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To ROOT or not to ROOT??

SuperKitch

SuperKitch

Newbie
HTC Sensation User in need of help and advice..............

I've had my device near on 6 months. I love it :p, but the battery life can be a bit rubbish :(, and sometimes after launching games, when I attempt to return to the home screen, I get a whitr screen with HTC written on it, which lasts approx 10 secs, before I have to wait for my widgets and apps to load up..............this can be irritating slightly! :confused::confused:

My friend, who is a HTC Desire HD user, mentioned ROOTING my device..... but I am unsure on this.

I just need an idiots guide to ROOTING, what does it do? How does it work? Is it reversable? What do I need to do it? pros and cons of ROOTING etc etc.

Is anyone able to help me (Please leave out the sarcasm and abuse, the last forum I signed up to, to get help with the same question, I just received abuse)

Thank you in advance :D
 
Rooting (Android OS) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia will answer most of your questions more comprehensively than I can but here's a basic rundown

Basically, Rooting means gaining access to the "root" of your phone's operating system. From there you can control settings you normally couldn't, thus allowing you to use a greater variety of apps, for example, or change out the operating system entirely... essentially it's the android's version of jailbreaking.
Depending on how far you go with it, it's usually reversible, especially if you keep backups of everything.
I think there are programs that'll root the phone for you if you search around this site and xda-developers.com for a bit.

as for pros and cons...
pros:a wider variety of apps to choose from. For example, there are apps that let you regulate the 'clock speed' of your phone's processor and make it go faster or slow down to conserve battery power that can only work on rooted phones.

cons:
Unfortunately for most carriers, rooting the phone will void your warranty. it also comes with a few risks, the worst of which is you can "brick" your phone... in other words, cause an error that turns your phone into an expensive paperweight. if you "brick" your phone, that can't be undone either... so yeah, gotta be careful with it.


also I've been told that HTC's website is pretty helpful with regards to rooting your phone


all in all, I doubt rooting will help your issues with battery life or the HTC logo thing... it might be easier and better just to go through your settings and make sure you don't have something enabled that drains your power. for example, I keep my wifi, bluetooth, and satellite connection turned off unless I need wifi, bluetooth, or gps.
though I've noticed a lot of games will use a lot of battery power too... so if you spend a lot of time on the games the solution might be just to keep a charger with you and plug in the phone while you're playing.
 
Using your phone while plugged in, cause it to heat up a bit I find.
I'm still on the fence as to whether root or not, since I'm a Kolb to androids.
IMO it all comes down to how long I'll have to wait for ICS, I hear the earliest is Feb. 2012.
If this release date, I'll be happy to wait, Ile sure they'll deal with battery life, & the heat issues.

Another thing to look into, is the aftermarket batteries available for the Sensation, I hear they can add about 25% extra life daily.
I also hear task killer apps can hog memory, & lead to faster battery drain.
 
For the battery I use an Anker battery, much better battery life.

If you confident that you can follow this guide then I'd strongly recommend rooting, obviously at your own risk but if you follow things exactly you will be OK, also there's a great forum over at XDA that will help with any problems.

I rooted as soon as I got my Sensation and I've never had the white screen issue, I'm just flashing this ICS ROM, love it!

The pros would be that you get better battery life, a more stable phone, more features, more add-ons, lots of bug fixes and you get updates a lot lot lot more quickly than when HTC and your carrier decide to update the phone.

The biggest con of rooting would be that you do have the potential to brick your phone (bugger it up basically) but like I say above if you follow the guides properly you should be alright.

Apart from that I don't know of any other cons, I suppose sometimes you can you a ROM that is in beta so there are bugs.

You can always undo the rooting too if you so wish and go back to how you had the phone.

Look through the guides in the ROM link I posted above and see if you want to root, you will need the latest firmware though if you want the ICS ROM but there's a guide for that.
 
If I end up brcking my phone (im still unclear as to what this means) will be able to recover it?? sorry to be such a n00b
 
Erm... not a hundred percentage sure to be honest, you'd probably be able to save it if you knew what you were doing but if you knew what you were doing you wouldn't brick it in the first place ;)

To be honest, I think once you get over the use of unfamiliar and complicated sounding words it's not as bad as you first thought it was.

Good luck though :)
 
SuperKitch said:
If I end up brcking my phone (im still unclear as to what this means) will be able to recover it?? sorry to be such a n00b
Click to expand...

As long as you follow the guide to the T (don't start skipping any steps that you feel aren't important) you will be fine. Read it, then read it again and take your time. If you have any questions at all feel free to ask them here and we'll do our best to answer them
 
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