New to the whole "rooting" thingy...

[Grifter]

Ok, I'm asking because I just don't know....I had the original Moto Droid and heard a lot of people discussing "rooting" your phone. I really didn't pay any attention to it at first. Now I have the Droid X, and the IT geek in me is starting to come out to play and wants to know, what are the advantages and disadvantages of rooting? I know if you jailbreak an iPhone, you lose your access to the Apps store - what are the ramifications with rooting your Droid phone?

 

[MyNewDroidX]

I'm new to Android myself and trying to learn my way. I'll let someone smarter answer the "what is rooting" question. In regards to jailbreaking an iPhone, that does not cut off your access to the App store. I just moved from an iPhone and I accessed it fine. Of course we're on a Droid forum, but I mention this so you are careful about what people tell you. Don't take all comments as fact

 

[JCo352]

Well root has not come to the Droid X yet, so that IT geek in you is going to have to wait longer.

 

[gonnadie4thegov]

Well first off you picked a bad time to feel like a IT geek cause the DX cant be rooted yet. But it should come somewhere down the road as the bootloader is cracked

Rooting short and sweet lets you do things with your phone that were previously not included or locked out, and also to make the phone more "yours"

With rooting you can:
Apply Custom Themes (colors, text, boot animations, icons, etc)
Use app's that weren't native to your phone
Overclock (speed up the cpu so the phone is snapier)
Custom Roms (These roms could be newer leaked versions of Android, (like we are experiencing now with 2.2 official release just over the horizon) or just modified stock Android Roms with new features to also customize the phone to "YOU"
Free Wifi Tethering (free usage though your data plan instead of paying the 20-30 bucks extra a month for it from Verizon (dunno how this will play out after the data plan teir's are put into effect.

As far as bad things? There really isnt anything outside of "Bricking" your phone. Now on a Moto Droid thats basically impossible. But it wont be known how possible or hard it is to brick the DX until someone cracks the bootloader. But if the sbf file is leaked (and it prob will be) for the DX it will be just as hard, if not basically impossible, to brick the device

There it is in short, anything else just ask

 

[aw3sk3r]

Thanks gonnadie4thegov for the great reply

 

[zerosouls]

It will most likely be rooted with the amount of people getting their hands on the x. It's just going to take a long time to break down a locked bootloader.

 

[Grifter]

Well first off you picked a bad time to feel like a IT geek cause the DX cant be rooted yet. But it should come somewhere down the road as the bootloader is cracked

Rooting short and sweet lets you do things with your phone that were previously not included or locked out, and also to make the phone more "yours"

With rooting you can:
Apply Custom Themes (colors, text, boot animations, icons, etc)
Use app's that weren't native to your phone
Overclock (speed up the cpu so the phone is snapier)
Custom Roms (These roms could be newer leaked versions of Android, (like we are experiencing now with 2.2 official release just over the horizon) or just modified stock Android Roms with new features to also customize the phone to "YOU"
Free Wifi Tethering (free usage though your data plan instead of paying the 20-30 bucks extra a month for it from Verizon (dunno how this will play out after the data plan teir's are put into effect.

As far as bad things? There really isnt anything outside of "Bricking" your phone. Now on a Moto Droid thats basically impossible. But it wont be known how possible or hard it is to brick the DX until someone cracks the bootloader. But if the sbf file is leaked (and it prob will be) for the DX it will be just as hard, if not basically impossible, to brick the device

There it is in short, anything else just ask

Well, already an IT geek, can't help that

Thanks for the informative reply. I'm looking to learning all that I can.

 

[The White Weapon]

Well first off you picked a bad time to feel like a IT geek cause the DX cant be rooted yet. But it should come somewhere down the road as the bootloader is cracked

Rooting short and sweet lets you do things with your phone that were previously not included or locked out, and also to make the phone more "yours"

With rooting you can:
Apply Custom Themes (colors, text, boot animations, icons, etc)
Use app's that weren't native to your phone
Overclock (speed up the cpu so the phone is snapier)
Custom Roms (These roms could be newer leaked versions of Android, (like we are experiencing now with 2.2 official release just over the horizon) or just modified stock Android Roms with new features to also customize the phone to "YOU"
Free Wifi Tethering (free usage though your data plan instead of paying the 20-30 bucks extra a month for it from Verizon (dunno how this will play out after the data plan teir's are put into effect.

As far as bad things? There really isnt anything outside of "Bricking" your phone. Now on a Moto Droid thats basically impossible. But it wont be known how possible or hard it is to brick the DX until someone cracks the bootloader. But if the sbf file is leaked (and it prob will be) for the DX it will be just as hard, if not basically impossible, to brick the device

There it is in short, anything else just ask

Well, already an IT geek, can't help that

Thanks for the informative reply. I'm looking to learning all that I can.

well just to clear one thing up with this, root and custom roms are in fact, different. rooting gives you "super user" (su) access so you can use metamorph for theming (changing the color of the status bar, the status bar text, changing what the battery icon looks like, adding "percentage left" to that icon (most phones only display in intervals of 10% though), etc.) and you're still able to overclock (OC) the processor, wifi tether, etc. with just root access.

EDIT: apparently OC'ing is not possible with a locked boot loader, like installing cusotm software builds. the process that tells the processor to work at a faster rate is called a "kernel" and the kernels need to be installed through a method that requires the boot loader to be open, so that might be out of the question for quite some time.

the only real problem comes with the custom roms (EDIT: and over clocking) like i said before. someone needs to break the code of the boot loader in order for devs to create stable, home cooked, versions of the OS (some of the more popular ones for the MotoDroid are "Cyanogen Mod" and "Bugless Beast") that add more functionality. As stated before, there really was no downside with the Moto Droid as you almost had to try to brick your phone to actually brick it. However, DX is going to be much easier to break. However, a few of the devs are saying they could (hopefully) have root access by the end of the week for a public release. Again, this is a hope, and not a fact and it could take much longer. At this point, we're all just waiting and watching.

 

[Noxic]

Oh dear, I've gone cross-eyed!! Its the NOOB in me......just got my DX on launch day coming fresh offa BB Storm....what a P.O.S that phone was...

 

[The White Weapon]

No worries everyone has to start at some point. Just keep poking around on this forum and you'll get everything you need to know pretty quickly. Congrats on making the jump!!