To Root or Not to Root

[Shauna]

I have Moto Droid 1 w/ 2.2 Froyo and I am wondering what the advantages and disadvantages are to rooting/unrooting.

What will I be able to do?

What apps do I need to have?

What if I don't like my phone after the root?

Thanks for the Help!! dancedroid

 

[JesseMONSTER]

hmm... personally... Some of the things I LOVE about being Rooted are..
Being able to Overclock and Underclock my phone, for performance reasons and to save my battery..
I love being able to Flash different Roms onto my phone.. so that you can walk up to other people with Motorola Droid.. and just looking at their reactions.
I love the fact that I can go through my app drawer and not see Amazon or Voice dialer..
Being able to carry my laptop anywhere I want and knowing that I'm going to be able to surf the web.. or do any other online things with Tethering
I highly suggest trying it out for maybe a week or two.. just to see if you like it.. and if you don't you can always go back to stock without anyone ever knowing

 

[monkeyboy383]

There are many advantages. Ill start with the few disadvantages since jesse got most of the advantages.
Verizon- tech support is just about useless in most cases, but then again if you're good with making sure you have good backups, you won't need em. Also, no warranty replacement unless you return your phone to stock. But then again, if its ok now... it'll probly be ok till you get rid of it.
Things go wrong- it can be a scary thing with rooting and flashing roms. You can cause alota grief for yourself, in extreme cases ruin your phone till you fix it with a computer. Then again when I light a cigarette, I can light my head on fire. But it doesn't stop me from smoking, just makes me watch what I'm doing... and as long you're careful with your backups, you'll be ok

Now advantages
Tethering w/o big reds big charge
Removing bloatware like amazon mp3 store & such
Being able to move whatever apps I want to SD
Overclocking from stock 600mhz to 1ghz made it feel like a brand new phone. All the new apps these days are taylored to phones with 1ghz cpus anyway, its the new phone standard these days. Not all droids can go that high, but most can I believe.
A huge thing is being able to flash roms & backup! Nandroid (used thru rom manager) will allow you to easily allow you to backup/restore whatever roms you use. Finding the right rom for you is different for everyone, and the customizations from all the ones out there are amazing!

Now apps
Rom manager- switch roms easily, backup, restore... simply awesome.
Titanium backup- move whatever you want to SD, backup your apps so you don't have to redownload them when you start flashin roms
Setcpu- your overclocking needs are solved. Plus, you can have it change how fast your phone is (or battery saving) automatically based on phone temp & battery among other things.
There's more, that's just the basics. Once you get the hang of a rooted lifestyle, you'll kno what else you'll need

Root, you won't look back. but you can if you wanna... but why would you wanna do that? Hope this helps a bit

 

[warrior21]

Rooting the phone only gives you superuser access to the OS so you don't have to worry about not liking your phone. What you do after that is all up to you. You have to ability to flash custom ROMS and themes, install custom kernels to overclock and wifi tether, and have access to root apps. It's always nice to have options and rooting gives that to you. The process is fairly straightforward and simple but make sure you do some reading for a couple of days so you understand what is going on. As always there are plenty of members here to help

 

[Quicksilver7714]

Rooting is fun but it can be stressful when using custom roms. Some times there are a few problems with the Rom also if you want to overclock your phone you will have to install what is called a 'kernel' which let's you clock the CPU up to a certain speed with setcpu. It is real fun tweaking the Rom of your choice to your liking. As stated before VZW will not help with any problems you have when rooted, so just come to this forum and search for your problem before posting a new thread. There are always tons of people here to help you get over any problem with your Droid. But before you start do A Lot of Reading. I wanted to root for almost 3 months but I did not do it because I had to do my research first. There are also some helpful videos on youtube but read the guides on this forum first and some of the other Droid sites like alldroid.org and droid-life.com, they were a great help when they included YouTube how-to videos.

Trying out Sprint for a month. Sent from my Evo using Tapatalk. 4G is pointless when you don't live in one of the few available network areas.

 

[naknak95]

My personal experience with rooting my Droid was good and bad. You can get apps that need root access like WiFi Tether, Drocap, ROM Manager, etc. I used an app called EasyRoot and it worked great. The only problem is if you update to 2.2, you lose root. I recommend not rooting your phone unless you don't care about your warranty. It can be very glitchy, check out this link for more info on EasyRoot: Unstable Apps

 

[Ice_Cold]

Easy Root is no good to Root the right way use this method
RooT Droid Regardless Of OS Version

 

[mwhartman]

If you want to root I suggest that you read as many articles/threads as possible. Make notes. If you have questions post them. Then, if you decide to root and have any issues the community will be here to assist.

Here are a few links that may help:
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/re...-dummies-guide-android-terminoligy-lingo.html
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-labs/74028-root-droid-1-regardless-os-version.html
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/rescue-squad-guides/70875-what-you-need-know-about-rooting.html
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-hacks/632-what-root-means-stop-asking.html

Let us know what you decide.
Mike