Droid 4 root available after post-root bounty experiment fails

It's out and it's rooted: the Verizon Motorola Droid 4, the first LTE device with a QWERTY keyboard. It was rooted on the day of release, by noted security researcher Dan Rosenberg, which in and of itself isn't news: roots on the day of release aren't uncommon, but his request for payment caused an uproar.

We've seem "bounties" requested before a root, but not usually after root. In Rosenberg's case, he requested a $500 bounty before releasing the root, but only $200 would be for himself (for a Droid 4 of his own). The rest he would donate to charity.

After the uproar that ensued, he decided to donate all $500 to the American Red Cross, and has released the root, as well.

Honestly, we are not averse to seeing developer compensated for their hard work, including rooting a device this quickly. Root allows access to a number of features on Android, including the ability to use additional functionality in apps such as JuiceDefender and Titanium Backup.

It's also the first step to installing a custom ROM. You can find the root (Windows) here. Put your Droid 4 into USB debugging mode, connect it to your PC, ensure you have the latest Motorola drivers installed, extract the entire zip file, and execute “run.bat."