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What does rooted mean?

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dunksmomma

Newbie
I've frequently seen mention and discussion of rooting and of phones having been rooted. Nothing I've read totally makes sense to me. Can someone explain in simple terms what it means? If I purchased an unlocked and rooted phone would the fact it has been rooted possibly cause me any operating issues or problems if I needed to do a factory reset at any point?

Since I don't totally understand what rooted means and how to do it I'm just trying to figure out if I should avoid a rooted phone. Thanks! :)
 
What I wrote for one phone model (Motorola Droid Bionic) ...

Root

A phone out of the box is un-root-ed and as such is restricted in how an App running on it can access the device and/or other apps running on the device.

Root-ing is running an un-supported modification (A.K.A. hack) on your phone Once and obtaining a circumvention to the restrictions.

An application called SuperUser (or SuperUser Elite) can be installed and then authorize privilege to apps so they can perform functions that an un-authorized app cannot.

In Play Store you will find some apps with a description that they require Root.

The big difference between the un-root-ed world and the root-ed world is that in the root-ed world you assume the responsibility for whatever happens. Don't expect Motorola/Verizon to come to your rescue. You will spend a lot of time searching in forums like ... Bionic - All Things Root - Android Forums ... for more information. (It is strongly recommended that you do some research before root-ing your Bionic.)

... Thom
 
And from the All-Things-Root sub-forums ...

  • Gaining root access is the equivalent of having admin rights on Windows.
    If you didn't root it or purchase it from someone who stated it was rooted, then it isn't.
  • With root you are able to access and change all files on your device where as when you arent you can only access the ones the manufacturer want.
    Root is the Unix/Linux term for administrator. It gives you permissions you do not have normally with the regular user permissions
  • To answer the question is in linux you have the opportunity to gain super user access through terminal this is exactly what root does gives you permanent access to root directory of your phone meaning you can mod the phone all you want including erase the operating system and brick the phone on the bad side.
  • To clarify from above: A phone that is NOT rooted can still be modified (you can still make it LOOK different) by using applications like Launcher Pro, for example, and installing Themes. You don't need to root to do this. If your phone is NOT rooted, you can also still access files that are on the SD card and/or on the internal memory, you just can't access _all_ the files on the internal memory. This is an important distinction imho because a complete newb might misunderstand and think he/she needs to root to access any of his/her files.

    1. If you Root your phone, you will be able to access files that you are not allowed to access without root. These are usually important system files, which you don't want to touch unless you know what you are doing because you could screw up your phone.

    2. If you root your phone you can use certain apps that need to access parts of the Android system that can't be accessed without root, but these are mostly obscure (in the past you had to root to tether your phone to your computer to share your data for internet access, for example, but that is no longer necessary).

    3. Rooting lets you delete the bloatware/crapware that often now comes pre-installed by the manufacturers and carriers, and which usually can't be deleted/uninstalled without root.

    4. Rooting lets you install custom ROMs. A ROM is like installing a different version of the Android OS with some changes/tweeks to it, like changing the layout and design of the user interface (UI), or so that you can get a newer version of Android on your phone before the manufacturer releases an update (if they ever even do!).

    These are the main things accomplished by rooting, and it is important to note that if you attempt to root your phone and don't do it properly, you could "Brick" your phone, which means it becomes inoperable.
  • the others have given you good info...
    but to put it more simple...

    rooting is getting access to the ROOT directory of your internal storage. This is how you can get control of all your phone functions that the service carrier has denied you from.
... Thom
 
It's basically the Android equivalent of jailbreaking an iPhone. Not as necessary as with an iPhone as you can still do a bunch of things with a non-rooted phone like play emulators, but for the advanced shit like removing bloatware/unnecessary apps (as mentioned above by Thom) and memory management rooting is very handy.

If your phone is already rooted (say if you've bought it off someone else) you can restore to a factory setting or re-flash the stock rom (re-install the same normal version of Android - 4.2 Jelly Bean, 4.1 Ice Cream Sandwich etc - that came with the phone) to make it normal again, though a rooted phone should work just fine unless something went wrong along the way. If anything a rooted phone should work a little better

I also agree, do your research properly if you do decide to root your phone. It's simple to do and takes literally 5 minutes, and fairly safe. But in the unlikely event that you were to mess something up. it'd mess the phone up big time, possibly bricking it. I've rooted my Galaxy phones half a dozen times with no problems at all, but there are plenty of horror stories online from people not rooting their phones properly, using the wrong files etc. There are plenty of resources: websites, tutorials, YouTube videos if you decide to give this a go.

In short a standard non-rooted Android phone will let you do 95% of anything you could want. Rooting gives you the extra 5% :D
 
A lot of people seem tp enjoy their rooted phones and wouldn't have it any other way.
I am NOT a rooter, and I still manage to change everything about my phone to my specifications.
I change the interface and the look of my Android phones, and by checking the box to allow downloads from outside sources, I can even install many more downloads than I could otherwise, but I stop short of rooting.
I personally have never needed to root my phones since there is always ample memory for downloads on these newer smartphones, and they suffer very little to no lag.
I do however have whatever bloatware was included on the phone, and can only remove that by root access.
It is really a matter of personal preference whether to root or not.
 
I thought it was a plants way of getting water and nutrients. Lol but it is essentially gaining administration access over your device. Its like graduating from high school or turning 21.
 
Rooting means something very different in australia lol. If you tried to root your phone youll get some funny look :D
 
Thanks y'all! Especially to The_Ty, Damewolf and Thom. Those were the more simplified answers I was looking for. I don't feel it's something I would want to try myself or something I would feel the need for. Just mainly wondering if I should avoid buying a phone that has already been rooted.
 
In summary ... it is a matter of choice ... the subject can become very polarized when discussed.

For me ... I have ONE telephone number for business and personal use and it is never root-ed. When I upgrade to a new phone and deactivate the old phone I then always root it.

The act or root-ing is not destructive. The problem that I have seen over-and-over-and-over-and-over is that the user did not do their homework, made a mistake, and got nailed.

If you chose to root ... read everything you can about your phone and the experiences of other people who root-ed it.

The All Things Root sub-forums at Android Forums are an excellent repository of information for each device.

... Thom
 
i rooted to get rid of TouchWiz, and delete the status bar. never did like the default launcher and even replacing it left a lot of TouchWiz stuff behind (such as the stock lockscreen constantly replacing Widgetlocker as well as the TouchWiz themed status bar that had those toggles in it that could not be changed in any way). TouchWiz also takes a good chunk of memory resulting in occasional lag.

Also, never did like Android's notification area, it was constantly cluttered with icons, and, coming from iOS, i preferred app notification badges and a clean top screen, but maintaining the pull-down shade. so i deleted the status bar, and make it where i can still see the list of notifications just like in an iPhone, and with Nova Prime, i got app badges too. to delete status bar or eliminate all of TouchWiz requires a ROM, which requires root.

Another benefit of rooting is making a fixed CPU speed, for some mid-to-low-end devices who's scaled CPU speeds (by default they constantly change the speeds on-demand based on how fast an app needs to run, but this can cause occasional lag as it is switching speeds, too) this helps a lot if you want a speed to remain set. i keep my GS3 at 700MHz all the time. no lag at all.

rooting also makes it uber easy to backup your device by making it easier to get into recovery. holding down power on most devices when rooted gives the 'reboot' option which gives another option to 'reboot recovery'. in recovery it's a simple click to backup your device so in case of failure you can restore all your apps and data.
 
dunksmomma said:
I've frequently seen mention and discussion of rooting and of phones having been rooted. Nothing I've read totally makes sense to me. Can someone explain in simple terms what it means? If I purchased an unlocked and rooted phone would the fact it has been rooted possibly cause me any operating issues or problems if I needed to do a factory reset at any point?

Since I don't totally understand what rooted means and how to do it I'm just trying to figure out if I should avoid a rooted phone. Thanks! :)
Click to expand...

To make it a little easier to understand ill explain how I use to before jailbreaking people's iPhones.

So..

Apple has a security protocol called house arrest protocol.
With the protocol in effect you can not access certain folders such as the root folder.

In tech terms the root user is one who has complete and total control over said device. By default you do not have root user privileges.

But, like jailbreaking, you can use exploits to take away these restrictions. (much like house arrest) After you run the exploit you take it away, and you have root user rights! :D

One of iPhones exploits for 5.1.1 was limerain. Not sure what they call androids exploit though. :p
 
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