Advantages and Disadvantages of Rooting Android Devices

For those who buy Android devices, such as Samsung, Sony Xperia, HTC, LG, etc may may seems confuse to hear such a word of Rooting OS Android devices. I think it is oke the word may seems strange and need a little explanation. On this article i will explain a little about what is the meaning of Rooting, the advantage of it, and the disadvantage you should know before making decision of rooting the devices.

What rooting does: 
Rooting your phone does a number of things. It lets you get Superuser access to your root directory (where you can customize things like appearance or performance). It also allows you to flash(flash is rooting terms for install) a different kernel, optimized for the ROM of your choosing.

Advantages of Rooting Your Android:

Run Custom ROMs
ROMs are what I referred to earlier as the developers overtime. They create their own version of Android, a new Operating System, that customizes your smart phone experience. It can change the color of your icons, change the app dock, whether or not you have an app menu, etc. It can do basically anything. With a ROM you can uncap the full potential of your phone.

Installing Special Apps
There are a number of apps on the market that only work while rooted. Screenshot apps, overclocking apps, etc. Just by rooting you are able to do so much more in the Market.

Free 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. So those were about the merits. Nothing’s perfect and there are certain caveats associated with rooting an Android device.

Speed and performance 
Kernels are the things that tell your processor what to do, and how to do it. By changing that, you can change your processor speed and voltages. Meaning you are able to do what you love to do, only faster.

Looks
If you have the latest and greatest Android smart phone, you can't deny wanting eye-candy. It's your desire, and the reason you enjoy Android so much. When you root, you can take any imperfections out. If you think it would look better with a blue theme instead of a green one, or you want your favorite color everywhere, you can do it. If you don't like the default layout of the phone, or the styling, you can change it too. You can even make it look like an iPhone. (Though I wouldn't know why you would.)

Customization
This ties into the looks and speed and performance sections. Being able to say that no one around has the same phone as you is nice (iPhone users reading this don't know what it's like). But the moment when you do see someone with your phone, and you can still say your phone is different, is priceless. It gives people warm fuzzies inside.

Disadvantages of Rooting Your Android

Your Phone Might Get Bricked
Not to demotivate you here, but when I tried to root my first Android phone – Samsung Galaxy S – 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, but in most of the phones there’s is no going back.

Posted in: Android,Rooting