So I've been hearing a lot about this lately. All I've really gotten from it is it lets you have access to more apps with the access to root system stuff. But that kinda makes me think you would be more open to data theft. And I haven't really heard about any cool apps or whatever benefits to doing this. Anyone here done this to thier droid?

i read about rooting a little bit but have no real desire to do so

sure some of the things like getting rid of preinstalled apps i'll never use or putting 2.3 on my phone to laugh even harder at my sister who is tired of motorola dragging ass on the 2.2 update for her phone would be nice but i can live with my phone the way it is

Why I root:

Teethering (although I guess certain phones can do this or offer this as a paid service so its not needed in all cases, I like it for free)
Overclocking (I feel the need for speed)
AdBlocking (I'm a horrible person, but I like my free apps to be Adfree too)
Customizing/Tweaking (I can remove apps Motorola doesnt want me to)

Deadman will be so disappointed when he reads this thread.

I rooted because:

• Verizon wants to charge me, on top of my unlimited data plan, $20 for...two gigs of transfer?...per month, with $10 per GB in overages. To Hell with that! With rooting, I was able to install tethering software that doesn't try to rip me off.
• I don't use Blockbuster, the Madden NFL demo, or the Need for Speed: Shift demo and it's clutter in my app drawer
• If I want a more advanced ROM, I now have the option to install it

TETHERING

oh no someone spelt something wrong
on the internet
quick to the big red font mobile.

What? (Also, I helped Deadman root and install Cyanogen on his Android phone, so... )

Anyway, usually a new ROM or tethering is the reason people root. There is no major security flaw in rooting, only with what you can do with it. (Just like anything else, if you leave your door wide open, it's your own fault. But the mere act of rooting doesn't do that.)

What everyone else said. Except jim.

Because he's Australian, and the word "root" means something different there.

A few things..

-Verizon never really charges for the 2gb overage. I use 8gb a month on average. Never had a problem.

-rooting is useful for all the reasons mentioned above. Unless your on ATT you can install 3rd party apps natively on android although you must be careful because yes, data mining is a possibility.

-if you have a phone with a 1ghz processor and 512 memory, rooting is pretty much a novelty unless you want to tether. My Droid 1 was necessary to root in order to function properly on android 2.2, as it was slow and sluggish on stock kernel and rom. I just got a Droid X of someone and this phone needs absolutely nothing to fly, best phone I've ever owned. Rooting and overclocking will also kill your processor and battery life, which is already a big problem with android as it is.

-If your rooting a Droid 1, Project Elite is the ONLY rom you should bother with.

the problem is that far too many people say "teethering" and when you hear/read "teethering" as much as i have you tend to whip out the big red font because it irritates you

same thing with people who can't say nuclear properly... except they can usually spell it right

Oh God does the nuclear thing piss me off.

"Nuculurrrrr herpderppppppp"

I see "teethering" and think this:

MAYBE IM CHEWING ON MY PHONE.

you don't need to be rooted for that :p

It does if you have a ROOT CANAL.

Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!

go straight to hell, wolfy!

Do I collect $200?

Data theft isn't really a problem after rooting. It can happen regardless if its rooted or not because its normally a malware app someone installs. I recommend rooting, it helps your phone have less bloatware, opens up features, helps the phone run smoother, and you have a variety of choices of which ROM to run. xda is the leader in development of custom ROMs and are generally trusted to put out safe stuff. They do a good job of policing themselves and you can find many options for making your phone do exactly what you want through themeing apps. Since each ROM is specific to device, xda splits them and has plenty of information on how to root and they usually have methods to unroot your phone and bring it back to stock depending on the model.

Don't be scared off of rooting, I've done it and not looked back. I know people that have the same handset as me and they ***** and moan about it sucking because they are on stock and don't know theres an option to make it run better.

edit: I haven't updated in a while and now I'm running Gingerbread, last time I tried it I was having difficulty but so far so good this ROM. GingerSenseTazzv6 for any Eris users that care.

I rooted to get a custom ROM. On my phone (Vibrant) that mean, way better general responsiveness and performance, tweaks and customization, tethering, adblock, but most importantly, about three times longer battery life.

Be careful running gingerbread on older handsets with 256 mb of memory. The task killer will go insane and kill everything every 5 minutes, this includes Pandora, all apps meant to constantly run, and text messaging (meaning you wont receive messages), etc.

Some roms have options to allow certain apps to remain locked in memory, but usually 5 Max that I've seen; text messaging and your launcher will take up two.

I think you Nd I are the only Eris owners here. But yeah I've been running it since Thursday and i have to admit I've missed sense. Was running gsb, and kaosfroyo before before that. You know he's got v7 out now. Page 56 of the thread. Maps and mac fixed but mms is broke again.

I attempted it once on my Epic but was unable to succeed. That was a while ago and I just couldn't find good documentation. Then Froyo came out and I kinda forgot about it but I would like to put Gingerbread on it.

Settle down now! Just because you have a valid point doesn't mean you get to call people names here.

Who was he bashing?

Just wanted to post how awesome tethering is for people who really haven't given it a lot of thought. I'm in a hotel room on my netbook right now. The Hotel has WiFi but honestly it sucks, its dropping the connection every few minutes. Tethering to my DroidX is significantly better, also I trust the connection more. Who knows how secure the hotel network is, tethering is a direct connect to my "ISP" no blocked ports or filtering.

At home, I've even used it to play games on when my primary ISP connection went down once. Granted the pings were like 140ms, but I was able to get a playable TF2 game out of it.

I didn't even give GB a full day. Once again I couldn't stand how it was running and the changes they made. Sense has some nice HTC widgets that are hard to replace, but I find it too laggy for my taste.

Oh well, I believe I'm downgrading soon, probably even moving networks.

The Eris wasn't a terribly great phone to begin with. It's running an extremely old CPU, it was actually outdated when the phone was released.

I've considered this a few times (running the Sprint HTC Evo Shift), but I use some of the Sprint software (notable Sprint Navigation) daily. Will that still be available on a custom ROM or would I be SOL?

You should be able to download Sprint's Nav app from the market, but Google's app is far better IMHO.

As mentioned by llibja, I highly recommend you try Google Maps (and its accompanying Navigation) app as it's far smoother and more functional than Sprint Nav. And it's free. That said, any ROM that still uses Sense should still have the Sprint apps available. Each ROM page usually will tell you what's included, so you won't be surprised. It's not always possible to download it from the market, such as if you're running CyanogenMOD (which is completely stock Android).

I am running CM7 on my EVO and can download Sprint's Telenav app in the market. Is this not the same as the stock sense app?

Perhaps I was mistaken then. I never saw it when I ran CM7. I finally jumped back to Sense though, CM7 just wasn't doing it for me.

Plants vs zombies for free, today only! sad news is you have to download amazon apps.

and it will only download on wifi because it's 74MB

also how is amazon appstore sad news? free app every day, some apps are cheaper, doesn't make your phone explode, isn't some overly bloated app

Never bothered with amazon before today...thats all.

Amazon App store is awesome (I like getting stuff for free that normally costs money). Most of the time I snag the daily free app but dont bother to install it, Just add it to my Amazon Account incase I want to use it in the future.

Thanks for this CM. I do use the Google navigation sometimes, but for some reason it always takes like 5 minutes Searching for GPS before it starts navigating, whereas Sprint Navigation comes up pretty quickly.

This is usually a sign of an issue with your GPS, actually. Google Navigation tries to make sure it has a good lock first, Sprint Nav doesn't.