Should you root your phone?

The question if you should root your phone or install a custom rom on your phone repeats itself  a few times each day in android discussion so I decided to answer the question in detail once and for all and to refer to this article each time the issue rises.

Why should you root your phone and install a custom Rom:

1. Dramatic improvement in performance - manufacturers always set the limit on the phone slightly below its maximum capacity, either for caution or to increase battery life on the expense of performance, we already seen phone like the T-mobile G2 who was sold with 800MHZ clock speed, and hackers managed to over clock it to 1700MHZ or 1800MHZ there are apps like Set CPU that allow the intelligent user to control the amount of power he wants to utilize from his phone.

2. Better battery life - Cellular providers love to install crapware on your phones and some of the time its either them or the manufacturer close content deals with the likes of amazon for the amazon mp3 app and you might not even have access to purchase songs from them in your country. all they do is eat sapce and memory and battery life from your phone.

With a custom rom you can install a lighter operating system and save on battery and space on your phone, also when you have Root you can also change settings based on use case, and speed the phone when you play games and slow it down when you only read e-mails and save battery life.

3. The best of all worlds - Every manufacturer builds its own shell on top of the google operating system, which means they add little apps and improvements that make our lives easier, why shouldn't we get all the best of all shells and create the ultimate phone? in a rooted phone you can install the great HTC keyboard on a Samsung phone, you can take the live wallpapers from the Dell streak and put them on a galaxy-s phone.

My favorite example is this: When the nexus one came into the scene in January it was touted as the Google phone so it had no shell, a month later HTC released the "Desire" which was practically a nexus 1 but with The Sense UI shell and a software option to activate the FM radio hardware that the N1 had inside.

Here comes the british hacker Paul obrien which does what we call "porting" and manipulates the Desire operating system to run on the Nexus 1, and suddenly nexus 1 owners can enjoy the sense UI widgets and use the built in FM radio, all of a sudden the N1 felt like a whole new phone.

4. Operating system upgrade - once too often a manufacturer releases an OS upgrade only to a few markets and is limited by cellphone providers, users can see how big parts of the world are getting android 2.2 while you are still confined to 2.1 or in some cases 1.6 ( cough Sony cough Sony). in most cases hackers from XDA will release roms that can be installed in your part of the world with the new OS, in some cases like the I7500 from Samsung they actually ported a more advanced OS which samsung did not even create for it. In the US market they can release a tether app that allows you to skip paying 20$ more for tethering when you are already paying for unlimited data plan on your phone.

5. Backup and restore -In a phone just like a PC you keep installing software as times goes by and you see how your phone feels slower and slower, you decide to uninstall apps but it never really fully return to the original speed. You can reset the phone to factory defaults but you end up losing many things, unless you are root all the backup software you will download from the market will not be able to backup all the parts of the OS that are protected. when you root and install app like "Rom manager" you can backup up your rom and at any point return to the exact state your phone was at the time of the backup, when used in conjunction with an app like "titanium backup" you can restore just the data that you accumulated since that backup, so you can recover that SMS message your girlfriend sent you with the list of things she wants from London on your next business trip, and you know that unless you get them, its the sofa for you :-)

Why shouldn't you root your phone?

After all that list of advantages you might wonder "why should anyone avoid rooting" and miss out on all those great things, well here is the list of why you might not want to root your phone:

1. Rooting your phone actually breaks warranty, and violates the terms of service. If you root your phone and you have a hardware problem , the provider or manufacturer can refuse to fix or replace it and justly so. once you tinker with it its yours to fix. it won't happen in most cases but the risk is real.

2. Hackers are not a computer company, with all the abilities and imagination the hackers employ to manipulate the phones, sometimes they break one thing while they fix 10 other problems, most hackers have day jobs and they cannot stay at home all day working on that small issue that bugs you to no end.

3. The almighty BRICK -the biggest risk in rooting and installing a custom rom is the possibility of bricking your phone. sometimes while installing roms or even rooting a phone where the root is achieved through the kernel, you can forget one step or miss type a command and you end up with a very expensive plastic brick.
It is not that common but you can see plenty of people who whine in forums on how they broke their phone, simply cause they missed a step or played with the phone's modem which if you "tickle" it wrong can brick your phone :-), if you are not technically savvy go to forums like http://android.modaco.com and get someone who is experienced enough to do it for you.

4. Manufacturer updates - although the hackers are hard at work at fixing issues with the phone, sometimes the manufacturer itself is hard at work fixing GPS issues or some other glitch, and they release an OTA update ( over the air), once you root your phone your phone will most likely fail the OTA.
You will have to wait patiently until your rom maker will release a rom update or at least an update.zip file with the modified OTA fix to suit your rooted phone.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day most of the reasons to root and install a custom rom are related to taking control over your phone, control how your phone operates, how it looks and even keep different versions of the OS to fit your needs, one for max performance and one for maximum battery life.
You spent a lot of money on that phone and you should be able to do with it what you want, just ask Iphone owners how many limitations uncle steve puts on their user experience.
You realize that Android=freedom. its a freedom you need to use and take advantage of, with freedom comes responsibility, once you go that route you are in charge of your phone for better or worse.
So rooting is not for everybody, if you are unsure you probably either have someone else do it or pass on it completely.

This article should not be considered as a recommendation to do anything to your phone, nor does it recommend you break warranty or void the terms of service between you and your cellphone company or manufacturer. what you do with your phone is your problem and your problem alone.

Full disclosure: I do not charge money for doing anything that is described in this article,I only do this things for my own amusement and love of technology and to help the occasional friend for free.