In Geeky words, Rooting is the process of allowing users of smartphones, tablets and other devices running the Android mobile operating system to attain privileged control (known as “root access”) within Android’s sub-system. Now this may a bit difficult to grasp for most of you if you are new to android, so in simple words, Rooting is the process that allows users to gainadministrative privileges of their device. This means rooting make you the Ultimate Lord of your device, gives you full control of the hardware and you can literally control all the core features of your device like the CPU frequency, voltages, kernel, dalvik vm and all other technical stuff which the common user was not supposed to know, but if you do you can greatly boost the customization and utility of your device and tailor it according to your needs to such an extent that your device is entirely your slave and even a single process on it cannot run without your permission. The word root is derived from Linux. If you ever used a Linux system you might recollect “root” or “sudo”. Rooting an android device is very similar the only difference is you need to follow a specific procedure to be able to use “sudo” on your device whereas in linux you just need your root password to use it.
Is rooting a device dangerous? Why are people scared to root their smartphones?
Simply rooting your phone is in no way threatening to your device. Its you who can mess up stuff and make things go wrong. Rooting is like empowering yourself to become the king of a territory which is none other than your own android device. How you rule after becoming the king depends entirely on you, its you who is responsible if something goes wrong not your android device. Nothing can go wrong if you have basic knowledge about android operating system and you understand its concepts clearly. The most important, you are aware of what you are going to do. The sole purpose of this site to educate you properly so that nothing can go wrong. People are scared of rooting because they simply do not posses any knowledge about it and thus while attempting to do so they might mess up stuff and make their experience worse. And believe me there is no situation with an android device you cannot recover from until and unless its a hardware failure which is very unlikely. So no matter what anomaly you are stuck in you can always recover, all you need to do is use google. Its really that easy so the risk gets nullified and the advantages are just too many.
What can i do with a rooted device?
Here is a list of things you can:
- Flash Custom ROMS, Kernels
- Run any android version on your device irrespective of what the manufacturer provided
- Save RAM and Battery (How? Read my other posts)
- Control CPU Frequency, Use Different Governors
- Overclock your CPU to boost performance, Underclock to save battery
- Highly personalize the UI, from the notification bar to app drawer almost everything
- Uninstall or Freeze Bloatware apps provided by manufacturer that waste memory
- Move all apps to External SD Card
- Add init.d support (Explained in other post)
- Customize the Boot logo and Boot Animation
- Hack Apps and Games for Unlimited money, coins etc
- Boost your device’s performance by tweaking some code (explained later)
and Much more that I cannot recollect right now…
