Geohot's Towelroot v1 Debuts One-Click Rooting on Android for Galaxy S5, Nexus 5 and Others

Geohot (aka George Hotz) is back into spotlight with the release of a new rooting tool called Towelroot for Samsung Galaxy S5 (Verizon and AT&T) and other Android devices.

Before his untimely exit from the jailbreak scene, Geohot was an iconic name in the jailbreak community and was known for his infamous hacking exploits with PlayStations 3 (PS3) console and several ventures into the iPhone jailbreaking domain.

Geohot's latest venture into Android domain brings a new lease of life for the discerning geeks in the Android community, as Towelroot brings an easy, yet efficient way of rooting (aka make it ra1n) your device with locked bootloaders.

For instance, Verizon and AT&T lock the bootloaders on their carrier branded devices such as the Galaxy S5 and hence, it becomes imperative to root the device before installing third-party apps or software on it.

Jeff Benjamin at iDownloadblog reports that he has already tested the rooting tool to be working fine and it reminded him of Hotz's addictive jailbreak tools of the past.

As Jeff notes, Towelroot is a simple APK that can be downloaded on supporting Samsung hardware via towelroot.com and the rooting procedure should be familiar to those who have used Hotz's tools before.

List of Compatible Devices

Here is the list of devices supported by Towelroot so far:

• AT&T Galaxy S5
• Verizon Galaxy S5
• Galaxy S4 Active
• Nexus 5
• AT&T Galaxy Note 3
• Verizon Galaxy Note 3

Here is how you root your Galaxy S5 in one-click with Towelroot:

Step 1: Navigate to towelroot.com on your Galaxy S5 and tap the Towelroot (lambda) image in the centre of the page to start downloading. A warning message saying: "the .apk file type could harm your device" will appear on screen. Just hit OK to continue.

Step 2: Wait for the "Starting download" message to disappear from the screen and then swipe down on the status bar to bring up notifications list and finally tap tr.apk download to open Towelroot.

Step 3: When the install screen shows up, just tap the Install button in the bottom-right hand corner. Now, you will receive another warning message saying that Towelroot "contains code that attempts to bypass Android's security". Just hit Install anyway after selecting the checkbox: "I understand and still want to install it".

Step 4: Once the Towelroot installation completes, tap the Open button in the bottom right-hand corner.

Step 5: After launching Towelroot app, you will see a big button reading "make it ra1n" which works very similar to blackra1n jailbreak tool just like old days. Now just hit the button and Towelroot will force a device reboot.

Step 6: After the device reboots to homescreen your phone will be rooted with its bootloader unlocked.

You can now enjoy installing all kinds of third-party apps and software on your phone without restrictions.

For further assistance, check out the video tutorial below: