Galaxy Nexus rooting and unlocking questions

[Techrayder]

Hello all! This is my first post! I am a proud owner of a Galaxy Nexus and have a few questions about unlocking the bootloader and rooting it.

1. If I were to unlock the phone and stay stock, but root it, will I be able to accept official OTA updates anymore? And if not, is the unrooting process to get to that point a pain to go through?

2. Is it really worth unlocking/rooting the phone if i'm going to just stay stock with root permissions and hope to stay up to date with people getting OTA updates?

Also, can anyone convince me on if I should or if it is very beneficial to getting into flashing ROMs on this phone?

 

[digitalslacker]

Hello all! This is my first post! I am a proud owner of a Galaxy Nexus and have a few questions about unlocking the bootloader and rooting it.

1. If I were to unlock the phone and stay stock, but root it, will I be able to accept official OTA updates anymore? And if not, is the unrooting process to get to that point a pain to go through?

2. Is it really worth unlocking/rooting the phone if i'm going to just stay stock with root permissions and hope to stay up to date with people getting OTA updates?

Also, can anyone convince me on if I should or if it is very beneficial to getting into flashing ROMs on this phone?

1. Yes, usually. It's possible that an OTA would remove root but it won't re-lock the phone.

2. You can root without unlocking so they go hand in hand. I personally think unlocking and rooting is worth it but I know plenty of people with this phone that are perfectly happy keeping it stock so it's really up to you.

3. Again, flashing ROMs is beneficial to some people but others prefer to just keep things completely stock or simply root it. I'm not sure anyone is going to convince someone else they should install a custom ROM, its not for everyone and when you mess it up it's pretty frustrating to get back to stock if you don't do your homework. The benefits range from being able to install custom kernels that tweak CPU and voltage settings to simply installing ROMs that give you a tweaked or completely different UX/UI.

The GNex is a dev phone so it can be tweaked and hacked but that doesn't mean it needs to be in order to be awesome, it's great stock.

 

[spacecasespiff]

how do you root without unlocking the phone and then how would you unroot that. I was under the impression that you could not do that. Now with that i still think unlocking is a good idea just incase.

 

[threepio]

how do you root without unlocking the phone and then how would you unroot that. I was under the impression that you could not do that. Now with that i still think unlocking is a good idea just incase.

Rooting without unlocking would pretty much be worthless i think

 

[Techrayder]

1. Yes, usually. It's possible that an OTA would remove root but it won't re-lock the phone.

2. You can root without unlocking so they go hand in hand. I personally think unlocking and rooting is worth it but I know plenty of people with this phone that are perfectly happy keeping it stock so it's really up to you.

3. Again, flashing ROMs is beneficial to some people but others prefer to just keep things completely stock or simply root it. I'm not sure anyone is going to convince someone else they should install a custom ROM, its not for everyone and when you mess it up it's pretty frustrating to get back to stock if you don't do your homework. The benefits range from being able to install custom kernels that tweak CPU and voltage settings to simply installing ROMs that give you a tweaked or completely different UX/UI.

The GNex is a dev phone so it can be tweaked and hacked but that doesn't mean it needs to be in order to be awesome, it's great stock.

Alright, if I go about unlocking the phone, is there a method so I can back up as much as possible before doing it?

 

[iBowToAndroid]

Alright, if I go about unlocking the phone, is there a method so I can back up as much as possible before doing it?

App data cannot be saved. All you can back up is any files on your storage (pictures, music, documents, etc.) If any of your apps allow you to backup data to the memory card, do that before you unlock. Then transfer everything into a blank folder on your computer and transfer it back when you're done