Hi Charles,

I have rooted my phones in the past and operated a rooted phone for several years in the early 2010s; I no longer do.

I am relatively tech saavy (use linux on a daily basis, can install multiple operating systems, use terminals, write scripts, deliberate troubleshooting) and found it sometimes challenging because I did not have any familiarity with the lingo, procedures, and recommended methods to root and roms (like different brands of cars, so to speak, all providing the same functionality, but assembled by different entities).

The benefits of rooting are - customization of your phone's settings (like full customization of the launcher, small things like changing the icon size, removing software that comes with the default android OS, increasing the max volume on the phone, etc) no longer appealed as much to me, and there was often a delay between when security patches were being available.

Additionally, some capabilities that were previously only available by rooting - like backing up installed apps and their settings, texts, are now available within the general Android Operating system and within different apps themselves. In some cases, by using these settings, you do trade off privacy because that data is stored on google servers.

The process itself is not very easy and you can very easily 'brick' (render your phone completely inoperable, and in some cases, not even a factory reset could save it, if I remember correctly) as well as erasing all information on your phone) if you do not follow directions extremely carefully, in the correct order, and the correct versions of the software.

Lastly, I've been around several different online niche tech communities and at least at the time I found the Android rooting/modding community to be the most unwelcoming to newer people and people seemed to resent others for asking more basic questions.

That was about 10 years ago so things may have changed but part of the community and those who made the roms spent time on xda forums.

Regards,
Will


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