Got root? Smart users of phones
have it. And that’s for a good reason. Rooting can make your smartphone faster,
better, and its battery last longer. But that’s not all. Because Android is an open
system, it allows you to modify any device it runs on, giving you full
flexibility to customize the phone exactly to your specific needs.
But what is rooting anyways? When you use a smartphone, you are only
given access to the surface of things such as the user interface while
navigating the phone. As soon as you are trying to make changes on a system
level, Android is there to protect you from potentially harming your phone and
denies access. However, having full control on a system level is absolutely necessary
to unlock its full potential. The rooting process is straight forward but you have to make sure that
you’re following the details. If you haven’t rooted your phone yet, see whether your phone model is covered in the AndroidRootz rooting
section. Once you’ve successfully rooted your mobile, you can take
advantage of the many awesome features that the Android world has to offer.
Reason 1: Remove Unwanted Apps
When carriers brand a smartphone and put a bunch of their own apps on
the device (often to try to get you to sign up for something), this is referred
to as bloatware. If you’re not using those apps, then they take away space and
may slow down performance unnecessarily. Who wants apps that we didn’t
personally select anyway. The problem with bloatware is that it often cannot be
uninstalled from your mobile unless you have rooted it and are using special
apps that have the ability to remove them on a system level. The root app
called NoBloat takes care of this task and completely uninstalls any app you
select. Beware though, if you remove apps that are necessary for the phone to
function, it may stop working. That’s why it’s always important to have a full
system backup (called Nandroid backup) so that you can restore the phone to a
working state. This way you can try to uninstall one app after another until
you’ve stripped the phone from all unwanted applications. A less extreme way of
removing these apps is to freeze and then hide them. This forces them to not
take away energy from the processor and makes them invisible. The app Titanium
Backup does exactly that.
Reason 2: Create Full System Backups
Unlike a regular backup, which only backs up your Google’s basic data
such as Contacts, a full system backup takes a complete snapshot of everything
that’s on your smartphone. In the rooting world this is called a Nandroid
backup. The app ROM Manager is one of the best tools out there to create
these types of backups. After you’ve created a Nandroid backup, you can always
restore your phone to exactly the point when you’ve created it. So if something
goes wrong, you can be rest assured that you can recover your device by
restoring from a Nandroid backup.
Reason 3: Make Your Phone Faster
What is the fastest smartphone on the market? This one question has the
Tech world captivated. But regardless of the device you have chosen, there are
always ways to make things run faster. One way to increase the speed significantly
with which your device runs is to overclock it. Overclocking means that you are
forcing the phone to run above the threshold at which the manufacturer has
fixed the phone’s processor to run. Every processor has actually more power
available than advertised but there is a good reason why the manufacturer does
not want you to use it: it drains the battery’s life. There is a way to
overclock the phone while still preserving as much battery energy as possible.
The overclocking app SetCPU
lets you create profiles so that you can choose during what activities your
cell phone runs at overclocked speed and when it should reduce power to
preserve battery life.
Reason 4: Back up Apps
When you download an app from the Google Play store, it gets automatically
saved in the download history (open Google Play, tap the Menu key > My
Apps). So if you need to reset your device or switch to another one, you could
go back to “My Apps” and download the apps from there again. But this gets
quite cumbersome considering the number of apps you’ve downloaded over time.
Sorting through a long list is just not productive. Even worse, Google Play
does not save all your app’s settings, including game scores. The solution: a
root backup app that not only backs up the app but also all of its settings,
and yes, including game scores. There are several of these apps available of
which Titanium
Backup currently takes the lead.
Reason 5: Get Firmware Updates Ahead of Time
The one thing that most Android fans complain about is that companies
do not update the firmware fast enough. In fact, unless your device is a
flagship model, chances are that there won’t be any updates at all. Firmware
updates come with the latest features, maybe a better look, and usually deliver
an improved performance. Thanks to Android being an open system, the developer
community often takes the lead on releasing firmware versions, referred to as
custom ROMs, based on the very latest Android firmware. So if the manufacturer
doesn’t update your phone or is otherwise just too slow, consider putting a
custom ROM on your mobile. There is one custom ROM in particular that’s
notorious for releasing firmware shortly after Google has released an Android
update: CyanogenMod. Visit their website
to make sure that your device is supported and give it a try. Some of the CyanogenMod
releases are also covered
here on AndroidRootz.
About the Author: Mark Galaxy
This is a guest post by Mark Galaxy, who is a writer for Android Tips, Tricks & Hacks and the creator of
the GalaxyUnlocker unlock software for Samsung. Join Mark for more hacking tutorials, SIM unlocking solutions, and useful stuff related to the Android world.
