Rooting and Apps

[Heifzilla]

Newbie here, going from a BB 9700 to an Evo Shift (arrives tomorrow )

I know close to zero about Android but am obviously trying to learn. With my BB, I can very easily change themes to suit my mood, and I have seen a bunch of people on these forums who seem to be doing to same for their Android phones. I know there are apps out there like Beautiful Widgets that have skins, etc..

My question is this: do I have to root my phone in order to use these apps or are there apps that will switch skins, widget icons, etc., without having to root the phone? If I need to, I will (I can follow directions) but I'd rather not have to...yet.

Is there a way to easily tell if an app will only work on a rooted phone?

Thanks much!

Heif

 

[RHChan84]

Apps like LauncherPro and ADW will change the look on your home screen and no rooting is needed. ROMS/Kernals will need to be rooted to go to those.

 

[dtboos]

As RHChan84 stated, you can change the look a LOT just with regular apps and launcher replacements. However, for full out changes which are custom kernals/ROM's (basically customized android builds), which can change the very functionality of the system and change the way icons look ect requires rooting to install.

Rooting really isn't a big deal though, and is easy to do. There are lots of tutorials here in the advances android section of the forums.

 

[Heifzilla]

Thank you for your replies!