What does rooting do?

Written on 4/18/2011 08:25:00 AM by poison_ivy

"Rooting" or "to root" a mobile phone has something to do with Android phones. Basically, it's like jailbreaking for the iPhone. Rooting your Android phone will allow you to access the system or OS and write anything on it. Why is it called root/rooting? Well, from what I gather, "Root" is the user account in Linux which has all privileges and since Android is Linux, to "root" your phone means you now have all privileges on your Android phone.

So since you now know what Root means, why would you want to root your Android phone? If you have all access to your phone, you can pretty much do with it as you like if you're a developer. For ordinary users, one of the most compelling reasons to Root an Android handset is custom ROMs. Customized ROMs or firmware are tweaked versions of the Android OS made by developers. It's customized because either it adds very useful apps or removes some of the bloatware (unnecessary apps) from the original handset.

In some cases, getting a rooted phone will allow you to run some applications that requires super user access and unlock your phone's security so you can unlock your phone from your carrier, or overclock it.

So do you really need root access? It depends on how you're using your mobile phone. If you're satisfied with just playing games on it then you don't really need root access, however, if you like to pimp your phone like maybe, overclock it to make it speedier or if you would like that Samsung specific App on your HTC Android phone, or maybe you can't wait for T-Mobile to roll out the Gingerbread update and want Gingerbread ASAP, then you would benefit from rooting your Android phone.

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