesome guide, without your guide, cant change the build.prop!
bun