The phone store guy told me that rooting isn't a one-step process but a continuing process. If you don't keep up with it, you can brick your phone. I had just gotten it and wasn't up to speed with it as it is, so I wasn't ready to push farther for details. Anybody have the scoop on that?
No, that's not true. Rooted is rooted, all it means is that you have root level access. Once you do, you've got it. Later version updates may make it more difficult to root, but they can't remove the root access you've already got. If you root at 2.2 and then upgrade to 2.3, you've still got root access in 2.3.
Second, what have you done different since rooting? I mean, how has it changed your experience with your phone? I never jailbroke my iphone, but there were tons of improvements to be made. But the iphone was a far more locked down experience, so there were more improvements
to be made.
I haven't rooted my phone, for several reasons. Even though I understand and know fully well how to back up the OS and data and know how to unroot and/or reflash the ROM (same as FDISK and reformat and reinstall Windows, essentially), which is a critical component to whether or not you should root in the first place (to keep from bricking the phone), I haven't had the desire to do much that requires rooting. I keep saying I'll get around to it, and yet here it is a year and a half later and I haven't.
The things you can do with a rooted phone, the pros of doing so, include:
1) The ability to add more home screens (say 5, from the default 3 in Android 1.5 and 1.6), but then again apps like Launcher Pro and the other Home replacements do the same thing. So do the later versions of the stock OS ROMs.
2) Tethering your 3G Internet connection to their laptop computer via USB cable, WiFi, or Bluetooth (using the phone as a modem), then again, PDANet does the same thing.
3) Installing a 3rd party ROM (or "Mod"), including a more recent version of the OS than your phone carrier has provided for the phone. To some people this is very important. To me, not so much. More important to me is that the phone work.
4) Backing up all the data and apps on the device. You can do this without rooting, it's just that you can't back up the stuff which requires root access. This is something you need to be able to do is you want to use custom ROMs, otherwise it's a non-issue.
5) Being able to apply custom themes. Many apps allow this already, it's just that with root access you can go even crazier with it. I don't find that all that compelling.
6) The ability to install any application (including those "blocked" by your phone carrier), apps that have been "banned" from the Market, and even alternatives to the Market itself. This is largely the kind of apps which will root the phone, or apps which require root access to install and run. This also includes the ability to delete any app, including the ones the carrier placed on the phone that you otherwise cannot delete. With Sprint, the NASCAR app is apparently one people want to get rid of. The Corporate e-mail is one that I'd like to get rid of. But then again, I can also just ignore it. It just ain't that big a deal to me.
7) FLAC lossless audio and other format support. This is one that some highly tout, but they are largely a bunch of idiots. FLAC is certainly better than lossy MP3, but unless you are a true audiophile and listen to audio with high end earbuds or a high end headset, you will never, and I mean
never, hear the difference. At least 90% of the people who claim to be audiophiles are not even remotely close to being one. But it sounds kewl to say you are.
8) The ability to overclock the processor. This is for the tinkerers. The phone will be faster, at the expense of battery life, of course, and is the one area which can really fry and brick your phone if you are not careful.
9) Enabling enhanced sdcard capabilities such as caching and allowing you to install and run apps on the sdcard (freeing up your internal memory). For the most part, App2SD does the same thing. There are some apps that do not allow moving to the SD card, and rooting allows you to force those apps to at least cache on the SD card, anyway, even though the apps themselves cannot be moved. If you are app-crazy and install anything and everything and then don't like it because your internal memory is full, rooting is for you. If you exercise a little self-control and delete apps you don't use, it's not a problem. Of course, being rooted allows you to delete those carrier apps that you don't want or use, too, so there is that.
The two primary downsides of rooting the phone, well, three really, are that rooting the phone will void the warranty, if the rooting process fails you will likely brick the phone (similar to a BIOS flash update failing on a computer), and having root access allows you to be stupid and do things which will brick the phone. Things like burning out the CPU because you've overclocked it with abandon, or loaded on a ROM that you shouldn't have (but if you know how to recover, that's not a problem).
One of the biggest ones, though, is that when you root the phone, then all the apps have root access, too. You know all those permissions that you need to be concerned with? Unless you know what they are and how they work, I mean
really understand them, then it might not be such a good idea to give root access to just any ol' app.
Third, how real is the possibility of bricking the phone?
It's 100% real. But it depends on what you do, and whether or not you do things that you aren't very familiar with. The one-click roots are highly unlikely to brick the phone, unless you use one that's incompatible with your particular phone (which many people have done). So just rooting the phone isn't much of a concern. It's what you do after rooting that can brick it. Like loading on a custom ROM without knowing,
for sure, how to get out of any trouble you get into (knowing how to reflash a complete OS and data backup). Or in deleting some app that is critical to the operation of the device (again, not a problem if you know how to recover).
It's not a bad idea to just go ahead and root the phone, even if that's all you ever do with it. Once rooted, it's rooted and you might want to do something later on, like deleting that NASCAR app. If you want to play with ROMs, then you'd better do your homework, and there's a lot of it to be done.
How many times have we granted “Always Allow” access to an application without fully knowing
exactly what the app was going to do? How can we tell exactly? Most people can’t, so we rely on what other users tell us, or we trust the developer. But, of course, that is not always reliable.
In many cases, but not all, these applications are open source so we can look at the source code to assess the risk. If you don't know what you're looking at when you look at the source code, then you won't be able to assess the risk, tho. Then again, with an open source application, there is a greater possibility of coming across a modified version. Even if you only allow access once, your phone could be ruined. So there's that.
But what exactly might a malicious root application do, one with root access that you have granted full permissions to? Basically anything.
We haven't seen them yet, except in a couple of instances, and those didn't require root access, but it's not hard to come up with a wide variety of evil things that a root-enabled application could do.
Replace the Gmail application with a modified version.
Replace your keyboard with a version that logs keystrokes.
Delete files such as applications or application data.
Download and attempt to install a different modified ROM.
Download and install another application that wakes up nightly to call toll-numbers.
Gain access to your Market account and make purchases on your behalf.
The list would be almost endless.
These are the risks of rooting your phone. But if you understand what you are doing, the risk is very, very low. And quite frankly, the risk is actually quite low even if you don't understand what you are doing. But it is there. If you are truly a technotard, then you probably aren't going to be rooting your phone in the first place, and that's good, because if you are a technotard you have no business touching a rooted phone. Otherwise, rooting isn't that big a deal, just as long as you don't try things out and then read about it later. Read about it first. The androidforums is a good place to start.
