Root Experienced user about to get new EVO, wandering if I should root/get new battery from the start

[Mountaineer]

My old Evo got stolen early in December and a new one is in the mail for me right now. I'm thinking that since I have a fresh new device, it may be a good opportunity to fix problems I had with my old phone before they have a chance to appear on my new phone. My primary ambitions are: Extending battery, increasing memory, and enabling wifi.

I never rooted my old phone but at this point (I don't even have the new one yet) rooting appeals to me mostly for the wifi and getting rid of bloatware to preserve battery (by the way, I read recently that you can delete the Sprintzone app now - could any of you verify that or can you delete additional stupid apps like Sprinttv, Football, and Nascar?) from the outset. Does getting rid of all those programs really help significantly? I would almost always find something unnecessarily running in the background, seemingly at random, like one program just launches another, even if I didn't have them set to sync or launch on startup or whatever. I would check the app manager every chance I could get to kill stock apps, and they were almost always there. If that really helps as much as I'd like, then I will resist the urge to get one of those 3500mah Seido batteries.

Also, I never tethered my old phone or used wifi because I didn't have a computer at that time (my pc crashed the day before I got my Evo! Luckily the Evo served as my computer after that!). I do have a computer now - an old MacBook, so tethering is essential. This is the other primary reason I want to root. This MacBook is old and leaves a lot to be desired, how would that effect my rooting options? Does rooting and tethering require me to install any drivers for my computer? If I carried out the rooting process on my Mom's Windows 7 machine, would that interfere with how the phone interacts with my Mac?

Also, I'm looking to expand to a 32gb sd card. Is it a bad idea to insert a 32gb memory card right of the bat, before you even turn the phone on?

Will Sprint insurance cover my phone if I root it and it bricks?

I know this is a whole lot to answer, but if anyone could help I'd appreciate it. I've been almost 2 months without my Evo and I'm just really pumped and want to max this one out and see this fresh start as a chance to take advantage of it.

 

[akazabam]

Sorry to hear about your previous Evo. Glad you're getting a new one . Since you've already had an Evo, it sounds like you're ready to start doing things that require rooting. It helps that you already know what you want.

1) You can, indeed, remove sprintzone. The only *normal* functionality it breaks when removed is the ability to dial *2. Big loss... You can also remove sprint tv, and all the other stuff you mentioned. See the Rooting for Dummies guide for a list of safe bloatware to remove. Once you've rooted, however, you can flash a custom ROM. Most custom ROMs have a good deal of bloatware already removed, with the option re-add whatever you want. The thing is, you *might* notice some benefits to remove this stuff, but it's more about removing the clutter than it is helping battery life. Android isn't like windows. Just because an app looks like it's running doesn't mean it's active. If it's not doing anything, it's not using any battery life. If you try to kill them, you just make it worse, as they'll start back up, using system resources. So, remove them to get rid of the clutter, but don't expect a huge increase in battery life. It could potentially help performance by freeing up some RAM, but again, not a whole lot. That being said, one of the huge benefits of rooting is the ability to remove this junk, so by all means, go for it. You can use titanium backup to freeze bloatware, which is the safest way. You can also use root explorer, or something similar, to rename the exensions from .apk to .bak on whatever you want in /system/app. I don't recommend you just remove stuff from there. You can, but if you remove something you shouldn't have, you'll make it harder on yourself if you need to restore it. Just be smart about what you remove, and how.

2) Once you've rooted, you can use an app called android wifi tether. It will turn your phone into a fully functional wifi hotspot. The client devices do not need any drivers. You can connect to it like you would any wifi access point. It doesn't matter what OS was used to root the phone.

3) You can use a 32 GB card right off the bat if you like, but it might be a good idea to boot up at least once beforehand, then copy the existing contents of the 8 GB card to the 32 GB card.

4) This is kind of a hard question to answer. Just be smart about what you do. Just rooting the phone is extermely unlikely to result in bricking the phone.

As for extending your battery life, if you're experiencing unusual battery drain, there are a great many things you can look at, in which case, I'll direct you to some useful threads. Otherwise, once you've rooted, you can look into using combinations of ROMs (not going to make that much of a differences), kernels, and setcpu. Once you get to that point, you can do some more research on that, and you can always feel free to ask more questions.

 

[Mountaineer]

Thanks a lot. Do you think I should root before adding all my contacts and basic configurations?

 

[akazabam]

Thanks a lot. Do you think I should root before adding all my contacts and basic configurations?

It's probably a smart idea to root first, just in case you need to wipe as a part of rooting.