Greetings!

LinuxConvert

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Hello, everyone.

First, thanks for existing. Second, thanks for existing big enough to have shown up in a CNET article reminding me about your existence.

The time has come for me to really dig down into my handset and make some fundamental changes. Before I started tinkering, I thought it'd be a good idea to join one of the android communities out there, and learn how to tinker safely without becoming a mason. I come armed with a Missing Manual and a desire to learn.

I'm tired of watching my battery drain so quickly, as well as bloat in general that came with my phone. CNET gave me some of the fundamentals to point me in the right direction, including that of this forum. LifeHacker published a link to an overwhelming/intimidating database about how to pick the tool I'm going to solve my handset problems with.

Hoping to get acquainted with everything I'll need to walk this journey, and then move on to bigger things, like actually contributing to the community. Eventually. One day. When I have the first idea of what I'm doing.
 

Kelly Kearns

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Welcome to the forums!

The good thing about the S5 is I know before Lollipop it could be rooted and the TM one probably can be after Lollipop. I had mine rooted when I had it and removed a ton of AT&T bloat.
 

belodion

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Thank you for your kind words and welcome aboard!☺

Posted via the Android Central App
 

LinuxConvert

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Welcome to the forums!

The good thing about the S5 is I know before Lollipop it could be rooted and the TM one probably can be after Lollipop. I had mine rooted when I had it and removed a ton of AT&T bloat.

On the issue of rooting, there's something I'm not quite clear about when it came to mods. I read several other articles about it, but this question wasn't answered (or, if it was, not in words I understood). It will be, I'm sure, of many stupid questions I ask.

What's the difference between a ROM and an OS, and why do I need to root, if I'm just going to nuke the whole thing and install a ROM from scratch?
 

Kelly Kearns

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On the issue of rooting, there's something I'm not quite clear about when it came to mods. I read several other articles about it, but this question wasn't answered (or, if it was, not in words I understood). It will be, I'm sure, of many stupid questions I ask.

What's the difference between a ROM and an OS, and why do I need to root, if I'm just going to nuke the whole thing and install a ROM from scratch?

I'm limited on rooting experience.

When I rooted my S5, I didn't install a custom ROM, I just rooted it to give me superuser permission so I could uninstall some of the bloatware.

You have to root the device to be able to have the permissions to be able to load a custom ROM, if that is what you want. Not sure about much with the T-Mobile S5, but it is likely one that could be rooted again after the update to Lollipop, there were issues with that with the AT&T variant, which is what I had at the time. T-Mobile seems to do less locking down than Verizon and AT&T.

As far as a ROM and an OS, the ROM is what replaces your OS. Your stock OS is by Samsung, but since Android is open source, a custom ROM is just a replacement OS someone has created.
 

Golfdriver97

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Welcome to the forums. Kelly did a pretty good job explaining the difference between the two terms.

From my Nexus 5.
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