by The HungryCoder

Rooting Samsung Galaxy Pop (Mini) on Mac OSx and enabling Bangla (Bengali) support

Introduction
(you can skip this part if you are in hurry)

I was planning to root my galaxy pop for a quite long time. But it was delayed as I found all tutorials applicable for Windows. That means, I need a windows machine to root my device but I don’t have any working windows machine.

Yesterday, I planned to upgrade to Gingerbread from Froyo as some of the friends suggested claiming it improves the battery performance (honestly, so far after upgrade, I believe it really does). I read some tutorials and this also requires windows machine. So, I borrowed my brother’s laptop. After about 10 hours of efforts, I could successfully upgrade the ROM.

So, this morning, I planned to root the device and in office I tried SuperOneClick.exe with colleague’s windows machine but failed. Then I was searching Google to do so on my Mac OSx. After several tries, I could do it.

Rooting the Phone

– Download the One Click Root Utility and unzip

– Connect the device with USB cable and enable USB Debugging (Menu –> Settings –> Applications –> Development).

– Run the utility and click ‘Root me’

– It will upload the required files to the phone’s SD card and reboot the set in recovery mode.

– You will get a new screen with a list of actions. Select the second option ‘apply update from sdcard: update.zip’. You can’t use the touch screen on this interface. You can use Volume up/down button to highlight the item and hit the Home button to apply.

– It should do the required job and rooting should be successful.

However, the above method did not work for me. The archive ‘update.zip’ may not be appropriate for this device. After a few more try, I could got it working. If the above method worked for you, you can jump to next section; continue reading otherwise.

– Reboot the phone normally.

– Connect the phone to your computer as Mass Storage Device.

– Download this file

– Copy this file to SD card’s root directory

– Now run the ‘One Click Root’ utility again and click ‘Root Me’.

– It will do the same thing it did earlier and will reboot the phone in recovery mode.

– Now you will see a new item in the menu ‘apply update from sdcard: upd_1.zip’

– If you are lucky, like me, this time it would be successful.

– Reboot the phone normally

Checking & Confirming Root

Well, I was a bit suspicious whether the root was really successful or not. So, I wanted to confirm it. I believe, you do too.

– Install ‘Root Checker’ from Android Market

– Run it and click the button ‘Verify Root Access’

– If rooting was successful, it will say something like ‘Congratulations! You have root access!’

– Hit your forehead on the wall if it says you don’t have root access 😛

Installing Bangla Font

– Download a Unicode Bangla font like Solaimanlipi or something else from Ekushey.org

– Transfer the download font(s) to your mobile’s SD card via any means (USB, Bluetooth or anything). You could directly download them on your phone too using your phone’s browser.

– Install Custom Android Font Switcher from Android Market

– Run it

– Click Local Font tab

– Locate the directory where you put the fonts and click on the font. It will ask for confirmation; hit yes.

– It will reboot your phone

– You should be able to see Bangla now.

The Bangla rendering is not flawless. Some characters (like a-kar) will not render correctly. But I am happy, that I can see Bangla. I will try to fix this problem soon too.

References