Android Rooting For Dummies (What is Rooting?)

One of the things I had a hard trouble finding an answer for after I got my first Android phone was: what is all this deal with rooting? I read a lot of articles on how to root my phone but I just couldn’t see what benefits I would get from it. I had had an iPhone and I knew the benefits I could get from jailbreaking, but I just didn’t know what I could get from rooting.

Well, rooting is in its definition a way to obtain root access to your phone. Does this still not tell you much? Good, then read on.

This was the geek definition. Now, translating this into English, it means that some applications (some of them widely available in the Android Market), require some deeper privileges to work. Applications like Wireless Tether or Quick Boot are just a few examples of these apps.

By rooting your phone, it won’t become faster but it won’t become slower either. What rooting means is that you’ll have the option to grant some applications more access than they would normally have.

Now, as to knowing whether your phone is rooted or not, that’s a quite simple task. A rooted Android phone will have an additional application (installed automatically upon the rooting process), that is called “Superuser Permissions”. You don’t need to use this app but just the fact alone that it sits there, gives you this possibility. If an application ever requires root permissions, you will get a notice saying that the app is requesting super user permissions. Obviously, if you trust the app you will grant these permissions – if you don’t trust it, you’ll deny them.