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To Root or no to Root

czeresniak said:
hey there jjbturnage.

Since you are on boost mobile and have not rooted your phone yet would you be able to get 2 files from the phone and send them to smith058? A lot of people are waiting on those 2 files so smith058 can complete the odin restore file that will allow people to restore their s3 to stock Boost Mobile rom.

If you are willing, please follow the directions in this post
http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/755665-i-need-file-usa-boost-mobile.html

If you have any doubt on how to do it step by step, I'm sure that smith058 would be able to walk you through it.

Thanks for your consideration.
Click to expand...
Thx a lot I did not know that the carrier that you use had any thing to do with the choices you have when rooting your phone :) thx for the info
 
czeresniak said:
hey there jjbturnage.

Since you are on boost mobile and have not rooted your phone yet would you be able to get 2 files from the phone and send them to smith058? A lot of people are waiting on those 2 files so smith058 can complete the odin restore file that will allow people to restore their s3 to stock Boost Mobile rom.

If you are willing, please follow the directions in this post
http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/755665-i-need-file-usa-boost-mobile.html

If you have any doubt on how to do it step by step, I'm sure that smith058 would be able to walk you through it.

Thanks for your consideration.
Click to expand...
Sure if I decide to root I will send you those files before I do so.No worries my friend :)
 
iowabowtech said:
Pretty common to secure the stock data/boot img's but yeah nobody should feel obliged. Fair question to ask for it though. Let's leave this as..."no" is a fair answer if you're not interested jjbturnage. I think that's what czeresniak was pretty much saying anyway. :)
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Thx def do not feel obliged to root anything but this forum gives me so many options I did not even know existed before. Information is a wonderful thing!!!! You guys rock on here.
 
Thank You for all the responses I have received on my question to root or not to root. I have gotten my pro and con question solved on both sides. This is def the place to get those type of questions answered and answered thoroughly. Thx alot:D
 
I would just like share with you my experience rooting my SGS3. I'm a first time rooter myself. After using Android phones for 2.5 years, there was one feature that I wanted that at the time I could not get without rooting. That feature was for the keyboard to automatically change to SwiftKey when the phone is in landscape and switch to Swype in portrait.

I did some research and found the procedures to root my phone. The entire process took me about half an hour. As it is my first time, I tried to ensure I followed some rather unfamiliar steps. It wasn't hard, but definitely not trivial. I needed to plug my phone into my PC and move some files around and then do a special boot.

After rooting I installed Keyboard Manager and my phone was able to change keyboards on an orientation change. Since then, I noticed that after a few days, my phone feels a little laggy. It was barely noticeable. However, when playing back music over my car's BT, once in a while, the music stutters. It would happen once every half an hour. Then after another day or 2, it would do it every song. At this point, I have to reboot my phone and then everything would go back to normal. I find that after rooting, I had to reboot my phone twice a week because of this music stuttering.

Last weekend, I found a means to get the keyboard switching functionality without needing to root my phone. I decided to unroot it. I used Kies to do a software update which unroots my phone in the process. For the past week, I have no experienced this stuttering and my phone is as smooth as always. The non-root app I used to switch keyboards doesn't work as well as the rooted app. However, I do find that having a more stable phone is worth the trade-off.

Android phones have many customisation options without needing to root. Rooting involves much more than just installing and configuring an app. If an unrooted phone suits your needs, I don't see too much benefit to rooting. My personal experience with rooting resulted in some draw backs. I know that many people who do root their phone has found it to be more stable or just better overall. Perhaps, more needs to be done to achieve that. I did the minimum amount of work to root my phone as there was only one feature I needed at the time. I suspect that there is a lot more I perhaps could have done, but I had niether the time or the desire to dig deeper into rooting than I did.
 
Stuntman said:
I would just like share with you my experience rooting my SGS3. I'm a first time rooter myself. After using Android phones for 2.5 years, there was one feature that I wanted that at the time I could not get without rooting. That feature was for the keyboard to automatically change to SwiftKey when the phone is in landscape and switch to Swype in portrait.

I did some research and found the procedures to root my phone. The entire process took me about half an hour. As it is my first time, I tried to ensure I followed some rather unfamiliar steps. It wasn't hard, but definitely not trivial. I needed to plug my phone into my PC and move some files around and then do a special boot.

After rooting I installed Keyboard Manager and my phone was able to change keyboards on an orientation change. Since then, I noticed that after a few days, my phone feels a little laggy. It was barely noticeable. However, when playing back music over my car's BT, once in a while, the music stutters. It would happen once every half an hour. Then after another day or 2, it would do it every song. At this point, I have to reboot my phone and then everything would go back to normal. I find that after rooting, I had to reboot my phone twice a week because of this music stuttering.

Last weekend, I found a means to get the keyboard switching functionality without needing to root my phone. I decided to unroot it. I used Kies to do a software update which unroots my phone in the process. For the past week, I have no experienced this stuttering and my phone is as smooth as always. The non-root app I used to switch keyboards doesn't work as well as the rooted app. However, I do find that having a more stable phone is worth the trade-off.

Android phones have many customisation options without needing to root. Rooting involves much more than just installing and configuring an app. If an unrooted phone suits your needs, I don't see too much benefit to rooting. My personal experience with rooting resulted in some draw backs. I know that many people who do root their phone has found it to be more stable or just better overall. Perhaps, more needs to be done to achieve that. I did the minimum amount of work to root my phone as there was only one feature I needed at the time. I suspect that there is a lot more I perhaps could have done, but I had niether the time or the desire to dig deeper into rooting than I did.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for sharing your experience with rooting your S3 I to would like the keyboard orientation to change, I share your pain with that :) Thx alot
 
Stuntman said:
I would just like share with you my experience rooting my SGS3. I'm a first time rooter myself. After using Android phones for 2.5 years, there was one feature that I wanted that at the time I could not get without rooting. That feature was for the keyboard to automatically change to SwiftKey when the phone is in landscape and switch to Swype in portrait.

I did some research and found the procedures to root my phone. The entire process took me about half an hour. As it is my first time, I tried to ensure I followed some rather unfamiliar steps. It wasn't hard, but definitely not trivial. I needed to plug my phone into my PC and move some files around and then do a special boot.

After rooting I installed Keyboard Manager and my phone was able to change keyboards on an orientation change. Since then, I noticed that after a few days, my phone feels a little laggy. It was barely noticeable. However, when playing back music over my car's BT, once in a while, the music stutters. It would happen once every half an hour. Then after another day or 2, it would do it every song. At this point, I have to reboot my phone and then everything would go back to normal. I find that after rooting, I had to reboot my phone twice a week because of this music stuttering.

Last weekend, I found a means to get the keyboard switching functionality without needing to root my phone. I decided to unroot it. I used Kies to do a software update which unroots my phone in the process. For the past week, I have no experienced this stuttering and my phone is as smooth as always. The non-root app I used to switch keyboards doesn't work as well as the rooted app. However, I do find that having a more stable phone is worth the trade-off.

Android phones have many customisation options without needing to root. Rooting involves much more than just installing and configuring an app. If an unrooted phone suits your needs, I don't see too much benefit to rooting. My personal experience with rooting resulted in some draw backs. I know that many people who do root their phone has found it to be more stable or just better overall. Perhaps, more needs to be done to achieve that. I did the minimum amount of work to root my phone as there was only one feature I needed at the time. I suspect that there is a lot more I perhaps could have done, but I had niether the time or the desire to dig deeper into rooting than I did.
Click to expand...

Out of interest, how did you use Kies to unroot? In my case Kies always refuses to touch the phone when rooted as it is modified ?
 
Rxpert83 said:
Root by itself won't cause the phone to lag. That's a strange thing there :confused:
Click to expand...

A few other people told me that as well. When I rooted the phone, I installed Keyboard Manager. That was the app that enabled the keyboard switch when the orientation changes. Others have suggested that it was possibly Keyboard Manager that was causing the progressive music stuttering and lagginess. When I unrooted, I removed Keyboard Manager as well and replaced it with Keyboard Manager Plus.

jjbturnage said:
Thank you very much for sharing your experience with rooting your S3 I to would like the keyboard orientation to change, I share your pain with that :) Thx alot
Click to expand...

There is a way to do it without rooting. Install Keyboard Manager Plus. I find that it works most of the time, but not always. Sometimes it leaves the prompt to select a keyboard on the screen. Sometimes it doesn't do anything. So far, it's the only solution that mostly works for an unrooted phone. It's good enough for me. If it doesn't work, I just have to flip orientations again and back and it works. Much easier than having to select the keyboard all the time. Most of the time it works fine.

Gomjaba said:
Out of interest, how did you use Kies to unroot? In my case Kies always refuses to touch the phone when rooted as it is modified ?
Click to expand...

I was looking for the unroot procedure. As I wasn't very knowledgeable at rooting, I wasn't sure exactly how to restore the backup image that was created when I first rooted my phone. I couldn't find the procedure at the time and decide to do something else.

I decided to clear the pictures and videos from my phone and move them onto my PC. It wasn't obvious which directory on the phone they were in, so I decided to use Kies. I wasn't able to do that in Kies, but I stumbled across a prompt that told me I had a firmware update available for my phone. Now, I did try to check for updates some time ago, but got a message that none were available because my phone was modified (rooted). I decided to give it a shot and let Kies do the update. It worked. Afterwards I found that the phone was unrooted. I installed Keyboard Manager Plus and my phone has been smooth for almost a week now.

It was by fluke that I stumbled upon a way to unroot my phone. I wouldn't suggest anyone actually try this as I'm not sure exactly what happened. All I know is my phone is in a state that I'm happy with. :D
 
Yup i have the utmost respect for XDA and what its users do for us. They just dont suffer fools lightly lol :D
By "below" i just meant on how advanced it is.. not that its better btw lol :)
 
For me one of the biggest benefits of a rooted phone is the ability to run firewall software.

Before, I used to worry about apps phoning home with personal information - particularly 3rd party keyboards that could potentially log your keystrokes and learn banking passwords etc.

With a rooted phone and an app like AFWall+ you can choose which apps can access the internet. It gives you some peace of mind.

I also like the ability to flash the photosphere camera from the Nexus 4 onto my S3 :D
 
I literally rooted my phone because I could. Now that it is rooted there are apps I use constantly; adaway, titanium backup, greenify and then learning how to flash stuff. I used to regularly try out different modems which can be done with odin but easier to flash when using CWM.

And now that I like trying out ROMs I'm hooked!
 
davoid said:
For me one of the biggest benefits of a rooted phone is the ability to run firewall software.

Before, I used to worry about apps phoning home with personal information - particularly 3rd party keyboards that could potentially log your keystrokes and learn banking passwords etc.

With a rooted phone and an app like AFWall+ you can choose which apps can access the internet. It gives you some peace of mind.

I also like the ability to flash the photosphere camera from the Nexus 4 onto my S3 :D
Click to expand...

I LOVE the Photosphere camera, but it crashes every time I take a picture and I have to reboot to take another one...my husband (who had no issues on his, same model of phone and same ROM etc) found a patched version, which he put on...seemed ok for a minute then went back to crashing every time...I am now back to the standard camera :(
 
The photosphere camera i use can only be used for photosphere. normal pics crash it but it leaves the default camera intact so its cool :thumbup:
 
funkylogik said:
The photosphere camera i use can only be used for photosphere. normal pics crash it but it leaves the default camera intact so its cool :thumbup:
Click to expand...

Ooooh, good to know...my husband had been removing the normal camera from my phone...I will ask him to put it back on and try again :D
 
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