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Root root/jailbreak?

M

mills23

Android Expert
Im new to moto droid, i had a iphone before and jailbroke it. Is rooting the same thing? Does it put things on your droid like cydia or installer? Or do you have to be a little more savvy to get stuff on there. Forgive my stupidity.
 
Nice thing about Android is that you could always install non-market apps, you just need to enable it in your application settings. That renders Cydia or Installer-like apps unneccessary.

If you're asking about Installous, that's different, and we don't talk about piracy here.

Rooting allows you complete access to the phone's filesystem. That'll allow you to load custom recovery images that let you boot different ROMs, make complete filesystem nandroid backups, drastically modify your theme, etc.

Tons of info in this section of the forum!
 
mills23 said:
Thank you. It sounds complicated getting in there and messing around with files.
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Not complicated at all. If I known how easy it was I would have done this sooner. The Bugless Beast thread had me up and running with a new ROM in a couple of hours.
 
Once you learn the basics it's actually very easy. Flashing a new ROM may involve several steps the first time when you are initially rooting and such, but once you do it a couple of times you get the hang of it, and it's very straightforward. Modifying themes and things like that can require a bit more work, but even then it's not too hard.

If you want to do it the easy way, the Droidmod Updater application (I'm pretty sure it's still available) will basically do all of the work installing ROMs and doing updates for you, but I recommend learning the manual method so you can fix your own problems.
 
You wish we had a 3rd party application store? Why? Cydia is needed because Apple is so strict with what app's they approve. Google lets any app into the Market as long as they aren't malicious.
 
You could always use DroidMod to root your phone and install their rom or grab another rom.

I am using the Smoked Glass rom.
 
CRPercodani said:
You wish we had a 3rd party application store? Why? Cydia is needed because Apple is so strict with what app's they approve. Google lets any app into the Market as long as they aren't malicious.
Click to expand...

Plus, we aren't limited to apps from the Market... you can literally download apps from anywhere on the web and you don't have to Jailbreak/Root to do it. You just have to set your phone to allow apps from "unknown sources" (go into Settings).
 
CRPercodani said:
You wish we had a 3rd party application store? Why? Cydia is needed because Apple is so strict with what app's they approve. Google lets any app into the Market as long as they aren't malicious.
Click to expand...

Kind of confused about this one too. What makes Cydia better than the option to have unrestricted apps by default?
 
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