Rooting Your Android Advantages and Disadvantages

Rooting Your Android Advantages and Disadvantages

Rooting an Android phone… Meaning?

Rooting an Android phone simply means to gain administrative privileges (or root access if you are from a Linux background) on the system. When you buy a new Android phone, you are just a guest user on the phone.The manufacturer has void you from certain SUPERUSER privileges. You can use the phone, just as a guest would use Windows, but you will not be able to make any changes to the system files.

However, after you have a root access over your phone, you could browse your Android root folder and make any changes to the system files on your phone. And that’d mean the ability to make all kinds of changes and install more powerful apps that you can’t use on a non-rooted phone.

We will now be talking about both merits and demerits associated with rooting an Android phone. Let us start with the brighter side: the benefits.

Benefits of Rooting an Android Phone

APPS :

After you have rooted your phone, you can run special applications that require root access on your phone. When compared to regular applications, root applications provide more features.

As these special apps can directly deal with the Android system files, they can tweak your Android in more extensive ways.For eg - you can change the system files of android mounting the file system as writable.

Running Custom ROM

One of the main reasons I rooted my phone was because I wanted to install and use custom ROMs on it.

These custom ROMs bring many teaks and performance fixes and are much more user friendly when compared to the stock firmware. They are optimized in performance and battery are updated  frequently than the stock ROMs.For eg - your can taste jelly bean OS on a Galaxy Y !!

Increasing Internal Storage

People who have low internal memory can transfer any application from internal memory to SD card after rooting their phone. There are some applications that provide the option by default. But if you want to force move an app by creating a symlink, you must use an app that only works on a rooted phone.Apps like Link2SD does the work.

Disadvantages of Rooting Your Android

Let’s take a look at the drawbacks of rooting your Android

Your Phone Might Get Bricked

Not to demotivate you here, but when I first  tried to root my  Android phone – Samsung Galaxy Y I bricked it and it was in the service center for next 15 to 20 days. No matter how good a rooting tutorial is, it’s a daunting task and if you miss out any step or flash a corrupt zip file (that’s what happened to me) you might end up with a bricked (broken) phone.

Now assuming that you are not a power user, you will have to go to your phone manufacturer’s service center and get your phone fixed. Moreover, if they come to know that the brick or semi-brick has caused because you were trying to root your phone, you might as well be charged for it.

You End up Voiding Phone’s Warranty

As soon as you root your phone, you void your phone’s warranty and if anything happens to your phone even when it’s in the warranty period, the company is going to charge you for the repairs. In some of the phones, you can un-root your phone to regain your warranty.