hey, thanks for your detailed explanation. i really want to root my N5 now but have few questions still.
My N5 is still in 1 year warranty period. so should i root it? can i brick it by doing so?
rooting has endless advantages. what disadvantage it has other than bricking your device?
could i be able to improve battery performance much more?
should i back up anything from my N5 before starting rooting?
Hey you're welcome!
As Incakola said, there really aren't any cons to rooting your N5 and bricking it through rooting won't happen. The N5 is pretty hard to brick actually and it can be recovered from just about anything.
In fact this is a direct email from Google on their policy for modifying your N5, it's a developers phone so they really don't care -
Thank you for contacting Google!
Warranties and RMA are still covered *regardless* if a device was rooted.
We are not trying to prevent customers from unlocking the bootloader and installing a new operating system that allows for "rooting".
Android has always provided customers the ability to do that on Nexus devices, and encouraged other OEMs to do the same. So in that sense we are not against "rooting."
This being said, we can't guarantee full advertised/promised functionality if the source code for the Android OS has been modified as the functionality may have changed.
If you were to do a warranty claim through... LG, Sprint or T-Mobile, then I would most definitely restore your N5 to factory settings. Like I said earlier... The N5 can be unrooted, the bootloader relocked, any custom recovery replaced with stock recovery.img, factory/stock ROM image reflashed and the tamper flag reset, all in a matter of 10 mins. So then the N5 has absolutely no evidence of ever being modified at all.
You can definitely improve battery life by trying out different kernels and setting, different radios/modems (signal drops can cause huge battery drain) and thought the device settings as well... Like account syncing time frames, GPS and location services too, just to start.
I would recommend installing a custom recovery on your N5. This gives you the ability to perform full nandroid backups, flash zips, ROMs mods and etc.. Although you can only flash custom ROMs if the bootloader is unlocked.
Just in case you're not familiar with a nandroid backup - It's basically a snap shot of your whole device and how it was setup at that time. Restoring that nandroid backup will reset your device to exactly the way it was when you made the backup and can save you in many situations.
There are a few custom recoveries available for the N5. CWM, Philz CWM based touch recovery and TWRP. I personally use TWRP because it has addition features that the others really don't. Like being able to backup the EFS partition easily, which is extremely important, has OTG support, side loading and actually being able to charge the phone while in recovery mode, which is a nice feature.
As a rule of thumb... For me anyway. I always make a stock nandroid backup, before making any alteration's or modifications to the device. I then make another one after flashing a new setup or ROM install. I also always have a most recent nandroid backup of my N5.
I keep at least one nandroid and a EFS backup on my phone at all times and a current build of the custom ROM that I use. I then usually move all the other nandroids off the device and onto my PC along with separate EFS backup on my PC as well. Which can be easily transferred back onto the device... Need be.
If you follow Rxpert83's rooting guide that I posted above in the 3rd post, it's really an easy and simple process and the chances of anything going wrong or bricking your N5 are seriously slim to NONE.
