Android noob help please

[Acidrop]

Coming from iOS, I've got my first Android phone and love it. I do need some help thought to try and get my head around some bits please.

I ordered a phone from abroad which had to be rooted to have gapps installed. Everything is working fine, but I'd like to flash the latest stock rom. If I do this, will I lose the root? And if so, will gapps still be installed or will I lose that too?

 

[Acidrop]

Ok so I've just flashed the latest stock rom and it's unrooted my phone. Doh!

I actually don't want root access as I need certain apps to run without it. Only problem now is my google play store doesn't connect anymore. How do I fix this please??

Edit: I re-rooted my phone again and flashed gapps from scratch and everything is working perfectly as before.

HERE IS MY QUESTION - If I unroot my phone using SuperSU, WILL GAPPS STILL BE WORKING?? I need gapps working!!

 

[Acidrop]

Since I'm talking to myself here, I might as well do another update.

Unrooted my phone and gapps is still working so all good.

BUT

Certain apps still say my phone is rooted and refuse to work. Phone is confirmed fully unrooted.

 

[gone down south]

I mean, at the very least tell us. what phone, what version of Android, what ROM.

 

[Rukbat]

Certain apps still say my phone is rooted and refuse to work. Phone is confirmed fully unrooted.

Some rooting programs do things in addition to rooting the phone (which consists of copying su and busybox to a system folder, and installing a superuser app, so you have control over which apps can get root. You don't want a virus to have free access to su.) When SuperSU completely unroots a phone, it only unroots it - removes su, busybox and itself. It can't undo the other things the rooting program did, and if an app is looking for something that rooting program did (like make a backup of a system file), the app thinks the phone is still rooted.

That's the why. The how? You need to know what the program you used to root the phone used to root it, then undo all that and remove any files it added. (It has to copy a file that it can run to give it temporary root, or it has to get temporary root some other way - whatever is rooting the phone has to be running as root, so it's sort of pulling itself up by its bootstraps. It should [but not all rooting programs do] remove all that stuff when it's finished.) Then you need to manually go in (you may have to root the phone first) and clean u-p all the junk. OR ... you could flash a stock ROM to the phone. How you do that depends on which phone you have. That's the easiest solution for most Android phones.

 

[Acidrop]

Some rooting programs do things in addition to rooting the phone (which consists of copying su and busybox to a system folder, and installing a superuser app, so you have control over which apps can get root. You don't want a virus to have free access to su.) When SuperSU completely unroots a phone, it only unroots it - removes su, busybox and itself. It can't undo the other things the rooting program did, and if an app is looking for something that rooting program did (like make a backup of a system file), the app thinks the phone is still rooted.

That's the why. The how? You need to know what the program you used to root the phone used to root it, then undo all that and remove any files it added. (It has to copy a file that it can run to give it temporary root, or it has to get temporary root some other way - whatever is rooting the phone has to be running as root, so it's sort of pulling itself up by its bootstraps. It should [but not all rooting programs do] remove all that stuff when it's finished.) Then you need to manually go in (you may have to root the phone first) and clean u-p all the junk. OR ... you could flash a stock ROM to the phone. How you do that depends on which phone you have. That's the easiest solution for most Android phones.

Thanks for the reply. I managed to get it sorted. I unrooted with SuperSU but had to manually delete the busybox and su files from my bin and xbin folders. I think SuperSU didn't fully complete the job because I have a custom recovery flashed. Glad my Barclays app is now working.

Anyway, the phone is a Nubia Z7 Mini. Amazing device for the price.

 

[Acidrop]

Some rooting programs do things in addition to rooting the phone (which consists of copying su and busybox to a system folder, and installing a superuser app, so you have control over which apps can get root. You don't want a virus to have free access to su.) When SuperSU completely unroots a phone, it only unroots it - removes su, busybox and itself. It can't undo the other things the rooting program did, and if an app is looking for something that rooting program did (like make a backup of a system file), the app thinks the phone is still rooted.

That's the why. The how? You need to know what the program you used to root the phone used to root it, then undo all that and remove any files it added. (It has to copy a file that it can run to give it temporary root, or it has to get temporary root some other way - whatever is rooting the phone has to be running as root, so it's sort of pulling itself up by its bootstraps. It should [but not all rooting programs do] remove all that stuff when it's finished.) Then you need to manually go in (you may have to root the phone first) and clean u-p all the junk. OR ... you could flash a stock ROM to the phone. How you do that depends on which phone you have. That's the easiest solution for most Android phones.

Got it sorted. Had to manually delete busybox and su files from my bin and xbin folders.

Phone is Nubia Z7 Mini. Amazing device for the money.