Root Root Advantages?

[HoldDaMayo]

I'm getting this phone for my wife soon and I work in IT, pretty tech savy so I'm sure I can follow the guides to root the phone, and I understand what it means. Please forgive me, I have an iPhone paid for by my work so I have little knowledge of the DROID world, what are the advantages of rooting this particular phone? My wife is not technical so I hate to make her phone more of a hassle, but if it's something worthwhile I can setup for her and it would make her life better, I would consider it.

Thanks!

 

[Rukbat]

Think Linux - you can su if the phone is rooted. That means that apps that need root access will run. Which ones? There are thousands, so look at the market and see which apps she'd want, and which ones need root.

Some people load their phones with all sorts of apps and never need to root the phone - some run a few apps and most of them need root access. You gain nothing by rooting if you don't actually need it.

 

[Sandman45654]

Another big plus for most of us that like to tweak things is that you can remove any and all bloatware from the phone. On this phone, with its included wifi tethering that is about the only reason I've rooted my phone. Before I had to use Wireless Tether for tethering and Riimote for my wiimote, both required root. This is a great phone except for the slightly muffled audio & voice to text problems some are having.

 

[the258]

Also custom recovery as well flashing roms, when the are available.

 

[d34thbl00m]

In my honest opinion, if there is only ONE reason to root any android, it would be for Titanium Backup. It's an app that allows you to save backups of all your apps to your SD card so that if you break your phone and have to get a new one you are still able to keep all your apps and the saved data for them. You simply put the old SD card in the new phone, root the new phone, and then restore all the backups from TB...you will have all the apps exactly the way they were when you created the backups. The full paid version of TB also has an app freeze function which allows you to freeze bloatware apps. Removing bloatware completely can sometimes cause issues with the phone causing it to not run correctly, but freezing the apps keeps them on the phone, just basically "hides" them and does not allow them to run in the background. Other than that the extra reasons I rooted my phone were for CacheMate (one click cache clearing), AdAway (removes adds on free apps and helps prevent push notification ads), SetCPU (allows you to overclock ((only on supported phones, which this one is not currently)) or set profiles to reduce CPU speed when the screen is off to help save battery life), and Rom Manager (used to flash new ROMS and the android recovery). If she is only going to use the phone as a phone ie talk and text, occasional data, then there isn't much need to root. But if you want to get full functionality out of your phone and work it more like a PC then rooting is a must.