Unlock Moto 360’s Bootloader & Root It [How To]

Although It’s been quite long since the concept of smart watches came into being, but a competition was yet to start. This credit goes to Samsung, that introduced the Galaxy Gear, the very first smart watch of its own kind and kick started a new gadget war. Before the Galaxy Gear,  smart watches from Sony and some other manufacturers didn’t get the spotlight as much as the Galaxy Gear got. The original Gear ran on Android, and packed up some features that were mouth watering. This new revolution urged Google to introduce a complete new Android OS for the wearable gadgets only, and then other manufacturers followed Samsung’s footsteps and came up with their smart watches and some other wearables.

Google unveiled Android for wearables, named as Android Wear at Google I/O developer’s conference 2014, at the same time, it also shown off a round smart watch, the Moto 360. The Moto 360 eventually wins the ground when it stands in competition with its rivals like LG’s G-Watch, Samsung’s Galaxy Gear 1, 2, Gear S and Gear Fit, and now, even Apple has jumped in the competition and unveiled its Apple Watch. While playing with the Galaxy Gear and Gear Fit for a while, I was able to conclude that Samsung has done a great job, but as soon as coming across Moto 360, the watch took all of my attention. At first, Moto 360 sports a great design. The watch looks likes some premium and classic wrist watch, the metallic round frame is eye-catching. The very thing I was disappointed with, on the Galaxy Gear was its battery life, while Motorolla has learnt quite a lot from Samsung’s mainstream wearable gadget and placed a good battery inside the Moto 360.

Moto 360 runs on Android Wear, and now that Android is there, the watch becomes customizable. Any device that runs Android, can probably be rooted and it’s real potential can be unleashed by putting up the applications that require root access.  The advantage I had after rooting my Galaxy Gear was I was able to run some non-gear applications on the watch, make some tweaks, load custom recovery and other stuff. Something similar can be done here as well. You can definitely move here and there by running root applications, flashing mods and other stuff on your Moto 360 and get the maximum out of it once you’ve rooted it. Before you head towards the rooting your Moto 360, you will have to unlock the bootloader as well as you are going to flash a boot.img file in order to gain the root access, once you’ve unlocked you’re all set to perform root operations.

Unlocking the bootloader and rooting your Moto 360 might not be a tough job, but the only tough thing you will be coming across is connecting your Moto 360 to your PC. Unlike the Galaxy Gear smart watches, the Moto 360 doesn’t have a dock that let’s the users connect it with a PC. Moto 360 supports wireless charging. ADB is supported over bluetooth, but you won’t be able to issue any fastboot commands until and unless you make a connector and connect it to your PC.

Let’s go through the steps one by one and get the whole procedure done.

Early preparations:

1. This guide is only for Motorola Moto 360

Make sure that your device is exactly as mentioned above. In case you try this method on any other device, you might end up killing your device permanently.

2. Battery should be charged at least 60%!

Your device’s battery shouldn’t be weak. In case your device goes dead during the flashing process, your device may get soft bricked and you might be in need of flashing stock firmware and that will ultimately result in wiping up your data as well. So, make sure that you charge your device before you start the flashing process.

3. Install Android ADB & Fastboot and Motorola USB Drivers

Make sure that you’ve installed and setup ADB & Fastboot drivers. Here’s our quick Minimal ADB & Fastboot guide. Apart from that, you need to have the Motorola USB drivers installed on your PC as well. Find all Android USB drivers here.

4. Create a custom USB connector for your Moto 360

As mentioned above, this is going to be the hardest part. Moto 360 doesn’t support any USB connecter, it charges wireless and supports ADB over Bluetooth. But to unlock the bootloader, you need to perform Fastboot commands and that’s not possible without USB connection. Here’s a very nice method by RootJunky that will help you to create a custom USB cable for your Moto 360.

5. Disclaimer:

This is a highly custom method. We shall not be held responsible in case you end up bricking your device or any other mishap happens. Make sure that whatever you’re going to do, you’re doing at your own risk. Neither us, nor the device manufacturer should be pointed at later on.

How To Unlock Bootloader Of Your Moto 360 Now:

1. Turn off your Moto 360 completely.
2. Now turn on your Moto 360 by pressing and holding the Power Key. Keep key pressed until your Moto 360 vibrates thrice and takes you to the bootloader screen showing the bootloader version number atop.
3. Now connect your Moto 360 to your PC using the connector you made using the guide linked above. Make sure that you connect your device properly. Just in case this part goes wrong, you might end up bricking your Moto 360.
4. Now open Minimal ADB and Fastboot.exe file from your desktop.
5. Now issue the following command

   1. adb devices

6. This will enlist the devices connected to your PC in adb mode. You can verify the connection of your Moto 360 by seeing its serial number on the screen.  Once done verifying the connection, issue this command

   1. fastboot oem unlock

7. Once done, reboot your device by issuing this command

   1. fastboot reboot

8. Phewww! That’s all. You’ve unlocked your Moto 360’s bootloader successfully now.

How to Root Moto 360 Now:

1. Download KGW42Nrooted_boot.img.
2. Renamed the downloaded .img file to “Boot.img” only.
3. Now copy the renamed file to the Minimal ADB & Fastboot installation directory. This should be located under program files in your Windows drive.
4. Now open the Minimal ADB & Fastboot.exe to launch command prompt.
5. Reboot your Moto 360 into bootloader mode using the method in step 2 above.
6. Now connect your Moto 360 to your PC using the customized connector.
7. Now in the Minimal ADB & Fastboot command window, issue the following command

   1. fastboot flash boot boot.img

8. This will root your Moto 360 and it will reboot once done.
9. That’s all, you’re rooted now. Enjoy!

That’s all. In case you’re stuck with anything or you got any queries, make sure that you use the comment box below. Thank you all.

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