Rooting the Samsung Galaxy LITE (SGH-T399)

Question

I have recently purchased a Samsung Galaxy Lite (SGH-T399). I am having trouble rooting it. It would be easy if I had a Windows PC, but I only have one Mac and one Linux PC. Instructions on how to root the phone would be helpful.

Answer 1

There is really easy ways to root your device from linux/mac using heimdall which is an open source alternative of odin PC. I will put two methods one auto root ,and an other one to root using heimdall choose the one that suite you best.

First I should say : in my opinion self rooting apps are not really secure ,since you will root blind when you have no custom recovery ,which makes it really hard to get back to a working phone if something goes wrong specially for your device ,like you may noticed on XDA there is a lot of bricked phones without solution. if you still want the auto root follow method 01 ,if you don't method 02 is for you.

Method 1: using impactor (Mac OS and linux)

1. Get Cydia impactor for your OS Mac OS X , Linux 32bit and linux 64bit
2. Depending on you OS for mac OS install the software and run it ,for linux extract the archive somewhere where you have the right to execute then open impactor.
3. a window like the figure below should appear.
   
4. Leave the window open and grab your phone ,GO to settings > developer Options > activate USB debugging also see if there is an option called Verify apps over USB if there is unchecked it.
5. Now go to settings > security and check unknown source.
6. Plug the phone to your PC.
7. On the window of impactor click on start (make sure your phone screen is on it will show an authentication pop-up for adb accept it) and wait if the process succeeded you will be asked to reboot your phone ,if not this method will not work for you go to method 02.

Method 02 : using heimdall on linux (ubuntu and it's variants)

like you said in the question :

"It would be easy if I had a Windows PC"

We will do the same method but we will use heimdall instead of Odin

Pre-required : :

• Download CWM or TWRP (both odin version choose one of your liking) and save it on your PC then extract it you will have a file named recovery.img put it somewhere safe.
• Download UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.00.zip and put is on your phone's SDcard we will need it later

in my example here I will be using ubuntu ,the method remains the same for other ubuntu variants and the same for Mac OS except for the installation part (see method 3 for info).

1. install heimdall and heimdall-frontend using this command
   

   sudo apt-get install heimdall-flash heimdall-flash-frontend

2. Once the installation is done launch heimdall-frontend
   

   sudo heimdall-frontend

   
   This is what heimdall looks like :
   

3. Power down your phone then Press and hold Volume down + Home button + power key until the warning screen appears Press Volume Up to go into download mode.

4. Now Plug your phone to PC.

5. On heimdall front end go to Utilities tab

6. click On detect ,you should read device detected on the console at the bottom.

7. Now that your device is detected we are going to get your current partitions information as a .pit file.

8. stay on Utilities tab ,click on save as then choose where to put the .pit file once done click on download

9. Now switch to Flash tab

10. Now click on Browse and choose the Pit file we saved earlier.

11. Now the Add button (on the right) should be click-able click on it.
12. click on partition name on the left ,a roll down menu should appear choose recovery.

13. Click on Browse under the partition ID (not the one under PIT !) then choose recovery.img we extracted earlier.

14. Now that we are all set , make sure the repartition box is not checked ,that the partition name is set to recovery (look at the above screen-shot) if every thing is right ,click on start at the bottom right.
15. while heimdall is flashing don't unplug your phone ,don't close heimdall ,don't open other programs ,don't touch the pc or the phone until heimdall show the message flash successful and your phone reboots ,if it doesn't click and hold power button until the phone shut down.
16. Boot into recovery (power + home + volume up) , (optional : Do a full backup might be handy in case something go wrong) then flash UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.00.zip we downloaded and putted on your phone earlier.
17. Now reboot your phone ,you are rooted and have custom recovery installed

Method 03 : On mac OS

replace the first step by this :

• Download and install heimdall and heimdall suite ,follow the rest of the steps just like ubuntu method.

References :

heimdall french ubuntu doc (couldn't find english version)

heimdall installation and compilation cyanogenmod wiki

heimdall prebuild downloads on github

heimdall source code

Answer 2

Have you tried towelroot? You can visit the towelroot website and download the apk file. Make sure to enable installation from unknown sources if it's not enabled already. Generally that option is located under Settings\Security.

Answer 3

1.Install VirtualBox on either your Mac or Linux 2. Install VirtualBox Extension Pack (on VirtualBox download page) 3. Install a Windows virtual machine of your choice 4. Enable USB 2.0 in VirtualBox for the Windows VM 5. Install Kingo andriod root inside Windows 6. Root you are welcome.

Answer 4

Even if all other ways fail, you can still root it the manual way:

1. Go to http://androidsu.com/superuser/ and download the latest su binary for your phone. (ARM, 3.1.3, I'd assume)
2. Put the downloaded zip file into the root directory of your phone's SD card.
3. Shut down the phone.
4. Boot the phone into recovery mode. On Samsung devices, this is done by holding [VOL UP]+[HOME] during boot.
5. Select "Apply update from SD card" and navigate to the zip file and confirm.
6. The SU binary is now being installed. Reboot your phone afterwards.
7. Install the app "Superuser" (com.noshufou.android.su) from the PlayStore.

Your phone should now be rooted. Test it by running the Superuser app.

Alternatively, there's this instruction from XDA.

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I cannot provide guarantee that this will work. Certain phone manufacturers take the process of rooting your phone as a void of guarantee.