Is it preferrable to root a tablet ?

[GKL]

I am new to the android / tablet world and am trying to learn from others' experiences so as to avoid making unnecessary mistakes.

First - should rooting be an automatic thing everyone should do to a tablet ?

What are the pros (and cons, if any) of rooting ?

What is the easiest, most foolproof way to root, or is there a proven app that will do it automatically ?

Does it really make a big difference if you decide NOT to root ?

Can you root later on after you had a tablet for a while and have a lot of apps installed ?

 

[Metroid Prime]

Hello and welcome to Android Forums, GKL.

To me rooting is more of a choice and it's really up to you if you want to root or not. Some people do it ASAP while others do it later or never. Your choice.
When rooted you have full administrative access to all the various places of your device and have full control over it. You can add/remove the OS and replace it with a newer fresh OS that changes the look and feel of your device and can use root only apps too and can really make your device yours with all that you can do with it. If something goes wrong during the root process you can brick (break) your device giving it the functionality of a brick and you void your warranty when you root so you're on your own is something goes wrong where you can't recover from it.
Don't really know of a easy, full proof way to root a device, but you could check in your devices forum and look at it's All Things Root guide. I don't think there's an app that automatically does this either. There is a difference, but there's people who are happy when they do root and there's people who are happy that they aren't rooted.
You don't get to do some of the things when you root and some of what I said is a small example of what you can do after root. If you decide later on you want to root go ahead.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that if you do decide to root you should do your homework on it before attempting it.

 

[GKL]

Hello and welcome to Android Forums, GKL.

To me rooting is more of a choice and it's really up to you if you want to root or not. Some people do it ASAP while others do it later or never. Your choice.
When rooted you have full administrative access to all the various places of your device and have full control over it. You can add/remove the OS and replace it with a newer fresh OS that changes the look and feel of your device and can use root only apps too and can really make your device yours with all that you can do with it. If something goes wrong during the root process you can brick (break) your device giving it the functionality of a brick and you void your warranty when you root so you're on your own is something goes wrong where you can't recover from it.
Don't really know of a easy, full proof way to root a device, but you could check in your devices forum and look at it's All Things Root guide. I don't think there's an app that automatically does this either. There is a difference, but there's people who are happy when they do root and there's people who are happy that they aren't rooted.
You don't get to do some of the things when you root and some of what I said is a small example of what you can do after root. If you decide later on you want to root go ahead.

Thanks for the insights, most things have their pros and cons and I guess each person has to decide according to if it makes a big difference for what they use their tablet for.

I think I'll hold off rooting at least for now and decide later after further research.

From what I read elsewhere so far there seems to be various ressons for rooting, but they would have to outweigh the possible downsides.

The one thing that I'm not sure of yet is how big of a problem it is in the android / tablet world - is what I read about some (or was it all ?) apps not working from a micro SD card but having to be installed in the internal memory, which can possibly get filled up too soon.

Do most or all tablets restrict apps to being installed on the internal memory or is there a way to install and use apps from the micro SC card without rooting ?

I'm typing this during some "off" time at work, but my new IdolPad Plus tablet I ordered arrived at home today so I'll likely be seeing about installing some apps tomorrow when I have more time, I'll be checking it out tonight though !

 

[Metroid Prime]

Yeah, one of the reasons for rooting is to be able to force apps onto the SD card instead of having them on the internal memory.
That's one of the reasons and one of the others is being able to install custom ROMS (OS) onto the device or having custom ROM versions of the latest android software like ICS or jellybean. You can move the apps over to the SD card without root, but you're only moving a part of it over like the cache and memory I believe?
There's also some really important root only apps like superuser and clockwork recovery mod, but I don't have much knowledge of tablets and rooting them, but you could ask in your devices root section about it as the members there will surly know.

 

[GKL]

Yeah, one of the reasons for rooting is to be able to fore apps onto the SD card instead of having them on the internal memory.
That's one of the reasons and one of the others is being able to install custom ROMS (OS) onto the device or having custom ROM versions of the latest android software like ICS or jellybean. You can move the apps over to the SD card without root, but you're only moving a part of it over like the cache and memory I believe?
There's also some really important root only apps like superuser and clockwork recovery mod, but I don't have much knowledge of tablets and rooting them, but you could ask in your devices root section about it as the members there will surly know.

Thanks, I did not notice any section for my particular tablet model, but perhaps I can find a section that covers root questions in general.

 

[Metroid Prime]

I don't have much knowledge of clockwork mod or super user, but I'm sure the other members here can tell you what they do.

EDIT: I forgot to mention also, with root you can remove carrier apps taking up space too.
Just be careful what apps you remove.

 

[Demache]

I don't have much knowledge of clockwork mod or super user, but I'm sure the other members here can tell you what they do.

EDIT: I forgot to mention also, with root you can remove carrier apps taking up space too.
Just be careful what apps you remove.

Clockwork mod in a nutshell (sort of)

Well, this is actually Amon Recovery for the Droid Eris. But the basic functionality and terms are essentially the same. The menu is pretty primitive (there is no touchscreen support, so you control the menu's either by the volume keys or some other buttons on the phone).

Highlighted is the "reboot system" function. Does exactly what's on the box.

Backup/restore - THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. It basically makes an identical copy of your current Android system (apps, user data and all) and saves it to the SD card. Its very important to do this before you do any major changes to the phone. That way, if something goes bad, no big deal, just restore the backup and your right back where you left off. They tend to be pretty big and take awhile to do though. But its your safety net when you tinker.

Flash zip from SD card - Simple. You put a ZIP file that you download onto your SD card (which usually contains a ROM), select the zip, press confirm, and let the device do its thing. This is how you install custom ROMs, scripts, and other neat things.

Wipe - Used for wiping the data partition (it contains app data and such) and Dalvik cache (used for optimising apps to run faster). Its sort of like performing a factory reset, except your SD card remains intact. You normally do this after flashing a new ROM, since stuff from the old ROM can conflict with the new one.

Partition SD card - This is an antiquated feature and a piece of Android history so its no longer really needed or used. Its from back before Android 2.2, before you could store apps on the SD card. And back then, you only had 100 MB TOTAL for apps. Some people figured out if you divide the SD card up right, you can store apps on the SD card and get a lot more space, and this was called "Apps2SD".

Other - More debugging like stuff

Power off - Do I really need to explain this?

Depending on what device you use, some features are added and removed.

And super user is pretty simple. Its essentially like gaining administrator priviledges in Windows. Your word becomes god's to the machine and will do whatever you tell it to.

 

[bigdrew]

Just a little clarity since I see both terms being thrown around--there is a difference between rooting and decrypting the boot loader. Rooting has generally become a fairly innocuous process for most devices. There are a good amount of applications in the Play store that require root access. If you aren't using any, there probably isn't any compelling reason to root. Rooting is also reversible. In contrast, unlocking the boot loader is dicey, and can absolutely brick your device. The risk is much higher, is permanent in some cases, and voids your manufacturer's warranty. The main reason for doing this is for changing, backing up, and restoring roms, and flashing .zips.

The procedure for rooting your tablet will depend on the model. XDA is a good place to start researching Android Forums & Windows Phone Discussion @ xda-developers. But again, if your not interested in any apps that require root, there isn't much of a point.

 

[colmmcgrath]

It depends on the user requirements. To have full access to your device you can root your device.

 

[GKL]

As of now I don't have any plans to root as the risk seems to outweigh any benefits as far as what apps I use so far.

 

[Motorhead1991]

The only fool-proof root method I know of was on the first AT&T Avails. You'd mount the system RW by dialing *983*7668# then you'd update the binaries from the superuser app . Other than that, devices succeptible to the Gingerbreak app (zergrush method) are the easiest.