Even a newbie of Android would always hear the word “root”, seems like it is a very common activity for Android users. Generally speaking rooting is not difficult to understand. Rooting means the user gets the administration authority and has privilege to do almost any operations. You can modify the system as much as you want. But for many people, they don’t have a clear knowledge of rooting. What can I do after rooting? Would it damage the device? This article lists brief pros and cons of rooting. You will get to know what rooting is and decide whether to root your device.
Pros
1. Customize your device freely
This is the main reason why many people like rooting. The original Android UI isn’t beautiful enough or easy to use. Although many cellphone manufactures have developed their own UI such as HTC Sense, Samsung TouchWiz, MotoBlur, Sony Xperia. But they still can’t satisfy user’s various requirements. So why not customize phone by ourself? Due to the open source feature of Android, you can find thousands of third-party themes, widgets, ROMs on the internet. Once get rooted, your Android device could install these amazing stuff and experience some fantastic features. Here I recommend you the Cyaongenmod ROM. They all provide various options for both newbies and veterans.
2. Backup and modify data
On a rooted device almost all apps and data can be accessed. You can easily backup any apps you want and transfer them to another device without losing your current data. Most people prefer to crack games by modifying the game data. You can change your game progress, get a large number of gamegold, unlock new competition and character. Just like cracking games on PC! But I suggest you not do this often as it reduces game difficulty sharply and make you get tired of games rapidly.
3. Remove native applications
Many mobile telecom carriers such as Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T like bundle some software in cellphones. In most cases these software are of little use but they keep running in background and pop up some annoying notifications and ads time and again. Anyone would get crazy about these software, or rather, malware. As these bundled software are integrated into the system, you can’t delete them easily. At this point, you need to root your device and get administrative privileges. Then you can remove these bothersome stuff permanently with root explorer or any other system tools.
4. Processor Overclock
Even though the processor frequency of major Android devices has reached at least 1.2 GHz, which is enough for daily use, someone still think it’s not perfect as they want better performance in high quality game and HD video. Overclock seems to be a common choice. Usually you need an app to do this and it requires an administration authority which means you must root your device first.
Cons
1. Easy to get bricked
Rooting is not a simple job like setting your ringtone or adding a new contact. It really needs patience and experience. Before rooting you’d better read some tutorials and remember some important steps and common errors. But honestly speaking, for newbies it’s very impossible to get the device bricked in rooting – which means your device gets in black screen and doesn't respond. Unfortunately there is no universal solution for bricking as it may depend on how you operate the rooting process and which kind of your device is (devices of different manufactures differ in rooting). Once your device gets bricked and you can’t solve it yourself, all you can do is sending it to the after-sale service site.
2. May lose warranty service
Some manufactures have a rule that rooting device may lose warranty. They can check out if you had modified the system so it won’t work even you flash the original ROM. For veterans, they may not care about the warranty as in their view cellphone is used for study or rather, tossing. But if you are not confident with your rooting technique or you are a careless people, you’d better not root your device.
3. System instability and security
In fact instability and security are the main reasons why manufactures don’t open administration authority. Rooting gives users a totally free operation environment but also brings some trouble. These mainly manifest in overclock and malware. Overclock could damage the processor more or less and cause more heat. These would make your device get stuck for several seconds or even shut down suddenly.
Malware is another problem. As you’ve rooted your device, it opens to not only you, but third-party apps. Some malware would collect your personal information or change your system configuration in background, just like virus. Although such malware on Android aren’t too much at present, they finally get increased. So you’d better take care of your system security.
