[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] trulyone:
Hi Folks,

I just wanted to put my experiences on the forums here in case it might help someone. I trawled through a lot of answers from all over to get the info I wanted and this is a consolidation of that effort.

This post is aimed at:

people who need to root orange razr i after JB OTA update

people who have bricked their phone after attempting the above using other methods

I bought a razr i last year from Orange in the UK. I originally tried to unlock the bootloader using the thread here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1928551

But the official way of unlocking did not work, probably because Orange didn't want people unlocking their phones (or did I just do it wrong – did other orange users have success?).

I next tried the x86 version of motofail2go by Dan Rosenberg: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=32927646

This worked fine and I was happy. Then Orange/MOTO released the OTA update for JB and my device was no longer rooted. I went back to the start and went to see if my bootloader would unlock after the update – and to my surprise – it did!

Next I went to root using this method: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/multi-platform-root-tool-for-the-motorola-razr-i/

I should mention as well I am using Debian Linux to the unlocking and rooting. This method left my phone unbootable, though I didn't think there was a problem with the method itself, it's just that the files provided are for ICS and don't work after the OTA JB update.

After some research I found the files which worked: I downloaded 91.2.26001.Orange.en.GB.zip from http://batakang.com/ftp/RAZRi/HomemadeFastboots/91.2.26001.Orange.en.GB.zip

This is the same version number as existing on my phone after JB update. After unzipping this I had the files I needed, namely: boot.img, Superuser.apk and su. I also downloaded the latest android sdk from:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html in order to get the latest fastboot and adb programs. I put all these files in the same folder along with the files from the multi-platform-root-tool from above, replacing those original files. I also copied boot.img to overwrite razr_i_boot.img and fastboot to fastboot.linux in order for the Root.sh script to work later.

Next: I connected the phone to my laptop via USB and set it up in fastboot mode. Previously it was in a boot loop, where it would display the unlocked bootloader warning and then reboot over and over again. To break out of this: hold the decrease volume button and then hold the power button for approx 10 seconds until the phone reboots and vibrates, then let go of the power button and wait 1 second for good measure before releasing the volume button. It will then boot into fastboot mode and should say "connected by USB" or something like that in yellow text.

Then, I went to the folder with all those files in my computer and issued:

$ sudo fastboot flash boot boot.img

And voilà! It booted normally, but was still not rooted. This was simply a matter of following the multi-platform-root instructions again with the replacement JB files.

So that's it. I hope this might help others. I welcome any questions, comments or queries.

Thanks to everyone who provided the files I need, especially to mattlgroff who did most of the ground work for this.