Root Is this even worth it?

[coldfuzion]

So my phone has been rooted for a while now, but I really haven't been seeing any benefits to it... Originally I kind of just did it because I thought "hey, its pretty much like jailbreaking" but then kind of realized that having a NON rooted android phone was kind of like having a jailbroken iphone/ipod becuase there's just more general openness..

Another reason I rooted my phone was for the wireless tethering, which (as far as I know?) is something you can do without rooting (i'm talking the tethering that isn't through sprint).

I'm strongly considering UNrooting my phone, but i guess I just wanted to maybe get a second opinion from people who've either done it, or have an opinion in general. i thought it'd help my phone's battery life, (hasn't that I can tell) , or maybe make it run faster (occasionally have to restart it because it gets so laggy I can't even listen to music), and let me customize the phone more (seems that's something that's already pretty easy to do without rooting, for the most part)

I'l admit, I probably didn't research it enough before doing it and didn't really know what to expect, and it kind of annoys me that I don't really feel like I know if there are updates i can/should be getting to make things work better (i'm using fresh evo, and every time i've checked thier app for updates, it comes back with nothing)

Whenever I've done this to a phone or my ipod, i always just have this feeling that things could be working better if I hadn't jailbroken/rooted it, like it feels somehow "broken" after doing a bunch of weird stuff that I don't fully understand to its operating system like that...


but anyway, Sorry, this might be kind of a noob question, I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do with this thing... It also worrys me a bit that if sprint ever found out (if i had to get something fixed under warranty or under the 7 dollar a month replacement plan) that they wouldn't fix it for me...

 

[Mr. Ed]

it's a good question.

Some people don't really need to root. My gf is looking at making the switch from iphone to android and asked me.."will you root it?"

she honestly wouldn't benefit from anything really(phone dependent)

I use the wifi tether (wirelessly tethering without paying spritn $30 a month) but she never would.

now...some of the phones she is looking at are stranded at Android 2.1 ...so if she were to choose one over the other I would make sure it were a rootable device..so that the phone might still be upgraded even if the manufacturer stops supporting the device

but other than that... if you don't want to use the wifis, other super handy backup apps like titanium, don't mind the bloatware and you are happy with the phone's speed without overclocking it ..then no, you prolly won't benefit much from rooting

 

[coldfuzion]

it's a good question.

Some people don't really need to root. My gf is looking at making the switch from iphone to android and asked me.."will you root it?"

she honestly wouldn't benefit from anything really(phone dependent)

I use the wifi tether (wirelessly tethering without paying spritn $30 a month) but she never would.

now...some of the phones she is looking at are stranded at Android 2.1 ...so if she were to choose one over the other I would make sure it were a rootable device..so that the phone might still be upgraded even if the manufacturer stops supporting the device

but other than that... if you don't want to use the wifis, other super handy backup apps like titanium, don't mind the bloatware and you are happy with the phone's speed without overclocking it ..then no, you prolly won't benefit much from rooting

yeah... So you still HAVE to root in order to do wifi tethering? I thought that changed and now you didn't even have to root to make it work (without paying 30 bucks a month)

the other thing is I WOULD really like to upgrade the OS when gingerbread makes its way over via rom... i think I'll keep my phone rooted, but I need to learn a bit more about roms and stuff I think... I'm sort of under the impression that if you have one ROM installed, and then you want a different one, you have to completely wipe the phone (say if i wanted to switch from freshEVO to cyanogenmod or something) which means backing everything up, then reinstalling all your apps and stuff.

It just gets kind of confusing when you start throwing custom roms on the SD card and then switching from one to another. I get this feeling that every time that happens, i'm adding more stuff to the phone (although I don't even know if this is true or not, bad example, i know but-) like if you had a bed (a phone), and the comforter was the stock OS, and every rom I installed was a blanket I was throwing on the bed without taking any of the old blankets (ROMS) off first... lol.

I think I might just need to sit down and read up on it sometime

 

[Mr. Ed]

read through the root for dummies thread ...you have the concept mostly correct.

and you are right..there are already gingerbread roms hitting xda as we speak....and root would be required to get those

supposedly sprint was going to have something out by end of the year (next week) but I have seen nothing indicating that will be the case

 

[coldfuzion]

read through the root for dummies thread ...you have the concept mostly correct.

and you are right..there are already gingerbread roms hitting xda as we speak....and root would be required to get those

supposedly sprint was going to have something out by end of the year (next week) but I have seen nothing indicating that will be the case

yeah, I'm going to try to read that tonight. Its snowin' like a muthaf*cker up here in minnesota. Got nothing better to do... lol

Thanks for the input