[Tech] Should You Root Your Android Phone or Not?

If you own an Android Smartphone, you might have heard about rooting your phone. Everyone is concerned if rooting is for them or not, should they root or not? Today here we will go through positives and negatives of rooting which shall help you in deciding whether you should root or not

Access Hidden Features

Android being open source, sometimes its not that open to some areas. You might come across some applications which are incompatible with your device. With rooted device, no one can stop you from installing them. You can access system files and do whatever you want. (Disclaimer: Do only if you know what you are doing)

Unleash the power of Tasker

Tasker is a very famous application of market. To use this app, a rooted phone is not mandatory but with root you can do much more. Tasker can be used to automate almost everything with preset conditions like toggling GPS, altering CPU speed and much more.

Better battery life and performance

Lot of apps are available to boost your phone’s performance but when rooted, it goes to a new level. You can use applications like SetCPU to change the CPU frequency. It can be used to overclock your CPU for better performance or underclock in order to save battery. Isn’t that smart? There are certain apps that tend to run in background when you are not really using them- Greenify is the solution. Greenify hibernates the selected apps you are not actively using and brings them back to life when you manually start them.

No more Ads

Ads are the major source of revenue for applications. But, we sometimes hate those ads as they eat up our data and distract when doing an important task. When rooted, there are plenty of app options to block ads for some apps or all ads on the device.

Smooth transition to new device

When setting up a newly bought device or restoring an old one, we take a backup of our applications and data. When rooted, this process is lot easier and you can take backup of system apps and their data, and on top of that, all this can be automated with applications like Titatnium Backup.

Free your device from preinstalled applications

This is a big yes for me to have a rooted device. Root allows us uninstall/freeze preinstalled applications which come from our service providers. Most of them are useless, drain battery and waste memory so its best to remove them. Titanium Backup helps in this process, but be sure that those apps don’t interfere with normal operation of the phone.

Custom kernels

A rooted device can be flashed with custom kernels. Using them, you can make some ‘dark’ tweaks to device. Kernels are responsible for communication of phone hardware and installed applications. So, custom kernels can help you in attaining a better performance, less battery drain and sometimes extra features (say Wi-fi tethering). Flashing can be done manually or automated with apps like Kernel Manager.

Custom ROM

This is the best advantage of rooting an android device. A custom ROM is nothing but Android’s custom version and it changes your phone. Some ROMs can get you stock version of Android or later versions of Android if device doesn’t ship with it. Some ROM bring additional features on the table, some customize your phone while some turn your device’s operating system upside down. So, whatever device you have and if you happen to root it, do try custom ROMs- it’s a new world out there.

Hold on, before you move ahead and make a decision based on aforementioned advantages, there are few disadvantages/risks of rooting an android device. Lets also go through them then you can decide whether rooting is for you or not.

No more warranty

Handset manufacturers do not entertain warranty claims if the product has been tampered with. Rooting a device is like tampering the device on software end, so if you root your device and take it to service center they are not bound to serve you anymore. To address this problem, some methods have emerged which allow you to unroot your device which makes it the way it came from factory and you can make your warranty claims. Again, unrooting is not that easy. Few manufacturers are now shipping their devices with a switch that flips when its rooted which can’t be reset by any means, but number of such devices is very low.

More Security Risks

Rooting is accomplished  by exploiting some  security flaws and installing applications like SuperSU. It is used to handle elevated permissions. Now this can be called boon or a bane. One way you are the owner and you decide which apps get those elevated permissions but novice users tend to accept every request they are asked in order to get the job done or to make a particular software work. A malicious application can do major damage to device and sensitive data. So, there, its not for everyone.

Android has grown up

Only a few things have left which stock android is not capable of doing nowadays, rest are possible. Extracting last bit of performance from device was required in older devices, new devices have latest Android with high specs so one doesn’t usually faces performance issues.

Updating issues

Whenever updates is applied to a rooted device, root is removed. Having said that, after an update user will have to go through all risky steps which he did before. Sometimes, update might fail due to software altercations made while rooting. Another problem that arises is that an update seldom patches the security flaw that can be exploited to root the device. So no more rooting for that device.

Brick-a-device

While rooting, if all the instructions were not trustworthy or incomplete or if by any chance you don’t follow the specifics, your device can be bricked! Brick is a jargon given to devices which are as good as a brick as they can’t function any more. Probability of brick is low but it happens. Sometimes its recoverable and sometimes its not.

Be sure of all these risks before proceeding and judge wisely whether rooting is for you or not.