Just curious - do you root your phone? Years ago, I used to meet many people who did this… Not so much anymore…
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I have not rooted a phone for years now. The last one I did was the LG G2. My reasons I used to root was to learn and some apps I used needed root access. I did check https://lineageos.org/ recently but they do not support my current phone.
Saying this I did root my LG G4 because of the boot loop issue the model had and I needed to get my data off the phone. The root software allowed some cores of the cpu to be turned of so the phone would boot. if I remember correctly. Then LG denied my warranty due to this… I took the phone company to court for replacement. On the first day of court the MD of the phone company showed up with documents from LG. The Judge said I did have a case as rooting a phone does not invalidate the warranty, which I already knew and explained to the phone company/LG. It just invalidates the manufactures warranty. After this the phone company and LG offered a settlement to me. I accepted the offer. I think it was obviously not worth their further time and they probably did not want a precedent that rooting does not invalidate your consumer rights in the UK/EU at least.
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I’ve never rooted any device.
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I’m on my first smartphone not rooted or jailbroken, and I started when the first iPhone was released. Most of the functionality has been incorporated in the operating system and that’s great that Cydia et. al. led the way (by copying much of what Android could do). However, it truly is frustrating every day to not be able to use a computer they way that you would like (and that would improve one’s efficacy).
I would happily lose my rights for support or repair if there was an option to open up a phone to advanced settings/configuration changes. I am very tempted to leave iOS because of this and think about it almost everyday. It’s from laziness mostly that I’ve not switched, and not because of some comfort level in using a particular device or OS. I’m a polyglot when it comes to tech, always have been.
Maybe when my current battery starts failing and I am thinking about a new phone I will switch and get a phone that behaves the way a computer should.
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Nope, I don’t root my phone, can’t see a good reason for me
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Nope, no reason…
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The last time was a Galaxy S3. Then when I started using Android/Google Pay, I stopped because there was a rush of knocking that functionality out.
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I rooted my Galaxy S3, because my boss used my contract to get a new iPhone, twice… So it had to last 6 years. I rooted it and put a custom ROM with security updates on it.
Nowadays, with payment and password applications, I wouldn’t root.
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Nope I have not rooted my phone for a long time. First time I rooted my original iPhone in order to add support for my carrier. It was a US purchased iPhone, and I was living in Greece. After that I noticed that a lot of the packages downloaded from alternative app stores like Cydia were inferior.
I stopped using alternative app stores all together. Then on Android, I did root some of my phones out of curiosity and to remove some of the default installed apps but after a while stopped bothering altogether.
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I’ve never bothered. Always been scared of ending up a bricked phone and an invalidated warranty.
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Count me as too chicken. I was always afraid I would lose complete functionality
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No reason to with the variety of things I can do with my Pixel.
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Always.
There are many tools in my bag of tricks that need it.
As I am not in the USA it is worth changing the NTP and GPS configs so I get a much faster fix and responses.
I also don’t want to use Googles location backend, I prefer using the Mozila backend.
As I don’t want all that crud that the phone maker and google thinks I need to have running all the time that I never use.
I want to scan for fake cell towers this needs lower level access to the radio chip.
I want to use HOSTS based blocklists.
Many apps I use want more Linux support so I need BusyBox.
I want to install F-Droid as a system app so it has permission to automatically update all the safer open source software I prefer using.
Installing any app you consider important as a system app means after doing a factory reset you still have the apps you really wanted.
If you have never used a ROOTed phone then you have no comparison base.
Imagine using Windows and every time it asks for admin elevation do do something fairly mundane, you can’t.
Imagine using Windows 10 S.
Many people fear ROOTing understandably, but somewhat unjustly.
A good ROOT tool has a decent interface and will default to always ask permission and block anything you did not say OK to.
Malware ROOTing problems more often tend to occur when malware ROOTs the device and does not show you nice popups asking permission.
You can ROOT, clean the crud, update and install as system apps what you think the device should have come with.
UnROOT.
From now on all your factory resets are less of a chore, and an easier decision to make.
You can image the device and reflash with yor clean version any time you need or put the factory original back.
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I have rooted multiple phones in the past. Nowadays there really isn’t any reason to do that unless you keep a phone till it stops getting security updates then you can root it and install a custom rom. Rooting can be very easy or very difficult most of the time its just issues you run into with usability because of a badly made rooting app. It is definitely something you want to know your way around tech and reloading roms and images because they can work great at first then have lots of issues later (like even an unrooted phone can) Also it can break payments through NFC as well as Knox on Samsung devices and cause them to get a counter showing that it has been modified and sometimes very difficult to reverse. But in general it is fun to play with this stuff and see what you can do.
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In addition to secure apps not liking root. I also experienced while installing the Square POS app on an Android phone recently that the Square app made me turn off the normally hidden “Developer options” menu I had enabled on the phone.
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Yeah a lot of newer phones allow you to unlock the boot loader from within the developer options which is a lot like rooting your phone so its not surprising that secure apps would want those options disabled.
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No. No need for me these days.
Tried to root my old Samsung S8. Despite multiple articles telling me how, I could never get it to to work, so I gave up on trying. I have no desire to root my A8 or Moto G7 Power.
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No I need the ability to use Samsung pay.
Also I can’t trust the “developers” of the roms - even though some are open source who is actually auditing it.
Nope…
Had a Windows phone that I didn’t feel needed it then iPhones where I was too scared because of all the brick stories out there. Plus, I’ve never needed to root. I never had apps or tools that needed it. I’m a boring phone user and enjoy playing with my tech urges on the computer rather than my phone.