I know this isn’t about opensuse (which is why I posted this in chit-chat), but I was wondering if any of you guys had experience
of rooting an android phone?
I’m thinking about rooting mine, mainly for better data security, and to be able to delete most of the **** inbuilt apps which you
can’t delete and I never use.
I thought being a techie forum some of you may have done it, and I would welcome your feedback.
I googled it, and this article is what I’ve found out so far:
Hi
I rooted my android tablet (ASUS TF101) and run Kat-Kiss on it via info from http://forum.xda-developers.com/ this is probably the best place for info I’ve found.
On Tue, 15 Dec 2015 20:36:01 +0000, Wild Goose wrote:
> I know this isn’t about opensuse (which is why I posted this in
> chit-chat), but I was wondering if any of you guys had experience of
> rooting an android phone?
>
> I’m thinking about rooting mine, mainly for better data security, and to
> be able to delete most of the **** inbuilt apps which you can’t delete
> and I never use.
>
> I thought being a techie forum some of you may have done it, and I would
> welcome your feedback.
>
> I googled it, and this article is what I’ve found out so far:
>
> http://www.androidcentral.com/root
I’ve done it several times - generally, if the device can be rooted, it’s
pretty straightforward.
If you have a Samsung device, though, be aware that rooting it breaks the
KNOX setup (and I’ve not seen anywhere that there’s a way to reset it -
some say it’s a ‘soft fuse’ that once blown, can’t be ‘unblown’), so if
you use something that depends on it (Samsung pay allegedly does, and
Android Pay might), then you’ll be losing that functionality.
I’ve rooted a couple Droid Incredible 2s, and a couple Samsung Galaxy
S5s. I have an S6 and a Tab S that I haven’t rooted, and right now,
other than not being able to run Titanium Backup of the devices, I’ve not
really had any reason to want to. (The phone’s easy - it’s a work phone,
so I’m leaving it until I actually own the phone, at least. The tablet’s
mine, but I don’t tend to tinker with it the way I have Android devices
in the past).
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
On Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:06:01 +0000, malcolmlewis wrote:
> Wild_Goose;2743068 Wrote:
>> I know this isn’t about opensuse (which is why I posted this in
>> chit-chat), but I was wondering if any of you guys had experience of
>> rooting an android phone?
>>
>> I’m thinking about rooting mine, mainly for better data security, and
>> to be able to delete most of the **** inbuilt apps which you can’t
>> delete and I never use.
>>
>> I thought being a techie forum some of you may have done it, and I
>> would welcome your feedback.
>>
>> I googled it, and this article is what I’ve found out so far:
>>
>> http://www.androidcentral.com/root
> Hi I rooted my android tablet (ASUS TF101) and run Kat-Kiss on it via
> info from http://forum.xda-developers.com/ this is probably the best
> place for info I’ve found.
+1 to xda-developers.com as well - that’s where I’ve also got information
on Nook devices that I’ve rooted (how quickly I forget). 
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Well my Samsung Ace 2 phone is rooted. I wanted an Android version with the print services, ie. KitKat+ and Samsung had stopped updating the phone. I put a Cyanogenmod version of Android on it and that came rooted.
It may sound odd but I’m not sure off hand if I found any benefit from being rooted. I’ve a strange history with Androids. I couldn’t afford/didn’t want to afford a regular commitment and I am on PAYG with annual phone costs of £5-£10 - the phone doesn’t get a lot of use.
I started off enthusiastically, writing an app to meet my own printing needs, getting a new tablet which I thought would be useful family wide as a quick initial route to the print services when someone emailed me asking if I could support that but it’s not used much,. It is used as a reference book (ie. I’ve got the Chambers Dictionary on it - probably the best dictionary for British English crosswords) but that’s about it.
I’ve played with downloading other apps, eg. DLNA onesto view TV recordings from mythtv. I’ve rapidly cobbled together something that spoke to my home automation code and (via Google voice recognition) enabled me speak commands such as “bedroom light on”. Even very recently when I rebuilt my “windmill” outside, I had to write a crude Android app that will start/stop it and give a real timeish view of its rotation and speed but I’m not 100% sure what for. Maybe I could draw a sort of "why do people climb mountains - because they are there£ parallel. Maybe once in a while I want to show someone I’m not completely tech clueless, etc.
Whatever, at the moment, I’m inclined to take a critical view. Realities are none of the 3 of us at home have really taken to this technology and we all prefer to sit at PCs (running OpenSuse of course) or in the case of my father, often the laptop. Personally, when out, I’m either out to speak to others or out to participate in folk music (my favourite being Irish jigs and reels) and apart for example a couple of times I’ve been in hospital and away from home for a week, haven’t really had the need to be “connected”.
It seems quite weird when other family visit. They want to get on our guest network straight away and tablets, phones and being connected are just normal parts of life to them.
Anyway, I seem to have wandered a long way off topic. I’m not sure if this could have made a new thread?
Jon Freeman wrote on 16.12.2015 11:36:
> It may sound odd but I’m not sure off hand if I found any benefit from
> being rooted.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=root
SCNR
Uwe
That’s given me a giggle!
But not my more usual thinking of non computer being rooted. That is having roots somewhere, belonging somewhere, having an affinity to some place…
This is purely my opinion…
While customizing your phone is awesome, I am one who does not root the phone once I am done flashing the ROM I want. On top of that I only use big name roms like CyanogenMod as I have a bitter taste from some XDA developers (some of these people really do not understand what open source is about). The reason for not leaving the phone in root is simple, if an application finds a way to bypass the root permission grant window, you are screwed. I don’t know how much safer it is to keep the root user disabled but it is done by default in cyanogenmod and I feel that is the best decision.
At the moment I am using Andoid 6 (Marshmallow) on my Nexus 5 and obviously since its a Google provided image, root is not enabled. Basically, IMO ROMs are cool and fun but leaving a phone in root is not something I am personally willing to do.
Sorry if the post doesn’t make much sense, writing late in the night
Thanks for all your replies guys, sorry for the delay in my response.
So what I am understanding now (I think) is that there are two separate issues here:
Option 1. Wiping the Google-infested Android OS which comes pre-installed on any Android phone you might buy, and replacing it with a “cleaner” Android OS.
Option 2. Running Android with root privilege permanently enabled.
Given the advice people have given, I’m looking at going for Option 1 but not Option 2.
By coincidence, a friend of mine has just wiped his phone. First he put on CyanogenMod, but he found a big problem with battery drain whilst running it. Then he tried OmniROM, and found his battery life was much better, to acceptable usage levels. Furthermore, he found his phone’s performance increased hugely. It has a quad-core processor, and he found it was finally acting like a quad-core device. His view was that the original built-in Android OS was so full of bloatware that the phone was struggling to perform as you would expect from a very high specification device. I haven’t asked him yet, but as far as I know he has not enabled root on it. He is now a very happy camper, with a super-fast phone (even though it is now two years old), and Google Services-free.
I have two Android phones, one for personal use, and the other I have just bought and plan to use for business purposes.
I think I will try OmniROM on my business phone, and if I don’t brick it then I’ll do the same with my personal phone.