What more can be done after rooting EVO?

[lnong]

The EVO will be my first Android phone. I currently own the Palm Pre, which I've rooted (by following an unofficial but widely-accepted guide that someone created). With the Pre, I wanted to root it so that I could do the following 2 things:

1) Install 3 "homebrewed" apps that required a rooted Pre: Flashlight app, Tether/Wifi/Hotspot app, File System Explorer app.
2) Use a Windows app (installed on the computer) that someone wrote to enable/disable "hidden" features and hacks on the phone (for UI customization purposes), and to automatically access online stores of "homebrewed" apps that developers created.

Basically, that's all why I needed to root the Pre, because with the WebOS being so new, the Palm App store didn't have any of these apps developed for official release yet.

So my question is for the Android OS and EVO, do similar apps already exist out there that I can just download and install, without a need to root the EVO? I mean I wouldn't want to root the EVO if all the cools apps that want are already out there for free download. What kind of apps or features that you current Android users want to have (or already have) that justifies the need for rooting an Android phone? Sorry, being a noob, I just dont know what apps are avail for Android from the store yet...and Im sure there''s a lot so I dont have time right now to browse thru all of them...

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

On the Evo, some apps require root, others don't. It isn't necessary to root to sideload apps. However, apps like wifi tether (like the one on the pre) requires root access... but USB tether using PDAnet doesn't. There are also plenty of good root apps in the market, which restricts far less apps than Apple or Palm in what can/can't go in there. just saying, if you want porn... its in there. Want an app so you can browse porn and not have worry about clearing the history... its in there. not saying there aren't perfectly good apps and games not in the market. there's an app like tap tap/guitar hero thats was pretty sweet, that wasn't in the market when I sideloaded it. Wifi tether needs to be sideloaded (google search wifi tether for android and bingo).

Also, to answer number 2. There really isn't one. There aren't many (if any) hidden features of android... most of that stuff is already put in there. One example I can think of is the color changing notifications on the N1. It was hacked and activated a while ago by I beliebe Cyanogen, but its now a feature of 2.2 (much like the blink notifications of WebOS). The difference was that on the N1, the hardware was there, but the software wasn't, Cyanogen compiled it from scratch. On WebOS, the ground work was there, but the button to activate it was just hidden. You'll find that Android is a more complete OS than what you may find on WebOS. Pretty much, there's an app for it.

You can also try new developments. The guys at XDA-developers.com are great... much like the guys at WebOS Internals are as well. We should probably have Overclocking soon on the Evo, its already possible on the Incredible.