It means getting access to parts of an operating system that you usually don’t have access to. This allows you to improve the performance of your phone, increase its battery life, browse protected files, change the boot animation, customize the UI, change certain behaviors, set a battery charging limit, use v4a (an amazing equalizer app), uninstall system apps, and much more
The process of rooting is a little convoluted and depends on the phone, but you should be able to find a guide for your phone if you look for one. Things can go wrong if you don’t follow the steps perfectly, but there’s always a way out
Your phone will be wiped, so you need to back up your data
Your warranty will get voided in the process, but can often un-void it by unrooting
Your phone will be no less secure, as long as you use a good superuser app (everyone recommends Magisk) and only give root access to apps you trust. Think of it as “run as administrator”
Why are people saying it’s a bad idea? Especially in the grapheneos circle. You won’t get info on their forum about rooting it.
“Rooting” is literally the act of taking control of the “root” user profile. This is the same as SYSTEM on Windows and even “root” on a Macintosh. As the names imply; the “root” user is the first user. When you are “root”; there are no rules about what you can run. You are essentially as powerful as the operating system itself.
But that omnipotent power does come with a great responsibility. With root access you can literally order the Operating System or even the hardware to kill itself; deleting important files or altering core code is not going to be met with resistance. Sometimes it will even comply with your commands without even checking if they are valid.
Without appropriate understanding of what you are commanding your device to do…Yes, rooting can be dangerous. However; if you do know exactly what you are doing, or are following instructions that are well known to work exactly how you intended them to that were written by someone who does know what they are doing…then Yes, Rooting can be Safe
The trouble with Rooting is trust. You are placing trust in a number of apps and software components to not abuse that access.
If you limit apps that are granted root access and make sure only safe apps are granted access; then all should be well. But don’t blame anyone if you damage your device.
This is why Rooting your device should ideally only be done after any manufacturer, OEM and carrier warranty has expired. It has benefits; but so too do the guardrails we program into modern operating systems. Rooting your device can be akin to bowling without the bumpers preventing your ball from falling into the gutter.
Benefit I found from rooting is backing up apps, since Android still sucks in that area. Especially third party app data.
