[Android General] xplorr:
When my new Cubot X16 arrived, I was quite excited. It’s a great phone I must admit. After one day of exploring, I decided to root the phone using the method described here: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=64093232&postcount=8

However this method did not succeed on my phone, possibly because I did an OTA update to the latest firmware. After installing SuperSU, my phone boot-looped forever. So I had to remove SuperSU within TWRP using this method: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=63615067

Because I only need root to stop ads, I decided another approach without root access. And it works!

I used TWRP recovery (which also enables you to backup your phone’s ROM).

So here is the method, which may work on most MTK phones and possibly others too.

The first part is the same as http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=64093232&postcount=8

1)	Things you need (i did it with windows 10 x64):

•	TWRP recovery file from https://cloud.mail.ru/public/6AL2/3P8rxeavd

•	Flash tool "SP Flash tool" (google for the latest version)

•	USB Driver for Android/MTK (e.g. from http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=53854405) there are a few driver-packages in the file; "New inst. win 7&8x64" worked for me; maybe you have to try another one)

•	A good hosts file for blocking Ads. Copied to your phone’s memory. There are many to be found. Hard to say which is the best. Watch out that it is in Unix format, not in Windows format! Some suggestions:

a.	http://hosts-file.net/.\ad_servers.txt

b.	http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=0&mimetype=plaintext

c.	http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt

d.	http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.txt

e.	https://github.com/Free-Software-for-Android/AdAway/wiki/hostssources​

•	Backup your old /system/etc/hosts file somewhere safe, in case you need/want to restore it!​

2)	Install the drivers (if you have none installed!); Download the Flashtool and the recovery-file (and unzip it); Inside the zip you will find a scatter-file and revovery.img

3)	Start the Flashtool as admin and go to the download window. Click at "Download-Action" and choose the file "MTK_AllInOne_Da.bin" (comes together with the flash tool). Click at "Scatter-loading" and choose "MT6735_Android_scatter.txt" from the unpacked recovery zip (Important: if you have another phone, please find the correct scatter file! You can also use Mtk_Droid_Tool_v2.5.3 to generate a scatter file for your phone). The section below should now be filled with the recovery-file, only the recovery-checkbox should be ticked (otherwise you may loose your smartphone-data)! Choose "Download only" from the dropdown-menu.

4)	Connect your phone to the computer (just normal booted, no special recovery- or download-mode). Click at Download in the Flashtool. The application is now ready to install the recovery. Now reboot your phone via the normal power-menu. The Download should start automatically, when the phone reboots. When the download was completed successfully, a green snag should appear in the flash tool. You can now disconnect your phone.

5)	Now let’s test your new recovery: Restart you phone holding the Power & Vol+ buttons. If you have a normal reboot while holding these buttons, you have to release them for a short period of time after the boot-screen appears. As soon as the screen lights up, you can release the buttons and you are now entering recovery (first time you have to allow the recovery to change your system at first).

6)	You can now take a system backup (or more)

7)	Mount the system partition (Mount and tick system)

8)	Start TWRP File manager and copy the previously downloaded hosts file to /system/etc/hosts

9)	Reboot normally and your phone runs Adfree​

Ps. Some users report that their phone generates a “corrupted system” message while booting (not so on mine). This may be due to the fact that the system does a checksum and detect that the system partition was “tampered” (but no problem we only changed the hosts file).

Once in a while you may have to update the hosts file. Download a new hosts file and reboot in TWRP and repeat the last 3 steps above (takes only 5 minutes).

Note that a bigger hosts file may slowdown lookups, but I did not see any slowing down. As a matter of fact AdAway uses the same method of replacing the hosts-file (on a rooted phone)

Imortant: You can still use Android Pay, since your phone was not rooted! Some other apps may also refuse duty when your phone is rooted.

Ps. Alternatively, you may prefer to replace the hosts file using ADB v1.4.3 (you can find a stripped version without installing the full Android development environment at: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2588979)

Copy the original hosts file from phone to pc:

adb pull /system/etc/hosts

Edit the hosts file, and add your own ads blocking records:

adb push hosts /system/etc/
adb shell chmod 644 /system/etc/hosts