Root Hate to make another "Should I root?" thread...

[silentshadow86]

Hi,
Typical newbie question, and I am sure many people are tired of answering this, but, should I root my Droid X? I know what the general responses for this question is, (Depends on what you want to do, how comfortable you feel about doing it, how much time you can devote to it, etc...) but I wanted to get an opinion from my specific standpoint:

Main reason why I want to root my phone: I love my Droid X as is, but I really hate the crapware on it. I really want to be able to delete those apps, and I really don't want the verizon media manager always popping up when I plug in my phone. I adjust my phone settings so that the battery does not drain so fast, but extra battery life is never a bad thing. I would LOVE to be able to tether my devices without a stupid monthly fee. I have lots of wifi devices that I could use with the connection, it would be really cool to be able to use my cr-48 for school without having to pay so much for another plan. I've also read responses in previous posts from people who rooted their phones, and they were all very happy that they did so. I'm sure I would find lots of stuff to do with a rooted phone that you can't do with a non-rooted one.

What's holding me back: I've never hacked anything before, I am always afraid of voiding warranties and service agreements. I am also paying the monthly fee for the phone protection, and I'm not sure if that is a good idea to pay for that and then root my phone. My programing knowledge is a only a little more than a "Hello World" program in Java. I'm afraid that something may go horribly wrong and I will permanently brick my phone. Like I said earlier, I am generally happy with my phone. Other than the crapware and very small irritations, the Droid X is awesome.

Other questions: If I were to root my phone, what should I do about the whole phone insurance thing? How easy is it to get the Droid X back to its original state? Can you run Gingerbread on a rooted droid? Do you even need to/would want to? Also, just saw this thread here. Should I try this instead?

Thanks for your help, and sorry again for the typical first post of a newbie. Because I haven't hacked anything before, and because I still love my Droid X as is, I am a little apprehensive and want to know for sure before I do anything.

 

[Outlaw71]

I'm an advocate of rooting and ROMing. I rooted very early, never had any problems arise out of rooting at all. I only started to ROM last month, but immediately after doing so (God, this is going to sound SOOO cliche...), I wondered why I had waited so long (see what I mean)!!!

Rooting opens up a whole new world of things you can do with your device, such as the free tethering you were talking about. But you'll never get the maximum out of your DX until you start flashing ROMs and find out which one makes your DX fly like nothing you've ever seen before.

Certainly there are dangers. I finally bricked my phone for the first time a week ago today. Then again on Sunday. Bottom line is, it's pretty hard to REALLY break these things from the inside. Once you find yourself in a bootloop or completely frozen, you can still breath life back into it via the SBF file. It sucks the first time you find yourself having to do so, but once you get through it the first time, you will realize that it's not that hard at all really.

The other thing is, as you mentioned... doing all of these things does void your warrantee. Now that matters to a lot of people. But myself, I would rather act like I own this thing and do with it what I please than act like I'm leasing it from Verizon. I don't see what gives them the right to block me from taking things off of this device that I don't want, need, or will ever use. That's just ridiculous. So if they want to make such a silly rule that they won't honor my warrantee if I've taken Madden off of my phone, then I guess I'll just have to live with that.

To (sorta) quote the late, great William Wallace... "all devices die... but not all of them REALLY live"!