Root In regards to rooting...

[fascinator]

Apologies in advance if this is posted already... I have a white SF and love it. I currently have a batt life of over 23 hrs without a charge and time w/o signal of only 6%. I really love TW launcher. I love swype. The sidetone issue basically is gone. My phone is fast as hell and gets great signal. What I need help with is what would rooting actually help me with? As far as I can tell all it could do is get rid of bloatware which I don't even bother with anyway? I don't see how my phone could get much faster? Some of the devs in here make great themes but I'm not sure if I should take a chance at going through a whole root process just for a theme? After reading all the info/threads in here though I feel like I'm missing out on something really big though, which makes me want to root even more and I don't even know what for? Please point me in the right direction/give some helpful advice. Thank you to everyone who replies with constructive advice. (Currently run with the recent DL09 OTA update btw)

 

[cableguynoe]

Sounds like you have a great phone.

There are many more reasons to root that to improve your phones performance.
It sounds like what you want is for us to convince you that you have to root.
Well, you dont have to.

You'll just be a lot cooler if you do

Oh, and welcome to the forum!

 

[fascinator]

Sounds like you have a great phone.

There are many more reasons to root that to improve your phones performance.
It sounds like what you want is for us to convince you that you have to root.
Well, you dont have to.

You'll just be a lot cooler if you do

Oh, and welcome to the forum!

Can I get a couple of those reasons please? And thank you, nice to be here.

 

[nitsuj17]

sounds like you are pretty happy with your phone

really, if you are looking to root "just for themes" you may want to consider the risk/reward to it. To get themes on your phone, you need root and clockwork recovery. You'll need to make a nandroid backup in cwr as well.

There is little direct risk in hosing your phone from a theme, but things happen and at times any mod/flash can result in an odin trip.

However, a fast and good performing phone is relative. Having use a fascinate stock (just for the heck of i tooled around on a stock kernel for a day) versus one running voodoo5 kernels, theres no comparison in speed and battery life. One might argue that they don't see the performance increases from custom kernels/vs stock but for those of us who do a lot of web browsing/downloading/games on our phones its a real boost.

 

[fascinator]

sounds like you are pretty happy with your phone

really, if you are looking to root "just for themes" you may want to consider the risk/reward to it. To get themes on your phone, you need root and clockwork recovery. You'll need to make a nandroid backup in cwr as well.

There is little direct risk in hosing your phone from a theme, but things happen and at times any mod/flash can result in an odin trip.

However, a fast and good performing phone is relative. Having use a fascinate stock (just for the heck of i tooled around on a stock kernel for a day) versus one running voodoo5 kernels, theres no comparison in speed and battery life. One might argue that they don't see the performance increases from custom kernels/vs stock but for those of us who do a lot of web browsing/downloading/games on our phones its a real boost.

I wasn't just going to root just for themes. Just wanted to see what other benefits there were. So based on what I told you about the phone I have, could I do any better? More than a day and a half on a stock phone battery is pretty good I thought. This is my first android phone (came from bb). Could anyone possibly show me a screenshot or two of their phones, themes, or something that is exclusive to rooting? I always learned better with pictures, haha. Thanks for replying btw. All is helpful info.

 

[nitsuj17]

I wasn't just going to root just for themes. Just wanted to see what other benefits there were. So based on what I told you about the phone I have, could I do any better? More than a day and a half on a stock phone battery is pretty good I thought. This is my first android phone (came from bb). Could anyone possibly show me a screenshot or two of their phones, themes, or something that is exclusive to rooting? I always learned better with pictures, haha. Thanks for replying btw. All is helpful info.

well you have to define what you are doing to get that kind of battery life on a stock kernel...if you are web browsing or playing games for significant periods of time then you would want an undervolt kernel....on a stock kernel im sure i wouldnt make it through the afternoon with what i do

 

[fascinator]

That's true. I don't always have that good of a batt life. Do you have any, or does anyone here have any screenshots of stuff that is exclusive to rooting? Apps maybe or just something cool? I'd really appreciate it.

 

[nitsuj17]

That's true. I don't always have that good of a batt life. Do you have any, or does anyone here have any screenshots of stuff that is exclusive to rooting? Apps maybe or just something cool? I'd really appreciate it.

kernels arent something you can see in a screenshot, other than just a name change or something...roms (unless themed) also won't look any different either, save for the different apps/programs included/removed.

themes you can see if the screenshots in their individual threads (check me theme thread out, or any of my themes here for examples)

mods like reboot options can be seen in there as well

 

[rigglemania]

Personally one of the biggest improvements for my Fascinate prior to rooting was changing launchers. Launcher Pro and ADW Launcher are both a vast improvement in performance and flexibility over Samsung's launcher.

 

[fascinator]

Personally one of the biggest improvements for my Fascinate prior to rooting was changing launchers.

So what were the other improvements after you rooted your phone?

 

[karib]

Rooting your phone also offers the ability to use wifi tethering for free. I rooted for that and also to remove bing and the other bloat from my phone. I needed the GPS to work, and also wanted to change the boot up and shut down animations. Beyond that, I do have a theme which changes the appearance of the notification bar/pull down screen, some of the colors in the dialer,settings,etc. But beyond that what makes it look different is installing a different launcher from the market. I use ADW ex launcher, and then downloaded many of their themes from the market, some free, some I paid for. Look up ADW ex launcher on google and what a tutorial or review of it.

 

[grin0048]

So what were the other improvements after you rooted your phone?

wireless tethering (free) is certainly a nice capability.

 

[rigglemania]

So what were the other improvements after you rooted your phone?

Well, I felt as you do for the first month or so that I had mine. I read around, asked a few questions, and didn't really see anything terrible compelling about rooting. But I'm a born tinkerer, so once the honeymoon phase was over, I got bored and wanted to do stuff

I started out by rooting - which mind you was easier for me since one-click rooting worked for DI01 firmware... I have no idea what the current method is for DL09. After I rooted, I didn't do much initially. Removed a few bloat apps, installed a few novelty apps like wifi tether, etc.

After about a week, I got bored again and decided I was going to flash DJ05. Getting my GPS working was a big factor in that decision as well. So I did a bunch more reading to prepare and then flashed CWM, then the DJ05 modem, ROM, and kernel. It (mostly) fixed my GPS issues, but aside from that I didn't really do much else with it at first. Of course, you're on DL09, so it's my understand that you shouldn't have GPS issues.

The next thing I did (only took me a few days to get bored this time ) was flash an undervolted kernel. Specifically geeknik's stupidfast 1.54 kernel. I still believe this has been the best kernel I've used as far as battery life goes.

After that I stood pat for about a month until I started getting into themes and voodoo kernels last week. I flashed to jt's superclean 0.9 ROM in the process - mainly because it comes deodexed, which is a requirement for most themes. I've also come to appreciate some of the other subtle changes, though I wouldn't say any of them blow away the stock rom.

I *really* like the gingerbread theme I've settled into. Voodoo/lagfix is pretty nice, but I'm still a bit unsure just how much difference there really is vs placebo. Voodoo sound is quite nice, though. If I could just find an issue-free voodoo kernel that gives me the kind of battery life that stupidfast gave me, I'd be 100% content until 2.2 rolls out. That's not to say that I'm not happy with any of the options I have right now, it's just that none of them are "perfect".

I'm not sure if any of that really helped you or not but there's my brief Fascinate history

 

[nitsuj17]

The next thing I did (only took me a few days to get bored this time ) was flash an undervolted kernel. Specifically geeknik's stupidfast 1.54 kernel. I still believe this has been the best kernel I've used as far as battery life goes.

After that I stood pat for about a month until I started getting into themes and voodoo kernels last week. I flashed to jt's superclean 0.9 ROM in the process - mainly because it comes deodexed, which is a requirement for most themes. I've also come to appreciate some of the other subtle changes, though I wouldn't say any of them blow away the stock rom.

I *really* like the gingerbread theme I've settled into. Voodoo/lagfix is pretty nice, but I'm still a bit unsure just how much difference there really is vs placebo. Voodoo sound is quite nice, though. If I could just find an issue-free voodoo kernel that gives me the kind of battery life that stupidfast gave me, I'd be 100% content until 2.2 rolls out. That's not to say that I'm not happy with any of the options I have right now, it's just that none of them are "perfect".

I'm not sure if any of that really helped you or not but there's my brief Fascinate history

the imnuts kernels are probably the consensus best battery life...although that might not be true for every single phone.

voodoo may/may not produce noticable increases in performance depending on what you do. rfs kernels are notoriously bad at system write tasks. this is true of downloads, heavy web browsing or gaming. so if you do a lot of any of those tasks, you ll tend to notice lag/hesitation/pauses with rfs kernels.

since voodoo converts your system to ext4, it handles write speeds *signficantly* better..it might not be for everyone, but it is is the gold standard, so to speak, on the galaxy s line of phones

 

[rigglemania]

the imnuts kernels are probably the consensus best battery life...although that might not be true for every single phone.

voodoo may/may not produce noticable increases in performance depending on what you do. rfs kernels are notoriously bad at system write tasks. this is true of downloads, heavy web browsing or gaming. so if you do a lot of any of those tasks, you ll tend to notice lag/hesitation/pauses with rfs kernels.

since voodoo converts your system to ext4, it handles write speeds *signficantly* better..it might not be for everyone, but it is is the gold standard, so to speak, on the galaxy s line of phones

Don't get me wrong, I *want* to like both voodoo and imnuts kernels, I just need to get the results I want as well. I'm still working on it. It would help if I knew the exact voltage mappings for stupidfast 1.54 for comparison as my phone really seemed to like that. I'm going to try what saps suggested and flash, full charge wipe cache/stats w/ imnuts 1/28 and lagfix enabled. Just not sure which UV to choose.

 

[nitsuj17]

Don't get me wrong, I *want* to like both voodoo and imnuts kernels, I just need to get the results I want as well. I'm still working on it. It would help if I knew the exact voltage mappings for stupidfast 1.54 for comparison as my phone really seemed to like that. I'm going to try what saps suggested and flash, full charge wipe cache/stats w/ imnuts 1/28 and lagfix enabled. Just not sure which UV to choose.

geeks kernel page lists voltages Geeknik's StupidFast Kernel for the Samsung Fascinate

 

[fascinator]

Well, I felt as you do for the first month or so that I had mine. I read around, asked a few questions, and didn't really see anything terrible compelling about rooting. But I'm a born tinkerer, so once the honeymoon phase was over, I got bored and wanted to do stuff

I started out by rooting - which mind you was easier for me since one-click rooting worked for DI01 firmware... I have no idea what the current method is for DL09. After I rooted, I didn't do much initially. Removed a few bloat apps, installed a few novelty apps like wifi tether, etc.

After about a week, I got bored again and decided I was going to flash DJ05. Getting my GPS working was a big factor in that decision as well. So I did a bunch more reading to prepare and then flashed CWM, then the DJ05 modem, ROM, and kernel. It (mostly) fixed my GPS issues, but aside from that I didn't really do much else with it at first. Of course, you're on DL09, so it's my understand that you shouldn't have GPS issues.

The next thing I did (only took me a few days to get bored this time ) was flash an undervolted kernel. Specifically geeknik's stupidfast 1.54 kernel. I still believe this has been the best kernel I've used as far as battery life goes.

After that I stood pat for about a month until I started getting into themes and voodoo kernels last week. I flashed to jt's superclean 0.9 ROM in the process - mainly because it comes deodexed, which is a requirement for most themes. I've also come to appreciate some of the other subtle changes, though I wouldn't say any of them blow away the stock rom.

I *really* like the gingerbread theme I've settled into. Voodoo/lagfix is pretty nice, but I'm still a bit unsure just how much difference there really is vs placebo. Voodoo sound is quite nice, though. If I could just find an issue-free voodoo kernel that gives me the kind of battery life that stupidfast gave me, I'd be 100% content until 2.2 rolls out. That's not to say that I'm not happy with any of the options I have right now, it's just that none of them are "perfect".

I'm not sure if any of that really helped you or not but there's my brief Fascinate history

Wow great info. That being said, it looks like I'm just gonna stay right where I am as stock. My phone would have to start messing up in some major way for me to root. It just does everything I need right now at a very fast pace. Thanks everyone for all of your great info though. These forums are a big help.