Basic Help Needed: What can be done with a rooted phone?

[NewbAndroidUser]

Hi all,

Sorry to be asking such an incredibly basic question. I've been wanting to ask this question for a LONG time, but this is the first time I'm feeling enough courage to ask such a basic question.

Is there a list of "Best benefits" of rooting a phone that I could look at?

I'm aware of the risks, but what about the positives?

Thank you for any help!!!

 

[NewbAndroidUser]

I forgot to mention:

Is there a handbook or something I could have a read of? Even if I have to pay premium money for a book that explains this?

 

[AugieTN]

In the past, I've played around with rooting on back up phones, NEVER on my primary phone. I don't know of any books on it. Rooting allows you to delete bloatware and tryout a different ROM. That's about it.

A mistake rooting a phone can leave you with a phone paper weight

 

[Hadron]

Rooting allows you to assign administrator privileges to user-installed apps (if they request them). That's it. But it means that if you can find an app that requires admin privileges to do something you can grant them. So you can give a root-capable file manager access to your system files (which allows removing system apps, for examples), or give a backup app the ability to read other apps' data (i.e. back up data as well as apps). It allows better firewalls or ad-blockers (because e.g. you can have an ad-blocker that has access to your IP tables and can block ads system-wide without having to go through a third-party VPN).

Technically a custom recovery is something different from rooting, since you can have one without rooting the phone (if you can unlock the bootloader), and indeed it's often the recovery that's used to root the ROM (it's the ROM itself that is or is not rooted, not the phone). It's the recovery that is used to install a custom ROM, and can also be used to make other system modifications (additions or replacements of system apps), as well as allowing full backups (ROM as well as data). Of course this is also why banking apps and many media apps refuse to work if they detect that the device is rooted, because this allows you to give other apps access to their data.

In my early days with Android the phones had such limitations that I used to modify them substantially (including in one case modifying the bootloader to reduce the size of the /system partition to allow more room for apps). But the devices have become sufficiently competent that I've not rooted a phone since 2017.

 

[svim]

There are any number of positives, but that's all based on your own technical skill level. Rooting allows you to do a lot of things to your phone, but don't fall for all the online babble about it being some kind of magical thing that can fix anything to your liking. If you don't know how to, and/or aren't already comfortable editing low-level processes in the Android operating system, it's easy to brick your phone.

Simply because you read about some neat 'hack' posted by some anonymous user on some obscure web page,there is no guarantee that is actually going to also work out on your particular model of phone. Android is a really, really diverse platform with countless numbers of different hardware configurations running different versions of Android that involve different variables in the firmware.

Always have a backup of your data and make sure you can readily be able to re-flash the appropriate stock firmware for your model if you do inadvertently soft-brick your phone. (If you hard-brick it however, it's game-over.)
But that's all more of just a warning, If you're really interested in rooting your phone, just be sure to do a a lot of extensive research on how first, and don't give up if you fail in the beginning, Just ref-lash and so it again.

Rooting (Android) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ocnbrze]

Hi all,

Sorry to be asking such an incredibly basic question. I've been wanting to ask this question for a LONG time, but this is the first time I'm feeling enough courage to ask such a basic question.

Is there a list of "Best benefits" of rooting a phone that I could look at?

I'm aware of the risks, but what about the positives?

Thank you for any help!!!

the benefits these days are minimal. its not quite like the old days. i have rooted many phones, but in the past. my first rooted phone was an htc evo 4g. it really unlocked the potential of that phone. i overclocked it which made the phone run faster. i flashed custom kernels which made the battery life much better. i also flashed a script that made the phone's sd card into internal storage.

but in todays phones, all of this is not necessary as most phone's chip are pretty fast. some phones you can format the sd card as internal. and most phone's have pretty good sized batteries.......so for me, the need to root is not there.

also keep in mind that some apps....like banking apps, will not work on rooted phones.

I forgot to mention:

Is there a handbook or something I could have a read of? Even if I have to pay premium money for a book that explains this?

BEFORE YOU ROOT READ THIS!

If you're thinking about rooting your phone (for whatever reason), there are several vital things you need to know. One of these is called the nandroid backup. A nandroid is your lifesaver... it takes a snapshot image of the device's entire current state, as it is right then, and saves it in a...

androidforums.com

Rooting Best Practices

. If you are new to rooting, you might want to be aware of some general guidelines for various root-related activities that might help you avoid some trouble along the way. - Have a fall-back / recovery plan before taking any "scary" (risky) action. In other words, know what steps you'll need...

androidforums.com

these are pretty old threads, but the concepts and terminology are still the same.

also do your research on rooting. not all phones can be rooted. and not all phone's have the same rooting proceess. i would first go to XDA Forums and see if there is a development forum for your device. also check to see how active it is. if there is no forum for your device, then there is no community to back the phone. just remember that no devs=no fun. also check to see if there is a custom recovery, mainly TWRP. if you can root, but there is no twrp, I would seriously advice on not rooting the device. the #1 tool for root users is a custom recovery which is used for flashing custom roms and making nandroid backups.

what phone do you have? and out of curiosity, why do you want to root?