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I just discovered about the command adb push and adb pull which supposedly lets people push and pull data from within the internal memory. Now my question is, can this be used on non-rooted phones? For example, i want to change the default camera shutter sound found on /system/media/audio/camera/, can I use adb to push and pull the audio files? And also, is this an act of rooting that could void my warranty? The main reason why I'm holding back on rooting was because I still had a full year before my warranty runs out.

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ADB commands work without root. However the /data partition is only accessible by rooted users* and while /system can be read by anyone, it's a read-only partition and root is needed to remount it as writable.

*There's one exception. The/data/local folder is accessible by non-root users too. This folder is primarily used for temporary like when you install an app via ADB.
The only practical use for this folder is that you can use a custom bootanimation by pushing a bootanimation zip file here.

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But how can this guy pull off replacing his not-rooted phone's boot animation? youtube.com/watch?v=79F7hZkui6U (that's a tutorial) – Propeller May 9 '12 at 7:36
@Shedo it seems that folder is exempt from this. Updated answer. – Richard Borcsik May 9 '12 at 8:22
While adb does work without rooting - why are the pushed files owned by root? This seems to imply that adb is capable of doing more - even without rooting. – Nils May 12 at 21:32

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