rooting is a load of bollix - yay or nay

osnola ibax

Ok, I've come to the opinion that there really is no great benefit to rooting at all. It made my phone more unstable, nothing was as reliable and it was always slower than stock.

Now I've reverted back to stock, the phone is much better and far more stable. My advice - stay away from rooting, its more hassle than its worth unless you have a very specific reason for it. While I'm at it, all this s-off is a load of nonsense aswell. You can change your splash screen WOW

bruschi

would it not be device specific though? what phone do you have? I rooted a ZTE blade, as it had a stock Orange Rom, and it was ****e, it badly needed to be rooted and is a super phone now it has been.

osnola ibax

bruschi wrote: »

would it not be device specific though? what phone do you have? I rooted a ZTE blade, as it had a stock Orange Rom, and it was ****e, it badly needed to be rooted and is a super phone now it has been.

Sorry yeah, wasn't thinking there. Mine is a Desire and having spent the last 6 months rooted, I see no advantages, but yes, of course you are right.

Khannie

Depends what you want to do with the device. Rooting is important to me because I know my way around linux ( which android is based on ).

Professey Chin

osnola ivax wrote: »

Ok, I've come to the opinion that there really is no great benefit to rooting at all. It made my phone more unstable, nothing was as reliable and it was always slower than stock.

Now I've reverted back to stock, the phone is much better and far more stable. My advice - stay away from rooting, its more hassle than its worth unless you have a very specific reason for it. While I'm at it, all this s-off is a load of nonsense aswell. You can change your splash screen WOW

Nonsense. I own a Desire and rooting has plenty of advantages and if you know what your doing it can greatly improve the experience.
S-Off doesnt just change your splash-screen, it also allows a custom and permanent installation of a new recovery image which if you get into trouble makes any recoveries a lot easier.
The legacy Apps2SD which uses a partitioned SD card doesnt cause any issues with apps that use widgets and work really well with all apps. Data2EXT stores your info on the SD card too which means you nearly always have full internal memory available.
Standard bloat apps can be removed when rooted like Stocks & that arse.
Full backups of all your data & apps
The Overclocking governors can be set to drop to low powers on standby and overclock when active which can greatly assist battery life.
Due to the always impressive dev community youre pretty much guaranteed the newest updates before the majority of stock phones.
Impressive features from other proprietary ROMS are often integrated into new ROM releases.

I've lost count how many different ROMs ive run on both my G1 and now my Desire.Its very rare that ive come across stability issues and any have been minor issues I knew existed with ROMs before I tried them. I actually cant think of any advantages to staying stock. Id always rather have a comitted dev community as support then some random lad in a call centre/phone shop

Zascar

I love my desire again after getting a customer rom on (LeeDroid) - I was beginning to hate it before with memory & battery problems. Best thing I have done with the phone.

Some apps are only available to rooted phones. Running a VNC server on the device can be handy for presentations. It is also possible to remove some of the stock apps that I never use like Facebook, Soundhound, Peep etc.

virmilitaris

Actually, conceivably someone may be able to help me or in so far as possible point me in the right direction.

I have purchased a Desire HD and have been contemplating putting on a custom rom. Unfortunately I am living in South Korea so finding a copy of my stock rom would be quite difficult, if not impossible.

Is it possible to make a backup of your stock rom yourself and reinstall it when necessary ? I've searched quite a bit but have only found references to downloading stock roms from other people.

I also don't know anything about the language integration with custom mods. For example I regularly type in Korean, is it possible to integrate foreign language characters into the standard keyboard on custom roms ?

Mr Bloat

Most rooting guides will show you how to install a recovery program like Rom Manager/Clockworkmod/Amon Ra. You can use this to create a full backup of your stock rom before you wipe the device with a custom one.

Idleater

OP, would you care to explain your post a bit more, rooting itself doesn't do anything other than allow access to system functions, locations and libraries. It doesn't alter the running of the phone software in any way. I'm currently running stock 2.2 with added root so I can run some backup apps, and have noticed no adverse affects.
Perhaps you have issues with some ROM you installed which of course is a completely different and unrelated to root access?

BionicRasher

Idleater wrote: »

I'm currently running stock 2.2 with added root so I can run some backup apps, and have noticed no adverse affects.

Sounds interesting
I have no real experience in Rooting and neither do I want to Root with a ROM or whatever (much confusion with ROM managers, overclocking, backing up, constant updates etc etc) - I like the stock HTC Desire phone and its layout and interface but I do have issues with battery life (lasts only 24hrs mostly) and internal memory (always down to about 15MB). I would love to just use the stock and have a basic root to allow better battery and maybe free up some internal memory and as you say enable some backup apps - can you point me in the right direction to do what you have done e.g. running stock 2.2 with added root

srsly78

Problem lies with the user installing a bad rom tbh. Root was needed in the past to get froyo etc, but official roms have caught up now. I'm still running leedroid since june, rock solid.

Zascar

Give LeeDroid a try OP - works brilliantly for me. Use MyBackup and Rom Manager, do a clean install.

Saadyst

The biggest problems for me when it comes to changing roms: unforeseen bugs, force closes, glitches.

I really want a phone that just works, no questions asked. My stock 2.2 desire is perfect for that. Fast, responsive, virtually error free. There are things I would like to change, mostly UI related (personal preferences), but functionality is so much more important to me.

Also seems to me there is a bit of a requirement to keep up with the community for developments on your rom or whatever new stuff that developers come up with - time I don't want to spend.

osnola ibax

Ok, basically I wanted to start a debate but probably worded my argument too strongly. I rooted because I wasn't a fan of sense and wAnted a stock aosp Rom. I was a massive fan of OD but then problems started. My phone would boot loop and freeze and only a battery pull would fix it. But there were other problems aswell with WiFi, gps, Bluetooth, there was always an issue with something everytime you would change or update a Rom.

I guess in my circumstances, I don't use a lot of apps so a2sd, legacy and alpharev tables are not all that important to me.

I have since reverted to stock 2.2 and all my problems are gone + sense is actually quite good. LED notifications are fully functional again, my phone does not reboot and is the most reliable it has ever been. It seems quite slick aswell.

When rooted, I used to bang on about bags of internal memory which I never used, longer battery life (arguably), quadrant scores etc. and now I think I was really just wasting my time. I don't think over / under clocking ever made a difference to me either.

Yes my personal preferences are coming in to play here and maybe I never needed root in the first place, I just think there is a load of bluster surrounding rooted phones.

Idleater

osnola ivax wrote: »

I rooted because I wasn't a fan of sense and wAnted a stock aosp Rom.

You know you can just disable sense?

Zascar

Why would anyone want to disable sense? I’m not 100% sure what Sense actually extends to but what I do know if it I really like. As others mentioned when on other threads, when you go to a non-sense rom, you tend to miss it!

Professey Chin

Zascar wrote: »

Why would anyone want to disable sense? I’m not 100% sure what Sense actually extends to but what I do know if it I really like. As others mentioned when on other threads, when you go to a non-sense rom, you tend to miss it!

The main thing I miss about sense is the integration of the people application. Everything down to your friends photo albums is handled so well I love it!
Besides that and the dialer I use replacement apps for nearly everything but those alone keep me with Sense based roms

mickoneill30

For me, I had a Galaxy S and to install a lag fix I had to root. The phone was much more responsive then.

Then I went to a Desire HD. Loads of internal memory so I don't need to worry about rooting to make sure all apps are on the SD. I put on Launcher Pro as it was more customisable than Sense (the only thing I can see that it lacks that Sense has is the big weather widget. So I bought Beautiful Widgets). The phone is reliable and fast so no need to root to change ROMs.

So in answer to the op. Yay AND Nay.

kippy

I havent read many of the reples to this OP yet but I can guess they contain people advocating rooting and those that dont.
It does depend on what you want from your phone and indeed what type of phone you have.
I have the desire on stock 2.2.
This phone and the software on it do everything I want it to do.
I got the phone a few months ago and at the time paid apps werent available for it. There was one paid app I wanted and it was a while before I could get it. Rooting may have expediated this process but would have caused me all manner of headaches and I would class my self as a bit of a geek/techie.

If I were a bit younger I may have rooted for the craic, just "to see" what the other ROMS were like, but at this stage I know theres nothing that I need that I dont have on the phone, at least nothing that is worth rooting for.

I know my way around inside of Linux and indeed Windows, that's not really a reason for me to want to root my phone however but I can see why people may want to go down that road.

For 95% of Android owners, they will never root their phone and indeed may never have the need to.

S.M.B.

Took me well over 6 months to even consider rooting mine but I was driven to it by a lack of space on my Desire.

Every time I wanted to have a look at a new app I had to uninstall an unimportant one like Astro File Manager, have a look at the new app which left me in a quandary if I wanted to keep it.

Now I have pretty much an unlimited amount of storage space and like someone else has said I fell back in love with my Desire.

The fact that I use Launcher Pro and have little use for the majority of the sense widgets means that a new senseless Rom was also beneficial.

slowlydownwards

AdFree* from BigTinCan on its own is worthed rooting.

*Apologies to devs, don't mean to be stealing bread from your table.