Root: CID, SuperCID – what is it, how can you get it?
In the root realm much you may have heard of a CID and the subsequent superhero version the SuperCID and wondered “what is that?”
In the HTC rooting world, and probably further out than that, CID stands for Carrier ID. That is a setting that basically restricts the phone to what firmware it can load.
For example if you’re on T-Mobile you shouldn’t be able to flash Sprint firmware unless they forgot to check for CID in their RUU. If you’re in the US you shouldn’t be flashing Russian firmware, etc.
There are two reasons that you might want to change your CID. The first is if you switch carriers, and the second is if you want another carrier’s updated ROM and firmware.
Some carriers are slowpokes when it comes to getting good software out of the gates. Some developers phones have firmware that fixes mistakes months before it makes it out to you.
Either way, a prerequisite for changing the CID or setting a SuperCID is that you have S-OFF, which you obtain with the Sunshine S-OFF tool. Yes it works. No I don’t make commision off of it.
You can either set a CID to a different carrier, which you’ll have to determine the code for (example I know off the top of my head: Sprint’s CID is spcs_001, ) – this will allow you to flash Sprint stuff on an HTC. Or alternately you can set the SuperCID of eight 1’s “11111111” and now your phone will flash any carrier, any region.
You already have ADB/Fastboot drivers installed if rooted and S-OFF. The rest is pretty simple.
Reboot your phone into download mode
Read your current CID
- fastboot oem readcid
Write that down, you might need it some day if you want to change back to it.
Write a new CID
- fastboot oem writecid whateveryou’rewriting
the “whateveryou’rewriting” could be spcs_001, TELST001, or any cid. Should you want it to be a SuperCID, put 11111111 after writecid. That’s eight ones. Not seveo ones. Eight.
Make it a Sprint phone: fastboot oem writecid spcs_001
Make it a SuperCID: fastboot oem writecid 11111111
Verify afterward that it took
After you’ve written read the current CID again to verify it took. Congrats! You’re now something else.
Credits – while we’ve done this article in the past for older phones, and a few versions since, those days were in the wild free days when S-OFF could be done with a paperclip and humming a tune about a tree and CIDs were mostly useless because the phones we were working on were locked and CDMA only. I used this guide to verify everything on the HTC 10.
