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You've went and rooted the phone. Now What???
Taking the step to become root on the phone is a glorious moment indeed however much like marriage its not about the wedding (that one event). It's about keeping control over what is on it and what isn't. Most have started down this process for the simple reason of getting rid of bloatware on a phone that we deem as ours. What to do with that power is totally up to the user now. No longer are you being dictated to by a corporation that thinks they know what people want but now you are being dictated to by your own imagination. Getting Root on your phone means that you can do anything from change ROMS/KERNELS to THEMEING your phone. It also opens up NAND so you can NANDROID BACKUP/RESTORE. Something many of us feel should have been given to us by this so called corporation that knows whats best for us. So now that you have taken the plunge to ROOT the phone now what to do with it.
RECOVERY – This is the NAND section of the phone. This is one of the main reasons for ROOTING for most. The ability to do a NAND BACKUP / RESTORE. A NAND BACKUP can be viewed as an image of the phones partitions. Partitions are like rooms in a bigger room. Think of a Warehouse they are generally just one big room add offices and you just partitioned your warehouse. Each Room is now separate but still part of the bigger room. So now you have a manager office, a receiving office, and a shipping office. These offices are different partitions and each has a separate function but still works with the others to make up the whole. The phone is broken into several “offices” as well the ones we need to worry about though are the “/data and /system” this is where all user interactions occur. Storing a copy of these two partitions is important if we screw up something down the road we can always come back to the backups we made of these. We should make new backups everytime we decide to change something. IMPORTANT thing to remember about NANDROIDs are that they record a moment in time. So it will restore it to that “Time” So if you update a bunch of apps after a NANDROID then you will need to updated them again if you go back in time on your phone.
ROMS – This is the part of the phone that is much like Windows for the computer. The ROM is a collection of software designed to work together to give you the best phone experience. Stock ROMS what comes on the phone has everything working the way it is supposed to so why change it? Well stock does not give you all the possibilities of the phone and it adds what we call Bloatware. Bloatware is defined as any app that you are stuck with that you don't want. You can't remove Bloatware because it is stuck into the /system partition of the phone. This partition is special as it is normally just a read only. Being ROOT allows you to make that partition writable so as to make deleting a possibility. Most custom ROMS remove the bloatware for you so that you can focus on just setting things up the way you want them.
KERNELS – This is the part of the phone that communicates between the ROM and the Hardware. Think of a KERNEL as an interpreter. Stock KERNELS clock the CPU at a safe speed however most of the stock settings are generally slower than what the CPU can handle so with some special software you can change the clock speeds to make the processor go faster or slower. You can change the voltage settings as well. Do note that its good practice to know what your doing before taking on any of these super cool functions.
THEMEING – This is strictly visual. You can change every aspect of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) You can rearrange elements and can change the phone to look completely different than it comes stock. The possibilities here are endless. Again though it is recommended that you know what your doing before doing it. Or you could mess things up real bad.
FLASHING – No this is not the same thing as perverts do Flashing a ROM, KERNEL, or THEME is done in RECOVERY. It is just a fancy term for “INSTALLING” The term FLASHING comes from HBOOTS cousin BIOS which is how you update BIOS is by “FLASHING” the newest version over the old version. Unlike INSTALLING, FLASHING writes to a physical hard area of the computer called the CMOS. FLASHING the ROM or KERNEL is very much the same on the phone. The main difference between FLASHING and INSTALLING is that FLASHING overwrites while INSTALLING writes to.
All are terms that every rooter should know. There are two basic ROMS. Corporate ROMS (Sense, Fungus, etc) and then there is AOSP (Android Open Source Project) What to install is totally up to you and what you wish to do.
Before doing any of this it is always recommended that you do a NANDROID BACKUP. This alone can save you headache and heartbreak. Getting to Recovery can be done in one of two ways. The first and IMO easiest is a soft reboot. This is done using a program that gives you the ability to reboot into recovery mode. The second method is the Hard boot. See your phone's root section for more details, as it's not quite the same for each different manufacturer
Things to keep in mind – Most of all Custom ROMS will be bloatware free but not everything you consider bloat will I consider bloat. Some things may still need to be removed by you the user. The best practice here is to FREEZE the app and not remove it. Freezing the app simply tells the ROM not to allow its use. If this causes unwanted issues you can DEFROST the app which will tell the ROM to allow its use. If a frozen app has no ill affect on the ROM after a few days then you can feel free to remove it. Also as mentioned earlier when you set up a system and NANDROID it anything after the NANDROID will have to be done again. So if you install a few apps then you will need to reinstall them after you RESTORE back to a previous setup. KERNEL tweaking is best done by those who are advanced enough to know what they are doing. Themeing can be fun but tedious as you will need to retheme your ROM with each new update. Fortunately its not as bad as it sounds but still tedious none the less.
Your imagination is your limit. Let it be Open and keep your limits open. So what should you do now that you have accomplished this amazing feat? Read, Study, Help, Build, Create, Destroy, Rearrange. What ever you decide to do, do it and remember you define how far you are willing to go.
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You've went and rooted the phone. Now What???
