Yeah, I've been reading about the benefits, but I'm always wary of modifying this stuff, and one thing I can't find info on is the risks. What might the risks be in rooting my EVO?
This is a tough question to answer. Why? If you know what you're doing, the risk is low to none. In fact, never have I ever encountered anyone in this forum complain that they were bricked (completely unrecoverable). People get stuck all the time, but if you know what you're doing, you can fix it.
That's why it's important to keep reading until you feel comfortable you know what you're doing.
I'm being as honest as possible. There is only one risk, and that is bricking your phone. And it's quite hard for that to happen. You have to **** up all three of the following components of your phone:
1) bootloader
2) recovery image
3) operating system
If any one of these components is healthy, you cannot brick your phone. Here's why:
Assume you manage to corrupt your bootloader during the root process (unlikely). Your phone will still boot to the OS, since the bootloader is bypassed unless you specifically boot into it. From there, you can try again.
Assume you flashed the unlocked bootloader, but you manage to corrupt both your recovery image and your OS. You can use the bootloader's Fastboot mode to flash a good custom recovery. And from there, you can flash a healthy OS. I don't think it's even possible to break both the recovery and the OS at the same time. This is a purely hypothetical situation.
Assume you have a corrupt bootloader, a corrupt OS, but a healthy recovery image. You can boot directly into recovery and flash a healthy OS. Then, you can boot normally and re-root to fix the bootloader. Again, this is an entirely hypothetical situation.
All of these situations are extremely unlikely. The worst case situation I've seen is someone with a locked bootloader with a broken custom recovery but a working OS. In this case, they just need to try to root again.
Confused more?
