Wednesday, October 30, 2013

6 advantages and disadvantages of rooting your Android device!

Hey guys! I am sorry, I haven't typed an article in about 5 days due to my exams... Anyways, tomorrow is Halloween! And as '666' is called the beasts's number, today, I give you 6 advantages and 6 disadvantages of rooting your Android device.


Advantages:

  1. Customization: After you have rooted your phone, you can make your phone "different" from the usual. Looking at you, Apple ;) Just for naming a few, you can put a background in your notification drawer, make it transparent, customize your quick toggles screen and the tiles' behavior, change your boot animation, selecting from thousands of themes available in the Play Store, make your status bar/navigation bar transparent, etc.
  2. Added software features: If you are not new to rooting, you may have already heard of +Paranoid Android . If you have not, it is a custom ROM which is based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project) with tons of added features like halo(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5WljHcOyXs) and Pie controls(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F7l4d3bjFM). There are many other ROMs with tons of other added features! 
  3. Overclocking: For improved battery life and stability, phone manufacturers generally underclock or keep the frequency of the processor significantly lower than the maximum capacity. Overclocking means to amp up your phone processor's frequency to help improve performance in games, other processor intensive apps or just for overall UI smoothness.
  4. Software updates: Android is infamous for software fragmentation and mostly in lower-mid end devices to delay the OTA updates to bump up the software version. And even if the manufacturers have the software update ready, many times the phone carriers have to add their 'bloatware'. A good example of this is the Samsung Galaxy S4 (international version) received the 4.3 version update just about a week ago but the US versions still don't have it yet. Another example is the HTC One. But, in this case, none of the versions has still received the 4.3 update. But, if you root your Android device, you no longer have to wait for the manufacturer to update your device via OTA.
  5. Bloatware/Manufacturer's skin: Samsung's Touchwiz and HTC's Sense are the most famous Android custom 'skins'. In the initial years of Android, it didn't have much polish and that 'polish' was provided to Android by HTC in the form of Sense. But after 2010, Android and it's developers have improved drastically and it no longer needs the much hyped polish as it already has it out of the box. On the contrary, sometimes these skins come in the way of our tasks and take up too much of RAM and storage. After having rooted your Android device, you no longer have to put up with these skins!
  6. Other improvements: After rooting, you don't only have advantage of software improvements but also hardware improvements. An ideal example of this is applications like DSP Manager and Viper4Andorid. Both these applications have the same basic concept, to improve the audio performance of your device byb adjusting the base, treble etc. as per your liking. Another example is for phones which have capacitive navigation buttons (like HTC phones) and it is called Swipe/Sweep2wake. Basically, you don't have to press the power button but just swipe across the capacitive keys of your phone.
Disadvantages:

  1. Void of warranty: If you have any problem in your phone that is covered in the warranty, you won't be able to claim it.
  2. Shortage of developers: If you have a famous high-end Android device then you don't have to read this but if you own a low-mid end device, the no. of developers can be quite limited. And this means that you may not have as many ROMs as other famous devices have.
  3. Bugs: No custom Android ROM is bug-free. Literally, there are NONE. It may have a very minor one, but it HAS to have one. Also, before ROMs are released to public, they generally go through minimum 2 phases(maybe more): Alpha and Beta. Alpha versions generally have very little things working but it is for the people who just want to experience something new. Beta builds are comparatively significantly more stable and has much less bugs.  
  4. Chances of bricking: If you are new to rooting Android, you might as well take help from a friend who is experienced in all this stuff or follow EXACTLY as the person who made the video explains STEP-BY-STEP. Bricking is generally caused by skipping a minor step that might not seem important to you but it might be the most crucial step of the rooting/modding process or by simple carelessness.
  5. No consumer support: If you have a problem, there is no"helpline" or "consumer support" to get help from. If you have a problem, search on the internet for it and ONLY if after finding for a long time, you don't get it, post the problem(in the appropriate category) in a community like XDA. And, if you are lucky, you have to wait for someone else to fix it for you if you don't know how to do it. Although, 90% of the times, people don't search in the proper places and post their problems, whose solution is already present on the internet.
  6. Time consuming: I remember, when I rooted my first Android device,the HTC Explorer, it took me about 2 hours. And this is mostly the case for non-geeks. Also, as I stated before, there is a chance of bricking your phone by not doing it properly.
Conclusion: If you are the kind of people that overlooks the cons of a thing(like me), I would recommend you to root your Android device. But, it takes patience and also, not all Android devices are easily rootable. Nexus devices are basically meant for rooting and that's why Google makes sure not to make the process of rooting one a pain in the ass. The decision is totally upto you! Let me know in the comments section if you are already rooted or you made your mind after reading this article. :) 
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