[At Your Own Risk] Rooting the ASUS Transformer on stock ICS

Over the weekend my ASUS Eee Pad Transformer received an update to the much anticipated Ice Cream Sandwich. In order to upgrade I needed to remove CWM. The OTA updates are only successful if you’ve got stock recovery. I had added CWM so that I could apply root. Now I had to do without CWM, and with it root.

You can use Voodoo OTA RootKeeper to temporarily remove root, and then after the upgrade you can restore root. This worked for me as I went from Honeycomb 3.0 to 3.1, but not when going to ICS. Though many others it worked even on ICS. I’ve decided the problem is gender related.

So here I am with my nice sparkly ICS running perfectly on the pad but I’m sulking because I can’t get root. And without root I can’t use Titanium Backup, Root Explorer and AdFree. All are staple apps for me.

Join me over the break to see how to to fix this.

ShadowGun Review

ShadowGun is a brand spanking new game from the Czech Republic based Madfinger Games. With amazing graphics it threatens to push the boundaries of mobile devices as gaming consoles. While currently a Tegra 2 exclusive, I expect that this title will become more widely available eventually. The game is currently a single player narrative only; however the studio plans on eventually introducing cross-platform multi-player between iOS and Android.

Shadowgun's Title Screen

The ASUS Transformer - Android's best tablet [and why the Transformer 2 will be my next tablet too]

The unassuming ASUS Transformer, immediately
recognisable for looking nothing like an iPad

Sometimes posts just change on you. You strike out with a clear purpose, and then part way through realise your unalloyed vision has been muddied with irrelevant diversion. Those diversions are usually just a self-reproaching highlight-delete away from oblivion, but sometimes your finger pauses over the delete key, and you wonder if you've just typed something that deserves expressing. In all honesty I'm not really sure whether this post belongs to the former category or the latter, but I'm feeling self-indulgent, and this is my blog.

I started out writing a straightfoward post about the Transformer news today, and then this sentence emerged from my fingertips: "I don't know if I've mentioned it before here on the blog, but the ASUS Transformer is my Android tablet of choice". Fast forward a few minutes and I had expended a few hundred words on what was meant to be an aside about why I like the Transformer above all others in the current generation of Android tablets. Since the Transformer has been largely unlauded by the rest of the blogging world, who have tended instead to be entranced by the undeniable aesthetics of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, I thought why not post my retort on behalf of the Transformer?

If  my esoteric musings on the writing process haven't already left you cold, let me make a case for the Transformer as the top of the Android tablet pile over the break (and if you're eyes have already glazed over, head onto my next post instead to catch up with the great news today in relation to the Transformer, and the Transformer 2).