Seems like a subject that has come up a lot lately. It is a very personal choice with advantages and disadvantages.
I view root is a luxury primarily to make your phone "better" (more convenient to use, exactly the way you like it - see examples in the "advantages" I have listed below) at a possible reduction in security and possibility to bork your phone if you go too far without being careful (see "disadvantages") below:
Advantages (Examples of what I do with root)
1 – Afwall+. Block apps from accessing the internet when they have no business accessing the internet. Improves security by limiting ability for apps to transmit info about you to the outside world. Also sometimes is successful in limiting ads within app… sometimes the app will malfunction or complain as a result but it’s easy to identify and fix. Improves security. Saves battery.
2 – Adaway. Block ad serving addresses to limit ads within browsers and some apps.
Both 1 and 2 work by modifying built in Android tables (iptables for afwall and hosts table for adaway) so there is no overhead and no hit to performance…they’ll make your phone run better and use less battery.
3 – Xposed. A large variety of customizations. To my mind it’s like letting you pick and choose what you want from a ROM. Some of my favirotes:
3A – XuiMod includes “battery bar on top” which shows a (customizeable) strip across my notification bar that indicates at a glance how full the battery is.
3B – Notification clean – let’s me eliminate certain notifications from an app without eliminating all notifications. Among other things I used it to get rid of the useless wifi connected notification on my notification shade.
3C – Swype Tweaks – replace the swipe voice service with google voice service
3D – Youtube Adaway - works sometimes
3E – AppOpsXposed – gives me the AppOps permission manager (which was available in 4.3, deleted from Android in 4.4 but this brings it back)
3F – BootManager – prevent certain apps from starting at boot. Primarily to speed up the boot process
3G – Complete Action Plus – customize your choice of apps at share commands.
3H – App settings. Can change the behavior of apps. Make them always resident (so you can get rid of the notification that some apps use as a hook to keep them always resident). Change Font size. Keep Screen on while app loaded. Make the notifications insistent (keep on notifying until you acknowledge…similar to alarm behavior…I think it lasts for minute) or ongoing (permament…can’t be cleared with clear button and can’t be swiped away but can usually be tapped away). Remove from recents (for example swipepad and my launcher are never apps I want to show in recents), Orientation (landscape, portrait etc).
3I – Xprivacy – Cadillac of privacy managers but a little difficult to use. I’ve left it disabled for awhile.
3J/3K – Xblast and Wanam (I lump them together because they have similar features and I forget which does which) – Customize your notification area appearance and your notification shade appearance – remove carrier label and put in your own custom text if you like. Wanam - Adjust which apps are presented within the Samsung multi-tasking function (splits the screen into two windows to view both apps at same time), adjust notification light behavior (which apps trigger which color and flashing or not etc), Wanam - phone tweaks to allow recording. 4-way reboot menu including soft-reboot (restart UI only… faster than normal boot), boot into recovery (for quick easy clear cache), also includes a screen recording option. Wanam – volume up keys move cursor forward/backward one space while keyboard is active (fantastic feature to avoid having to fine select cursor position with your fingers)
4 Titanium backup. I use it primarily to freeze bloatware that shows up in my running services. And that certainly can improve performance as the phone gets more apps installed that require running services… sooner or later memory will become a big factor in performance. You may have heard advice “free memory is wasted memory’. That advice accurately reflects how we should view cached apps (leave them alone because they don’t hurt anything and can help) but it doesn’t reflect how we should think about running services memory which has a higher priority than most other memory.
5 – Let’s you do even more with Tasker.
5A – I have a Tasker shortcut that initiates Google Keep voice note. The shortcut is launched with one gesture from anywhere in my phone using swipepad. Google Keep voice note is unique in that it captures BOTH transcription and recording (transcription is handy since I can read it and share it… recording is handy in case transcription got garbled). That is an amazingly useful tool for notes on the go (think driving) since you just initiate the recording and say what you want to say (you don’t have to watch to make sure it is properly transcribed, because you can always listen later). That’s what I want when I’m on the go (maybe driving) making a quick voice note of something that popped into my head. The root is needed in order to initiate recording by emulating a tap at the proper location on the screen because google in their infinite wisdom does not provide any shortcut to this function.
5B – One tap does everything needed to set up my phone for hotspot / tethering (turn data on, turn firewall off, turn hot-spot function on (the last item is done through secure settings..I think it needs root).
5C - I have my own personalized pin-unlock function, built in Tasker to replaces the stock one. Does everything the stock one does, but the time required for the screen to lock varies depending on my location and there is no "swipe" involved (for some oddball reason Samsung forces you to swipe to unlock when you have pin unlock enabled, which seems pointless to me).
There's a lot more I do with root, Especially Tasker and xposed, lots of small tweaks that aren't earthshaking by themselves but make my phone exactly the way I like it. But I don't think it would interest anyone for me to keep going on further about how I customize my phone with root tools.
#6 - Security - note some of these things above can improve security (firewall, permission manager etc). Also I think advanced users like
@EarlyMon may do a lot more to monitor what is going on with their phone and protect as needed. Root gives more tools to do these things.
1 - I think the biggest disadvantages do come in security/protection.
#1.1 – as mentioned above, you can’t take carrier updates after root. That means you may not get the newest patches quickly or ever.; Depending on your device you can often update to newer “stock” rooted firmware using a flashing process (not OTA update) but it will be delayed and it will take some effort to do the backups and the flashing. This is probably the biggest among these three concerns.
#1.2 – Every app that you grant root access has
huge (potentially almost unlimited) access to your phone, so extra vigilance is required to only grant root access to apps that are very reputable apps (preferably open source).
#1.3 - Even if you only use apps that are open source and reputable, there may be some danger simply from the fact that you have created a new doorway into the phone and the key is being passed around. We
think that key is being handled very carefully and precisely, but there is some unknowns (unknown to to me at least):
1.3A The method you use to achieve root (depends on device, some have very limited options). Some of them are known nasty (Kingroot). Others are widely used, so we assume they're good but there is a certain level of trust required.
1.3B The superuser app that is supposed to control root access. Does it do its job perfectly... is there a backdoor.
1.3C Can a legitimate root app be hijacked by some other app to use its access. I'm not a security expert but it seems that most of the exploits involve tapping into permissions/access granted by the system for one purpose and using them for a different purpose.
1.3C1 Careful use of su app to avoid blanket permanent root permission and instead request user approval frequently may help you recognize if root access is being abused for an unintended purpose.
2. Also if you are not being careful about what you do, it’s easy to bork your phone when you get into things like moving/changing files in protected areas or flashing roms. Doing backups and doing your homework before altering things are good ideas.
