This guide will show you how to root the HTC Desire 816 Android phone.

Disclaimer

Digital Endpoint is not responsible for rooting the Android device in any way. Before performing any of these steps make sure you back up your Android device completely. These steps are correct at the time of writing but rooting is done at your own risk at your own responsibility and Digital Endpoint is not responsible in any way.

What is needed to root the HTC Desire 816?

In order to root the HTC Desire 816 you will need the following.

• The HTC Desire 816 you wish to root
  
• A PC
  

Step 1 – Install a custom recovery

Before you can root the device it must be running a custom recovery. To do this you must first enable USB debugging on the device. We discuss how to do that here.

Once you have enabled USB Debugging we are ready to install the custom CWM recovery.

The first thing you have to do is download the file needed to install the custom recovery to your PC which you can get from here.

Save the zip file to an easy to find location on your computer such as your desktop and extract it to its own folder.

You now need to unlock the bootloader of the HTC Desire 816 before you can continue.

If you have not yet installed the USB drivers on your PC for the HTC Desire 816 and configured the Android SDK on your PC then please read the article here as this is needed for you to continue.

You now need to put the device in to HBoot mode.

1. Make sure the phone is turned off completely.
   
2. Hold the Power button and the Volume Down button together and wait for the phone to boot up.
   
3. When the Hboot menu appears choose Fastboot from the options (use Volume up and Volume down to select and Power to confirm).
   

Connect the HTC Desire 816 to your PC and then navigate to the folder where you extracted the custom recovery zip file to.

Double-click the .exe file to start the custom recovery installation process and follow the steps that appear on-screen.

Now that the phone has had a custom recovery installed we are ready to root the phone.

Step 2 – Root the phone

Let the HTC Desire 816 boot up completely and make sure it is still connected to your PC.

On your PC download the SuperSU zip file needed to root the device which you can get here. Save it to an easy to find location such as your desktop but do not extract it.

Instead copy the downloaded SuperSU zip file to the HTC Desire 816 in a convenient location such as the Downloads folder.

Once done, disconnect the phone from your PC.

It is now time to put the device in to Hboot mode again.

1. Make sure the phone is turned off completely.
   
2. Hold the Power button and the Volume Down button together and wait for the phone to boot up.
   
3. When the Hboot menu appears choose Recovery from the options (use Volume up and Volume down to select and Power to confirm).
   

With the HTC Desire 816 in recovery mode (this is why we had to install the custom recovery first) tap Install Zip from Sdcard and then tap Choose zip from Sdcard and navigate to the SuperSU zip file you copied to the device and select it.

Wait for the SuperSU zip file to be flashed to the device.

When it is done tap Reboot System Now.

When the HTC Desire 816 boots up again look in the Apps drawer and you should see SuperSU which means that the device has been successfully rooted.