flashing vs rooting vs unlocking

[afropick3000]

my question to the community is this. does unlocking a phone bypass the problems you have with flashing to a different carrier? and does rooting a phone and flashing a custom rom completely erase any of the problems you would have when you flash a phone to a different carrier?

 

[Davdi]

There are two separate issues here:
Firstly let's consider unlocking the bootloader, and flashing a custom recovery (most likely TWRP) and then a custom ROM.
Unlocking the bootloader: for some phones you may need to contact the manufacturer to obtain an unlock code which you then 'push' to the phone via Fastboot/ADB and a USB cable from tour computer.
Some (mostly Chinese I believe) have an option, most likely in Developer mode, to unlock the bootloader.
Once you've unlocked the bootloader you can flash (install) a custom recovery like TWRP, and use that to flash a custom ROM.
Note that this has no bearing on carrier lock.

Secondly - Carrier unlocking:
To unlock from a carrier, you need a code from the carrier which some/most/all will charge you for. (That;s the official way). They probably won't supply a code while you're still in contract, or in the case of PAYG have been an active user for less than an arbitrary time which I believe (not know for sure) can be anything from 6 months upwards to about 2 years. Of course you can get unlock codes from various online sources, and a number of independent phone 'repair' shops will unlock a phone for a fee.

Rooting. Is simply the addition of the superuser ('su') binary and a superuser control app like SuperSU (there are others) from the play store. Depending on the phone, the rooting procedure can very from pretty much automated to very difficult and sometimes impossible. rooting often depends on exploiting weaknesses in the device's stock recovery or booting process which may be patched at some point.
Most custom ROMs are pre-rooted so that's usually a better way yo go if you want/need root.

Remember, in Linux (Or Windows) terms, Rooting means gaining Administrator privileges which gives you greater control of your phone (and also increases the potential attack surface - i.e. rooting can make your phone less secure than leaving it un-rooted.

Unless you have an app which needs admin privileges (Titanium backup comes to mind) then there's much less real benefit to rooting than there was back in the days of Gingerbread or KitKat.
The process Ive described here have been simplified for ease of understanding. If you need more detail, just ask, then any number of us on here can provide it.

 

[Hadron]

When you talk about "flashing to a different carrier" I assume this is a CDMA thing. With most phones/networks worldwide there is no flashing involved in changing carriers: as long as the device is not network locked you just pop a different carrier's SIM in it and that's it.

(You may not be aware how limited the distribution of CDMA networks is: there are only a handful in the world, and they are all in just a few countries. Hence most of us have never had to deal with anything like that).

 

[afropick3000]

There are two separate issues here:
Firstly let's consider unlocking the bootloader, and flashing a custom recovery (most likely TWRP) and then a custom ROM.
Unlocking the bootloader: for some phones you may need to contact the manufacturer to obtain an unlock code which you then 'push' to the phone via Fastboot/ADB and a USB cable from tour computer.
Some (mostly Chinese I believe) have an option, most likely in Developer mode, to unlock the bootloader.
Once you've unlocked the bootloader you can flash (install) a custom recovery like TWRP, and use that to flash a custom ROM.
Note that this has no bearing on carrier lock.

Secondly - Carrier unlocking:
To unlock from a carrier, you need a code from the carrier which some/most/all will charge you for. (That;s the official way). They probably won't supply a code while you're still in contract, or in the case of PAYG have been an active user for less than an arbitrary time which I believe (not know for sure) can be anything from 6 months upwards to about 2 years. Of course you can get unlock codes from various online sources, and a number of independent phone 'repair' shops will unlock a phone for a fee.

Rooting. Is simply the addition of the superuser ('su') binary and a superuser control app like SuperSU (there are others) from the play store. Depending on the phone, the rooting procedure can very from pretty much automated to very difficult and sometimes impossible. rooting often depends on exploiting weaknesses in the device's stock recovery or booting process which may be patched at some point.
Most custom ROMs are pre-rooted so that's usually a better way yo go if you want/need root.

Remember, in Linux (Or Windows) terms, Rooting means gaining Administrator privileges which gives you greater control of your phone (and also increases the potential attack surface - i.e. rooting can make your phone less secure than leaving it un-rooted.

Unless you have an app which needs admin privileges (Titanium backup comes to mind) then there's much less real benefit to rooting than there was back in the days of Gingerbread or KitKat.
The process Ive described here have been simplified for ease of understanding. If you need more detail, just ask, then any number of us on here can provide it.

i have rooted a phone and a tablet once before mainly to get rid of the bloatware and to install a custom rom because the company was not pushing updates(toshiba)(not a total noob). and this was back in the honeycomb days. so it's been a while. but i still hear people say for example that they flashed their phone from cricket to t-mobile and now they don't have texting or mms. and i was wondering how to avoid that? thanks for the response.