Rooting an android device - What? Why? When? How?

Note: This is a preliminary post for a Guide to rooting Samsung Galaxy Ace

What exactly is rooting?

The diverse dictionary definition of rooting ranges from 'the process of putting forth roots by a plant' to 'cheering' to things I cant even mention here. But to an android user rooting is the process by which we add an extra super-controller to their device so as to drive any part of their device in the way they want.

 The Term rooting came from the Linux world(same place from where android comes) where "Root" is the most powerful user of any system ( Laptops, PCs severs etc). The "Root" user in a Linux system is far more powerful than a windows Administrator.The "Root" user has access and control over every single thing happening in his system. Rooting of an android device essentially hands over the same power to the user. The process of converting a regular user of an android device to a 'root' user is termed 'Rooting'.

In a rooted phone this access to the restricted areas is controlled by an app called 'SuperUser'. This app is the doorman who allows or prevents the access based on your approval. The rooting process adds this app to your existing bank of apps. The "Just Rooted" device looks and functions the same as every other device of the same kind except for the added SuperUser app. So to tap the now gained power you need to install apps specifically designed to avail functions offered by a rooted phone like 'Titanium back up'.

Should you root your phone?

The should

Like I said before it gives access to all the processes in the device. There is nothing unchangeable in a rooted device so to speak. But here are the best advantages.

You can remove preinstalled bloatware - Most annoying of all things is the junk that comes pre-installed with the phone which takes up space and slows down phone. There were apps in my phone which I didnt even used once because good alternatives were available to me. But because of their 'system app' status and therefor non-removability, they sat idly there occupying valuable memory until I rooted my phone.

Free up a lot of space in phone- There are 3 Types of storage memory in an android phone

    1 System Memory - Also called ROM. Where the Android system files are stored. The OS update also goes there so its not completely read only.

    2. Phone Memory - Where your apps are stored. Updates to the system apps like Android Market, google maps, gmail etc also goes to the phone memory. In older android phones this memory was considerably low so users were not free to install lot of apps.

    3 SD Card - Where the user apps are stored if the app is 'movable'. Some popular apps like Facebook does not have this option enabled so they stay in the phone memory with their big foot print(In my phone it occupied 26MB of space out of 150MB which was close to 17% of the available memory)

After rooting, you can move any app to any memory. You can move system app to Phone Memory, move the updates of apps like market and gmail to system memory and move apps to SD card even if movability is not there by default.

You can do complete backups - You can completely back up the system and user apps including the user data. I would recommend Titanium back up for the task. As the user data is also backed up you dont have to set the preferences again if you are restoring. Also you can create Nandroid backups ( Complete System Backup).

Change the looks of your device the way you want

Prevents ads - You can prevent ads from showing up in your phone. But I wont recommend this because considerable time and effort are put in for making every app and in my opinion they should be rewarded for their work.

Fun - Exploring new territories is always fun and if your phone is alredy out of warrenty coverage, you can try rooting to have some fun.

The should NOT

Warranty - "With Great power comes great responsibility". The Super-depth access also means that you can damage the phone pretty easily. delete some essential system file and voila! you got a dead phone. The Manufactures cannot be held responsible for such mis-happenings because we are pushing the system outside of the intended use. So as you root your phone you WILL forfeit your warranty.

Stability Freaks -Don't go there. Rooting reduces the stability of the system so there is a higher chance of crashes and automatic rebooting.

When should you root your phone?

Thats a subjective question . You can try rooting when your 'should root' outweighs 'should NOT'. I rooted my phone once the warranty got expired and the phone memory was reduced to such an extend that i could not install anything without deleting another one and cache files needed to be cleared every day just to avoid low memory warning.

If your phone is under warranty you better not root, because maintenance of an out-of-warranty smart phone is costly.

How to root your phone

Almost every phone has a method to root. Or guys at xda-forum will find a way for that. Mostly it involves starting the phone in recovery mode and applying an update file. This update file is different for every phone hence you need to use the file specific for your phone. Please do a little search and read about experiance of others in rooting their phones.