Taking the plunge, but first a question.

[Rcrdude64]

Alright ladies and gents I have a quick question before I delve into the rooting of a phone since I have always been curious but never wanted a voided warranty. I'm currently using an Evo4g with an extended battery, love it, works all day long without problem. Not the point though. I also have another Evo4g that is considered by sprint "locked" because it was reported lost or stolen and never cleared so it is useless as a phone to me. I figure why not root it and play with the features that I can while on the wifi at work and home right? Will this all work even without it being an active phone on the sprint network? And if so please point me in the right direction for someone who has never attempted to root a phone before so i dont just end up with a paper weight that looks nice.

 

[HawaiiD]

Op,
The whole concept of rooting in a nutshell is to gain full access to your phone.
With rooting your phone you can flash new Roms(CyanogenMod7) and Kernels(Tiamat) to say the least.
And at the same time you can download a bunch of programs that with take advantage
of your root access I.e. Wireless Wifi Tether,Titanium backup, Ram managers,Rom Managers,Set Cpu (which you can under clock or over clock your CPU),
Battery Calibration tool.

All this will change how your phone performs from much improved battery life to faster
running processes.

You can always unroot your phone if you please?
But I will say this... Once you get a taste
of root access? you will not go back

And to answer your question regarding the "dead phone"?
I suppose you could root it and download Apps from the XDA site
via wifi and have fun with it. But the real fun is when your "Active" phone is
rooted.

Aloha,
HD