rooting a Gs5 (at&t) that's on lolipop

[Curado]

Firstly, I have only rooted one phone and that was my GS3 and I used cynogenmod. It was super simple and easy and then they came out with the installer which was a god send. Now I just got the gs5 and it updated to lolipop. Which I like a lot of the features but I hate the scheme and the amount of bloat ware is insane.

second, I am getting conflicting reports on whether I can even root this phone now that it is on 5.0.
1) can i?
2) are there step by step instructions on how to do so?
3)what is the best ROM out for it now? I was checking out the fuzion ROM and that seemed to be pretty decent.

I basically want most of these 5.0 features but also be able to customize and get rid of crap I don't need

 

[anon(1017475)]

As of this date...there is still not a way to root the ATT GS5 (SM-G900A) on Android 5.0 FYI.

 

[dcannoli]

Can you factory reset the phone to kit Kat 4.4, root, dl OTA update?
Maybe there is something similar to that.

 

[wamsille]

There is presently no way to root a Galaxy S5 on AT&T. Furthermore, there is no way to downgrade the 5.0 Lollipop update to Android KitKat. Your options at this point and time are to continue to monitor development forums on sites like XDA, Samsung / AT&T to offer a way to unlock your bootloader to install custom roms, an exploit found to downgrade the firmware to KitKat, or to sell your Galaxy S5 and go with another device that is more open.

You mention the bloatware on the Galaxy S5 - while there are many preinstalled applications you can either uninstall or disable them easily through the settings. Some apps can neither be disabled or uninstalled, so you will want to hide them to avoid opening them. I understand that disabling apps does not free up storage space, but you are freeing up the phone's resources to manage those apps running in the background. This alone can do wonders for users.

You mention the theme. Yes, Samsung didn't give an option for a Material Light / Dark option so it's very pastel and bright. While you can't skin specific apps, you can change the look and appearance of the launcher and icons with Nova Launcher. Add the Google Keyboard and you can make the phone look like it is running vanilla Android. I find that both tend to be lighter on resources than the stock Samsung apps and can help performance. However, I find the stock launcher and keyboard to be more than sufficient.

I'm personally looking at getting rid of my S5 because I prefer more of an open platform and the ability to install Cyanogenmod or any other variants of ROMs that make the phone your own. Plus, I like Android without any carrier / vendor modifications.