After the huge HTC One Max, HTC Desire 816 is another giant from Taiwan Smartphone Manufacturer. With the screen size of 5.5 inch, Desire 816 serve a better user experience of watching video and browsing internet. A 2600mAh battery with Snapdragon 400 makes Desire 816 a better lasting smartphone in the balance of performance and battery life. If battery life is of your concern, rooting your device is always the way to reduce battery drain by bloatware.

A special thanks to v_superuser for releasing a simple root method for HTC Desire 816. Please be reminded that rooting your device requires unlocked bootloader. In other mean, your phone is no longer under warranty by HTC. We are not responsible if anything happens after rooting your device.

Root HTC Desire 816 and Install CWM Recovery

ESSENTIAL STEP: Install HTC Sync Manager on your PC. Download here.

Step 1: Unlock bootloader of your device. Follow the guide here. Instead of HTC Butterfly S, select model “HTC One”. No worry as it proven working by v_superuser from XDA.

Step 2: Download recovery exe file from here to your PC.

Step 3: Turn off your device, and reboot to fastboot mode. Press and hold POWER + VOLUME DOWN button until you see a HBOOT menu appears. Select Fastboot in the menu.

Step 4: Connect your phone to PC via USB cable.

Step 5: Double click the downloaded recovery exe file. It will install CWM recovery on your device.

Step 6: Once installation complete, download SuperSU zip file from here to your device. Remember to place zip file in root of your sd card.

Step 7: Turn off and boot into recovery mode. Press and hold POWER + VOLUME DOWN, then select Recovery from the menu.

Step 8: Select “Install Zip from SD Card”, find the SuperSU zip file in the list.

Step 9: Select SuperSU and press POWER button to confirm.

Step 10: After flashing, reboot your device.

Step 11: On your device, download wp_mod.ko. Install ES file explorer in your device and move the downloaded wp_mod.ko file into /system/lib/modules. Change permission to 644.

Step 12: Reboot device.

Step 13: By using terminal emulator, type

su
insmod /system/lib/modules/wp_mod.ko

Step 14: Then open a file manager with root access and mount as r/w. Navigate to /system/etc and open install-recovery.sh with text editor.

Step 15: add the line insmod /system/lib/modules/wp_mod.ko to the bottom of the file.

Step 16: Finally reboot your device and enjoy the rooted HTC Desire 816.