Root Your Phone!

[TabGuy]

Sorry. At least your work lets you have a Droid

That's because I'm the decision maker with regard to all technology.

 

[macmitten]

Tell you what... I'll mail my phone to one of y'all and you and root and update it for me... Because I tend to screw things up when it comes to command lines etc.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[dmmarck]

Such as, in the same way that no stock software is perfect, no custom software is perfect either. I think its quite a misnomer that there is something inherently more stable about a custom ROM when compared to a stock software build. In fact, the opposite is often true.

The issue I have with a lot of custom ROMs and the modding community is that every sentence about fixing a problem starts with "All you have to do is...." followed by a 20 step guide on how to fix it. And in the end it won't necessarily fix your problem. Going into custom ROMs and modding is just a rabbit hole of chasing the "perfect ROM" by mixing and matching all kinds of things.

Don't get me wrong, I like rooting and ROMing I think its pretty fun. I've ran about every custom ROM under the sun on my Evo and G2, but I don't care for people who think rooting and ROMing is literally the only way to run your phone. Honestly, it is not for everyone... actually, its probably not for most people. For the non-technical or regular user, it brings more hassles than it fixes.

I agree largely with what you said, but I'd only add one clarification--while ROMs may not be "perfect," they can certainly improve upon the OS. I think it's rather easy to see how; devs (usually a dozen or more, depending on ROM) listen to user feedback and update quickly. Sometimes the updates are terrible, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they are stable, sometimes they aren't. But the neat thing that I, personally, love about ROMs is the turnaround time for improvements, features etc.

But rooting isn't for anyone; it's a risk, and each phone has a different path to becoming unlocked (and some don't even truly "unlock") and rooted. Once there, though, there's a very easy, straightforward way to go about things.

 

[axne1]

I've heard about the whole "rooting section", but it's never been made clear to me what important things I'd be able to do that I can't do now, aside from themes (I was into them when I had a Blackberry, now not so much). I won't overclock the phone. My phone works just fine out of the box.

How about increasing battery power?

Sent using axne1's
Beastly Galaxy Nexus Prime!

 

[dmmarck]

How about increasing battery power?

Sent using axne1's
Beastly Galaxy Nexus Prime!

And further, overclocking is only one way that your phone could be faster. Roms can be inherently faster without it, and kernels--without overclocking, even--can have better, more intuitive governors.