Why You Should Root Your Android Phone

Benefits of Rooting an Android Phone

Anyone who owns an Android phone already knows that Google’s operating system provides a tremendous amount of freedom right out of the box. If you want to take full advantage of your device, though, your best option is to root it.  (“Rooting” is the process of unlocking root permissions on your phone, like jailbreaking an iPhone or using the sudo command in Linux.)

Rooting your phone gives you unparalleled access to every aspect of your device. It allows you to download tons of root-only applications, push your hardware to new heights, and on some devices even flash different, customized versions of Android. So what are some of the advantages of gaining root access?

Access to New Versions of Android

Non-root users are at the mercy of phone manufacturers and wireless carriers when a new version of Android rolls out. Relatively new phones like the Motorola Droid still don’t have a scheduled release date for Android 2.2. Users of phones that include a custom interface like the HTC Incredible or EVO 4G are looking at an even longer wait while the manufacturer integrates their UI into Android. If you’re using an older phone like the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) you’ll probably never see an official release of Froyo.

Meanwhile, root Android users have had access to 2.2 for more than a month. Stock versions of Froyo have been available for a while, and the popular custom ROM CyanogenMod recently made its first release candidate version available. There’s no wondering when you will see an official release for your device, if at all. As soon as someone compiles and releases a version for your phone you can download and install it.

Breathe New Life Into Your Aging Device

Even though it was released just last November, the Motorola Droid is starting to show its age. It’s 550MHz processor just can’t stand up to the 1GHz processors phones are packing today, much less with whatever the future holds. If you have root access, though, there’s something you can do about that.

Thanks to an awesome application called SetCPU, you can easily overclock the CPU to give you a little extra power. Even better, SetCPU dynamically clocks your processor. If it’s idle the CPU only runs at 125MHz. Once it needs the extra power it cranks the CPU up to whatever you set the max at.

The Droid can be stably overclocked to 800MHz, and can even go higher if you want to risk it. I’ve found that 800MHz offers plenty of juice without sacrificing much in the way of heat or battery life.

Access Apps Only Available to Root Users

Along with the aforementioned SetCPU, there are loads of excellent root only applications. ROM Manager makes it easy to flash Custom ROMs to your phone. It takes care of the entire process for you, including downloading the ROM, restarting your phone, and flashing it. Before you wipe your phone’s memory you can backup all of your applications with one click using Titanium Backup. Once your new ROM is flashed you can reload them with another click.

On a non-rooted phone the process to take screenshots is pretty convoluted. It involves downloading the Android SDK and running the DDMS, which isn’t very intuitive. On a rooted phone you can take your pick from several screenshot apps that can do it directly in Android.

ASTRO is a very nice file manager, but with root access you can do so much more. Root Explorer comes with a SQLite Viewer, which will come in handy now that you have access to the /data/data folder on the SD Card.

This partial list only scratches the surface of root applications. With a little looking around you can find much, much more.

Use Features Not Available In Stock Android

With custom ROMs come tons of features not available to stock Android users. The previously mentioned CyanogenMod comes packed with extras. FLAC support, installing apps to the SD Card without Froyo, and full 360 degree orientation changing are just a few of the features that CyanogenMod has to offer. If you want to, you can even pair a Bluetooth mouse with your phone and use it for navigation.

With all of these advantages, why isn’t everyone rooting their phone? Unfortunately, rooting does have a few downsides.

So, you are in a dilemma if you should root your new and expensive Android phone. There might be many questions popping in your mind like what is rooting exactly..what are the benefits ofrooting.. any disadvantages of going through with this process? Well, we’ll take these up in our post today and try to answer them.

We’ll start by talking about the most basic question – what does it mean when one says he should/should not root his Android? Let’s see.

Run Special Applications

After you have rooted your phone, you can run special applications that require root access on your phone. When compared to regular applications, root applications provide more features.

As these special apps can directly deal with the Android system files, they can tweak your Android in more extensive ways. For example, you can uninstall multiple applications silentlyafter you have root access using eUninstall.

Run Custom ROMs

One of the main reasons I rooted my phone was because I wanted to install and use custom ROMs on it.

These custom ROMs bring many teaks and performance fixes and are much more user friendly when compared to the stock ones. They are optimized in performance and battery are updatedmore frequently than the stock ROMs.

Free Internal Storage

People who have low internal memory can transfer any application from internal memory to SD card after rooting their phone. There are some applications that provide the option by default. But if you want to force move an app by creating a symlink, you must use an app that only works on a rooted phone.

So those were about the merits. Nothing’s perfect and there are certain caveats associated with rooting an Android device.

Disadvantages of Rooting Your Android

So, let’s take a look at the demerits of rooting your Android.

Your Phone Might Get Bricked

Not to demotivate you here, but when I tried to root my first Android phone – Samsung Galaxy S – I bricked it and it was in the service center for next 15 to 20 days. No matter how good a rooting tutorial is, it’s a daunting task and if you miss out any step or flash a corrupt zip file (that’s what happened to me) you might end up with a bricked (broken) phone.

Now assuming that you are not a power user, you will have to go to your phone manufacturer’s service center and get your phone fixed. Moreover, if they come to know that the brick or semi-brick has caused because you were trying to root your phone, you might as well be charged for it.

You End up Voiding Phone’s Warranty

As soon as you root your phone, you void your phone’s warranty and if anything happens to your phone even when it’s in the warranty period, the company is going to charge you for the repairs. In some of the phones, you can un-root your phone, but in most of the phones there’s is no going back.

Conclusion

So, you’ve been acquainted and warned. If you think that rooting the phone to run special applications and custom ROM is worth is, go ahead. If you think it’s not worth the hassle, stay put. At the end of the day, it’s depends on your usage and what you want your phone to do for you. Of course, proceeding with caution no matter how great an expert you think you are is always advisable.

The bricking incident never stopped me from rooting my phone again. What about you? Are you going to root your Android phone?