What is rooting?

[mikecomp93]

What does rooting your phone do? I see the whole other forum category but i thought i could get a rooting for dummies answer here first.

Thanks,

Mike

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[SpookDroid]

The quick answer? Rooting is 'hacking' your phone into granting you access to the most basic level of files (the root folder, thus, the term 'rooting').

Basically it opens the gates of your device and lets you write, read, erase, re-write and modify EVERYTHING in your phone. That's the cool part, the scary part, and the dangerous part. In the right hands, rooting can be fun. In the wrong ones (be it someone who doesn't know what they're doing or someone who maliciously knows exactly what they're doing), it can wreck havoc onto your device, potentially rendering it unusable if you were to delete the wrong file or re-format the wrong partition.

 

[Drunder40]

And it may void your warranty

 

[mikecomp93]

So in other words i will not be rooting my phone lol. Thanks

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[SpookDroid]

So in other words i will not be rooting my phone lol. Thanks

Posted via the Android Central App

It depends on how comfortable you are with modifying your phone to the core and if you deem it worth the risk. There are some pretty cool things you can do if you root, but for some of us, it still doesn't warrant the risk. Rooting DOES void your warranty, although some service centers don't even look for this... but legally speaking, it does void it. And Samsung devices do a pretty good job at tripping a counter when you tamper with the device, so even if you un-root, the counter thingy still shows evidence that you did it before.

 

[Alex Feldmeier]

Eventually you will probably want it rooted because it does open a lot of possibilities like cleaning system files to help your phone keep running smoothly forever. But yes, it voids the warranty and you risk bricking your phone. However, there is almost always a way of unbricking it unless you manage to mess something up real bad.