Pros and Cons of rooting my Fascinate

[omelet1978]

Hi,

I've had the Fascinate for about a month now and have been learning about android and rooting and such. I'm thinking about rooting it and was just wondering what the pro's and cons were. I'm not a fan of bing and Verizon put too much crap on there...

My main question is whether or not I would get to keep Swype. That texting feature is awesome. Other than that I would love to hear what people think!

 

[SomEngangVar]

The only downside is that your warranty will be void. But if you ever need to use it you can just un-root. You'll still keep all the stuff that comes on your phone, you'll just get more options. Better backups, better battery life with the right app. The galaxy s line is actually pretty open to rooting. It's fairly easy. It usually just consists of popping a file on your sd and running it as an update through recovery or plugging your phone into your computer in debug and running a file from your computer. Although you probably already know that. It took me a while to root my phone as well, but now I"ll never go back.

Here:
HOW TO:Root, Install Clockwork, Remove Bloatware, Integrate Google, Un-root, and more - xda-developers

 

[packerbacker]

There aren't really any cons except the potential bricking that could happen. But all the pros- better performance/smoother, better battery life, ability to change appearance with themes (tho I'm still kind of too scared to try this), ability to completely backup, etc- far outweigh that risk. Besides if you do encounter a problem I would bet money there would be a solution here to wipe the phone and try again. I hardly hear of people who tried to root and COMPLETELY broke their phone.

I am sooo glad I rooted, as scared as I was to do it for the first month and a half or so that I had it.

 

[Chris Kerrigan]

The only downside I can think of is the lack of OTA updates. But to be fair, most people who root are flashing custom ROM's and/or plan to side load an OTA update once it's available online anyway.

 

[Johnly]

Rooting is also very fun but I am currently not.

 

[sengokubattosai]

I just returned my Droid X yesterday and got a Samsung Fascinate. As much as I loved the Droid X, the Samsung Fascinate was $.96 at Sam's Club this weekend (I work there) so for me the exchange will (hopefully) be worth it. But I am looking to a) get rid of Bing and b) potentially update to Froyo, since I believe it came with Android 2.1. Would I be able to do that if I rooted it?

 

[thachizzle]

@sengokubattosai we're getting Froyo later, hopefully early in 2011. But we're getting an OTA to get GPS fixed and other things in the DJ05 update rolling out soon.

As for rooting it, definitely do it. I had my fascinate for a month and was waiting on Froyo to come, but that kept getting delayed so I decided to root it and make the phone faster, take off bing, and just customize my phone. The results were amazing. My phone is screaming fast with customizable looks. I love my Fascinate

 

[Sta11i0n]

The only downside to rooting is you become your phones worst enemy. There's nothing stopping you from doing whatever you want to it. I'd highly recommend as soon as you root, get Clockwork Recovery flashed via Odin, and create a backup. From there, if you do anything harmful to your device, you can always go back to a safe place with it again. There are ways around any negative effects you commonly hear of. Updates will be available to download from places like this, then flash to your phone instead of getting them OTA. If you need to use your warranty coverage, you can just flash a stock image back to the phone to remove root and anything else you've done before returning it. If you run into any problems, that is exactly what forums like this are here for. You have access to a great support community that can give you a hand.

 

[titanx1970]

I say root your phone because waiting for the ota update to froyo is a waste and I have a Galaxy vibrant and my roomate has a Fascinate and I rooted both. Axura2259 I so awesome and I have so much battery. I live in San Francisco and I was traveling back from Sacramento, with only 26 percent on my phone and that was about 3:30 in the early evening and I was playing games and texts and web and when I got home with was two hours without charge. I still had 19 percent and I didn't touch or charge my phone til 11pm. Mind you I unhook my phone at 8am that day.

 

[jwebste9]

Con = Bricking
Pro = everything else, and even if you brick i have learned its not that hard to fix, your heart will sink but then you will fix it an be fine. You will get to remove verizon crap which speeds up phone, add custom roms so you dont have to wait for OTA and get to learn a lot in the process

 

[jackchaos]

is it possible to jump up to Gingerbread? I don't see any mention of that. thanks.

 

[xastormyeveningx]

Will rooting clear my sd card?

 

[anon(94115)]

nope that will be intact, no data loss from there

 

[zero0r]

Man I'm with everyone else here root it or do yourself one better and flash KangBang Comm Rom v1.3. Just PLEASE do yourself a favor and don't be like me and dive in blind even though i came out Ok read up on everything first. It's super simple to do and the benifits are amazing but if you mess up things could end badly for your phone from what i hear but i also hear that a lot of things that look bad are still fixable plus like was said there is some of the best support out there right here on these forums.

 

[jjcasillas15]

Read, Read and Read some more before you root! I rooted about 3 months ago and wished I would of done it sooner. I dont have anything bad to say about it. Best thing I could of done. You'll be amazed at what you can do. From De-binging and De-bloating to changing themes... Its addicting actually, but these forums are very helpful if you do get in some mess. Dont be afraid to ask questions if you decide to Root. Have fun!!

 

[big_limits]

Pros: Brings ur phone out of puberty

Cons: Much like other things after puberty... You will never leave it alone.

 

[Sta11i0n]

Pros: Brings ur phone out of puberty

Cons: Much like other things after puberty... You will never leave it alone.

Well put.

 

[putney1477]

Pros: Brings ur phone out of puberty

Cons: Much like other things after puberty... You will never leave it alone.

haha! I couldn't agree more!

 

[DroidXcon]

Here:
HOW TO:Root, Install Clockwork, Remove Bloatware, Integrate Google, Un-root, and more - xda-developers

thank you so much for this, cause we dont have any of this information here. i would have wasted days and days writing tutorials for no reason

 

[Turtl705]

Thanks for all the info everyone. It's been very helpful.