What is Root and why should you do it (or not)?

Would you like to have more control over your smartphone? Is your technical mojo fully charged? Are you in the mood for something new and exciting?If the answer is yes than you should go ahead and definitely root you smartphone.

But first  you should read and understand about what you are going to do and follow the instruction to the letter. The most important thing here is to be careful. Do a backup of your data and be sure that you have all the tools that you need for rooting your phone before you begin. The risks that you take when rooting your android smartphone are minimal and the potential benefits are pretty impressive. But let's not go ahead of ourselves, first things first:

What is Root?

You don’t get root access to your Android device straight outta the box and several applications won’t function without you having root access to your investment. To make things easier to understand i'll make use of an analogy. If you have interacted with a Windows PC in the past, chances are that you had administrative rights and you could have altered and tune the operating system in any way that you wanted to. Rooting your Android smartphone is equivalent to having administrative privileges on Windows. In our case, this means having access to the entire Android operating system and getting around any restrictions or limitations that your smartphone manufacturer may have implemented. This is basically what happens when you proceed with the rooting of your Android smartphone.

Should i root my smartphone?

With great power comes great...fun! If you ask for my personal opinion i would advice you to go down the root way. Why? Here are some of the immediate benefits of rooting your phone: 

• You can download an run much more applications
• Gain full control over your android smartphone
• You can customize and theme your device in any way you want to
• Improve your battery life
• Free up internal storage
• Back up and restore the whole system

There are also less obvious advantages of having your Android smartphone rooted but this advantages are the ones that should matter the most in your decision to root your Android smartphone. Here you will find listed some of them:

• Rid your phone of all manufacturer's or carrier bloatware (software that you don't really need)
• Access your entire file system
• Set up wireless tethering
• Completely block advertisements
• Flash custom ROM's (install modified Android ROM which can add extra useful features to your phone; you can find more on this in other dedicated posts on this blog)
• Speed up your phone by overclocking the CPU

What are the risks of rooting my smartphone?

Before you proceed with the rooting of your Android device you should take in consideration the risks that come  with this procedure. There are three main concern factors:

1. Voiding phone warranty: if you root your phone you will most likely loose your manufacturer or carrier warranty. Imagine this scenario: after you have successfully rooted your phone something goes wrong with your touchscreen or battery. In these case you will not be able to take full benefit from you warranty. But remember this, your phone can be very  easy un-rooted and you can than install the original firmware of your phone and your warranty will be valid once again.
2. Bricking your smartphone: there is a minor risk that you will end up with a phone useful to you as a brick. This could happen only if you don't follow the necessary steps in rooting your phone or if you flash a ROM that wasn't designed for your device. If you do your homework before trying to root your phone, follow the right steps and pay attention to what you are doing the possibility of bricking your phone should be almost nonexistent.
3. Security and Malware risk. You could be confronted with some security risk after you have rooted your phone depending on what applications you install. 

To root or not to root, this could be a question.

If you enjoy being able to tinker with all of your phones settings, discover new ones by installing custom ROM's or you like to customize every single inch of your smartphone screen by installing countless themes - than rooting is the answer for you. Other potential benefits that come from rooting your phone like -overclocking your CPU, improved battery life, eradicating the bloatware, root-only applications, improved general performance - could only cement your decision to root your phone and you’re most likely to find the hole process of rooting extremly rewarding.

Depending on your willingness to experiment with new things and your technical proficiency , rooting your phone should be a straightforward process. If not one of the above benefits intrigues you, rooting your android phone probably isn’t for you.

By Aleman Adrian