The Galaxy Tab 10.1 hasn't even been in our hands more than 12 hours, but it has already been rooted. Turns out Samsung left absolutely no protection on the device, and rooting it is even easier than rooting a XOOM, and that says a lot (the XOOM was meant to be easily unlocked and rooted).

For comparison, the XOOM root requires fast oem unlock and data wipe, while the Galaxy Tab 10.1 root process is as simple as mounting the file system for writing and copying su and SuperUser.apk to it, all of which is packaged into a nice flashable zip file. It could only get easier with a one-click auto-rooter, but we have the next best thing here.

All credit for this easy as pie hack goes to @_mrbirdman_ and his crew.

The root process took me about 15 minutes, 99% of which was taken up by downloading the Samsung Kies application, which installs the drivers so that my Windows PC's adb can see the tablet and communicate to it.

Instructions

Download the Android SDK and make sure you can execute adb commands. If you need help, Google around - there are plenty of guides on adb usage. If you're on Windows, download and install the Samsung Kies application, which adds the necessary drivers to your machine. Download Samsung_Galaxy_Tab_10.1_root.zip from our mirror and put it somewhere on your computer. Open up a cmd prompt and type in

adb push Samsung_Galaxy_Tab_10.1_root.zip /sdcard/Samsung_Galaxy_Tab_10.1_root.zip

adb reboot recovery You should now be in recovery. Use the arrow keys to move up and down, and the Power key to select. Select "apply update from /sdcard" and then apply the zip that you copied above. You're rooted!

Here is the whole process as I've done it a few minutes ago:

A few pictures of SuperUser permissions and the Root Checker app verifying root:

And finally, a successful screenshot taken using the Screenshot ER app that can take screenshots on rooted Honeycomb tablets:

Major points to Samsung and the Tab 10.1 in my book.

Source: AllDroid via @_mrbirdman_