What is ROOTING

What exactly is ROOTING ?

There has been so much talk about Rooting of late. You try to tweak your android device and find out you have to root and some don't even know what rooting really is.what exactly is rooting?

I asked a friend sometime ago and she said rooting was only needed to change font or IMEI of your android device. ROOTING goes way beyond those 2 things. It also has its advantages and disadvantages. I personally, I'm yet to root my Samsung Galaxy S4 and I've got my reasons. Rooting is similar to jailbreaking on Apple devices. A lot of people would say "your android device is your boss till you root it". Today,I'd be explaing rooting,advantages and disadvantages of rooting.

WHAT IS ROOTING ?

Rooting is simply the gaining of access to hardware and software restricted areas that the device manufacturer placed in your device. Still dont get it? you remember Merlin right? imagine king Arthur was the king of camelot and for some reasons best known to gaius,arthur can't enter some rooms in his own castle. Who's the king right? Gaius kind of feels that arthur might wander into the room of spells and cause mayhem. He could as well wander to the scary dragons room and become a king size barbecue. He could also wander,leave castle doors open and let morgana and his enemies into the castle... i think you understand about now. Because of this and many other reasons, Gaius ( samsung,HTC,LG,Techno,Sony etc) have put restrictions to where King Arthur (you and i) can use in the castle (the android device). Rooting simply gives you Super User Rights,helps you get beyond restrictions.Your phone naturally treats you as a guest but rooting gets you the full administrator wand. Imagine a device where you can control everthing about. Removing adverts from applications and games,getting free unlimited coins in games.countless possibilities.

Advantages / Benefits of Rooting in Android

There are many Benefits of Rooting,let's take few of them and show you.

1. Install latest android operating system updates 

most old android devices dont get latest operating systems. It is either because the manufacturer doesn't release them to their devices or the device is just not powerful enough to handle the power in those softwares, it might take a little research,determination and patience. The task can be tiring for a newbie but you'd love it with constant practice and the outcome would sure motivate you.

2. Custom ROM’s ROM
simply means Read Only Memory. Remember when i said you could get the updates that your phone manufacturer didn't provide. You can get those updates via custom roms. With some training, you could learn how to modify official roms from google. You dont like the logo your phone shows when you put it on,you want to change the way the keypads are shown,or the keyboard tone,increase the phone speed. All comes with custom roms. You naturally cannot load custom roms unless you root your android device.lots of roms can be found on developer’s website XDA Developers is 1 major source.

3. FULL DEVICE BACK UP
android has a backup function but again,it is another function with a restriction. The normal backup only saves your OS files but what if you've got enough temple run coins to buy a plane,gone past that annoying stage of Angry Birds or you simply dont want to play DUET all over again...,you can simply backup your apps,apps data and many more,JUST ROOT THE DEVICE. Many devices  won’t let you to do this unless your mobile is Rooted. Root your device,install custom recovery or  Titanium Backup and  you can Backup and uninstall any apps and Games to your SD card.

4. Jaw dropping themes
i must admit,even samsung couldnt please me with their icons at times. I change wallpapers often,tried few launchers but one solution seems to be the best. They are custom themes. These themes change your whole interface way beyond launchers and barely slow down your device. To take advantage of this custom themes,the device must be rooted

5. Install superb apps and add features.

while playing ashpalt 8 on my S4,cool graphics and nice sound,the game put me in all sorts of rage when i couldnt buy the best cars to race. I always came in 5th place. Lots of games likewise just make you miserable when you need to get coins or buy something to play. What if i tell you it was possible to simply increase your 50 coins to 9,000,000. Amazing? With Rooting,installing game patchers,following simple steps and you'd  laugh last. This and many more functions can be achieved. Few of them are,

1. You can increase the Base band of your device which allows you to increase the signal transferring quality of your phone.

2. Some devices dont have wifi hitspot functions,with rooting and installing some apps,your device gets its own hotspot

3. You can remove the Apps that are not usefult to you but still eat your internal memory

Disadvantage / demerits of Android Rooting

1. Security 

 when you root your device and get apps from other sources, There are high chances of getting affected with some malware on your device as these apps are not verified by google for safety or even been tested to work well with your device. A few bad apps make their way to playstore and google only tries to remove them from the store.so, when you choose to install apps from other sources,read about them,confirm the source and monitor changes in your device behavior after installing the app.

2. Malfunctions of Your Android Device or Bricking

 rooting simply involves replacement of original system files with custom files that give you access to restrictions. If rooting is done with improper experience or wrong files,your android device might not work or even die a.k.a Bricked. If you root with a partially damaged file,some parts of the phone software might malfunction. The camera app and radio app once malfuntioned while i rooted with a bad file and custom rom.so,be careful again in choosing root files and rom selection

3. Loss of Software warranty
rooting replaces original files with your own files. Rooting your device is equal to loosing your warranty. So,if you root your device wrongly and things start acting funny,you cant hold the manufacturer for the fault as you have modified what you were given. You're wondering how they would know. Believe me,they always do.

4. Super User Access
super user access has a bad side. You would normally find just your internal memory and SD card in the file manager but on rooting,some files and folders in the operating system might be opened to you. Wrong deletion or virus corruption of important system files can mean a lot of trouble. Also,apps request for user access whenever they want to function. If you grant access to dangerous apps,someone might just end of stealing important information from you or even corrupt your device. Be careful installing apps and granting super user access to those apps.

5. Rooting methods
Another problem of rooting is that there is no one way of rooting android devices. Various devices have various methods and using the wrong method for the wrong device can be very very dangerous. There you have it.....still wanna root your device? LOL, let's hope i didnt scare you. How to detect a rooted device it is easy to detect a rooted device,simply check for the Super User icon in the installed applications.

Myths
1. contrary to believes,rooting your device,installing a custom rom and increasing the speed of your processor to its maximum would make your device explode.it might or would only make the device get really hot and battery drain would be very much.

2. When you root your devices and install a custom ROM,you wouldn't get official OS updates from your device manufacture anymore but installed applications would still get updates from play store and you can still use the play store.

3. Rooting replaces the original file with an edited one. UNROOTING replaces the modified files with the original files but ensure to get the right files for your device . Using a file for Samsung S4 i9500 on a Samsung S4 i9505 would cause problems.

 Finally,I'd share some hacking tips and some tricks that can be used on rooted devices in another post. Have a nice day