Lets be honest here, you have your Nexus One, and think it is great. You show it off all of the time, but occasionally you run into an iPhone owner who brags that his phone is better because it has multi-touch support. All of this irritates you that Google decided to not activate it for the release of the Nexus One. Whats worse is that nearly all other recently released Android phones already have multi-touch support. In the end you set out to find a way to enable it on your phone, and you find out you need to Root it first. This is when you fire up the instructions below, and begin the journey:

Before we start

You need to complete a few steps before we begin to ensure you do not lose anything during this process:

1. You need to ensure you have installed the USB drivers (you can get them from Google or XDA)
2. Confirm your Nexus One is recognized by ADB (for help: CyanogenMod Wiki or XDA)
3. Be sure to backup any important data or files from your Nexus One

Step 1: Unlock the Nexus One bootloader

Before we can flash a new recovery image on the Nexus One, you will first need to unlock the bootloader. This is very simple, but will completely delete everything from your phone:

1. Power off your Nexus One, and hold the trackball down while powering it back on. This will boot into what is called fastboot. (You will see a screen with Androids on skateboards)
2. Open a command prompt on your PC, and navigate to your Android SDK tools folder.
3. Enter: ‘fastboot devices‘ and make sure your phone is recognized.
4. Enter: ‘fastboot oem unlock‘ to unlock the bootloader.
5. Use the volume keys on your Nexus One to scroll to yes and press the power button to confirm.

Step 2: Flash a new recovery image

Now we need to download and flash a new recovery image to the Nexus One:

1. Visit XDA and download the latest Amon RA’s recovery image: here
2. Save the file to your Android SDK tools folder.
3. Navigate to your Android SDK tools folder from a command prompt.
4. Enter: ‘fastboot flash recovery recovery-RA-nexus-v1.5.3.img‘ (The filename may change as the recovery image is updated)

Step 3: Flash N1 Addon from recovery mode

Now that we have installed a new recovery image on the Nexus One, lets reboot into recovery mode and flash a custom zip package. Since we wiped the phone in the previous steps you might need to enable usb debugging again to get ADB and the fastboot commands to work.

To Check: Go to Settings > Application Settings > Development > USB debugging (enable)

Lets use Cyanogen’s N1 Addon that you can get from here

1. Download the N1 addon from the link above, or any other custom .zip you want to flash.
2. Save the .zip into the root directory of your SD card.
3. Navigate to your Android SDK tools folder from a command prompt.
4. Enter: ‘adb reboot recovery‘ which will reboot your Nexus One into recovery mode.
5. Select “Flash zip from sdcard” and navigate to the .zip file you put on your SD card.
6. From here you just need to follow the instructions on the screen, and press the trackball to begin when prompted.
7. After the process is completed navigate to reboot and press the trackball again, this time to reboot your Nexus One.

That’s it, your can now download any root application you want from the Android Market. Maybe try searching for: SetCPU, Nexus One Torch, or just the term “Nexus root”.

Let us know if you have any problems in the comments below, and we will try our best to help you. You can also find support in the XDA Nexus One forums.