Reasons to Root your phone?

[Santilli]

I've rooted my Samsung Mega 6.3.

It's been a great move for the following reasons:
Software that can have root access can either remove, or freeze applications I don't use, that are draining resources.

Most of my data downloads are programs updating themselves, programs I would remove if I had access, or freeze.

I use Rom Tool Box Pro.
This allows me a list of programs, and the ability to freeze the program.

By looking at my data usage by program, a major offender is Costco's app. 30% of my useage, though I use it rarely, and, it runs constantly in the background, sapping my battery, even when the screen is locked. It, and a controller program, AllShare Cast Dongle S/W are now frozen, thanks to root access.

Another great program feature is the ability to change the cpu speed range. I've set it to a minimum 384MHz, which still gets me everything I need to do, and stretchs my 3200 battery out to a matter of days. If I need more power, I just slide it up, and use the maximum 1728 Mhz that the phone is capable of running.

Rooting the phone has made a huge difference in controlling the phone, and what's on it.



Another great program is DU Battery Saver. With it, I can hit one button when charging, and it pretty much shuts the background programs down, minimizing cpu load.

 

[Santilli]

Bottom line is with all the junk Samsung and Sprint put on my phone, I have to car charge it daily.

Rooting it, and freezing, or deleting their added, junk, cpu and battery eating software, the phone will last for days with the 3200 battery.

Without that, I would be looking at a Mugen, huge phone, 6400 battery, and case back extension.

For another hundred bucks.

So, rooting saved me 100 dollars, and more, since no padded cases work with the Mugen back cases.

 

[Santilli]

It's 2:44 PM. 5 3/4 hours on 25% of the battery. That works out to 22 hours of battery, thanks to rooting, and software.
No worries about going the day, or needing a charger all the time...

 

[Santilli]

Since my MixZing app for music sucks juice, I plugged it in for about an hour. Currently, at 10 PM or so, I'm at 70 % battery. That's about 20 hours... ROOTING IS GREAT...

 

[LunarMist]

I'm not sure what app required you to hack the phone, but you know it is possible to have good battery life with normal phones?

 

[Santilli]

Actually not without root access.
With Sprint, Verizon, T Mobile they load a lot of crap you can't turn off without rooting.
Plus, programs that can control this stuff, can't do it, without root access.

Odin works just fine. Have to research your phone.

If you want to use Verizon or sprint, with all crap wear, then Mugen battery, for 100 bucks, is the solution.

No app REQUIRED ME to hack the phone. The ones I listed work MUCH better with root access.

 

[Striker]

Next time buy a phone without all the crapware on it, they do exist.

 

[Handruin]

I'd like to see a better and more-conclusive test geared towards isolating the battery advantages of rooting vs non-rooted phones.

 

[Mercutio]

I think nearly all the actual power saving advantages come from being able to block communications that stem from advertising data; the processing requirements of the apps themselves tend to be pretty minimal.

 

[LunarMist]

I think nearly all the actual power saving advantages come from being able to block communications that stem from advertising data; the processing requirements of the apps themselves tend to be pretty minimal.

Maybe I'm strange, but my phone seems to have very little communication and downloads.
I turned off every questionable option and disabled or uninstalled apps I don't use.
The G4 battery lasts about two days, which is better than the old Samsung Galactic II.
I thought the main purpose of rooters was to install special apps that need extra privileges.
Will the rooter really be much better and can the old installation be restored with software like a True Image of the computer?

 

[Santilli]

That's the problem. Without rooting, a lot of pre-installed software starts on startup, and can't be removed, or turned off.

Rooting gives you the ability to remove a lot of stuff you couldn't, and or use a program to shut it off, or freeze it, and keep it from starting.

 

[Santilli]

Du Battery Saver has a monitor that lets you know what percentage of the processor each program is using. You can then go in and turn them off.

 

[Santilli]

DU Battery Saver also has a Optimize button that pretty much does everything you need with one button push.

 

[Mercutio]

Battery optimizers, depending on how they work, can actually cause more power drain on your phone than just letting apps run. It depends a lot on how often the app wakes up the phone for data transfers vs. how aggressively the app tries to restart when it's killed.

Something that really does help with battery drain on Android is to disable as many things that want to do push notifications as possible. Most IM clients, Facebook Messenger, OKCupid, Pushbullet et al. Those guys are serious battery hogs.

Airblocker is a tool for rooted Android devices that allows a user to selectively revoke Push notifications from apps.

 

[Santilli]

Rom Toolbox Pro has a freeze setting. Wonder if this stops the apps from trying to start again?

I'll check into air blocker. Also need to get to know Toolbox pro a bit better, along with Titanium Backup which also has a Freeze feature.

 

[Santilli]

https://www.oneclickroot.com/top-root-apps/

 

[Handruin]

I began exploring what is needed to root my HTC One M8 and I'm overwhelmed with the amount of data that's out there to understand the process. What I'd like to try is to convert my phone to the Google Play Edition since it was sold like this at release but I chose the Sense 6 edition from HTC when I bought the phone. My thoughts are that if I can get on the GPE track I could get Android updates much sooner than the many months it takes HTC to qual and release builds. I can also remove a bunch of the bloat apps that are installed.

What I'm unclear on is if I should fork over the $25 to S-OFF my phone. From the limited reading I've done, many suggest it's worth paying to have this done and the only viable method is to use SunShine. Once I do this, my phone is basically free to do whatever I want.

Now the confusing part is that it sounds like I need to root my phone before I can S-OFF. From what I've seen over at xda, there are extensive guides made for my specific phone, but they were written a while ago so I'm unsure if this all still applies. There are utilities like TWRP Recovery and SuperSU that are needed and it looks as if I can go to HTCDev and unlock the boot loader. The first thing I'm trying to do is to properly backup my phone before I screw around with this.

 

[Mercutio]

... and to get a real, functional backup of your phone, you need to have root in the first place. This is an identified weakness with Android generally. HTC probably has some kind of backup software for you to use but I have no idea if it'll put app settings back the way they were.

But in this case, you need to unlock the bootloader for your phone before you do anything. Make a developer account with HTC and request an unlock code? Sounds reasonable and probably hasn't changed in the last year. Get that part done and then you can worry about getting root after. I do know that Verizon has extra locked-down boot loaders and than in some cases the Android modding community hasn't found ways around Verizon editions of phones but IIRC you're on ATT so that's probably not an issue.

 

[ddrueding]

I plan on rooting the day I get my G4 (hasn't arrived yet). If nothing else to delete all the crap Verizon will have put on it, including the prompts to use their backup service that I can't turn off.

 

[Santilli]

Just remember you void your warranty if you root. Not an issue with either of the Samsungs.

https://www.oneclickroot.com/root-apps/system-app-remover/

 

[Mercutio]

The G4 root is kind of awful still.

Another warning I have for you, dd, as a person who breaks his phone a lot: I still haven't managed to get a 100% functional replacement screen for mine. I've tried three so far, and none of the replacements has let me use tap-to-turn-on, something that is as far as I can tell is tied solely to the display assembly.

 

[Handruin]

... and to get a real, functional backup of your phone, you need to have root in the first place. This is an identified weakness with Android generally. HTC probably has some kind of backup software for you to use but I have no idea if it'll put app settings back the way they were.

But in this case, you need to unlock the bootloader for your phone before you do anything. Make a developer account with HTC and request an unlock code? Sounds reasonable and probably hasn't changed in the last year. Get that part done and then you can worry about getting root after. I do know that Verizon has extra locked-down boot loaders and than in some cases the Android modding community hasn't found ways around Verizon editions of phones but IIRC you're on ATT so that's probably not an issue.

I used the HTC sync manager to do a full backup of my personal stuff. It's bloated but it seems to work. I'm waiting to unlock the boot loader because it requires the android development studio which is a 1.1GB download and their connection is pretty slow. I signed up and I'm going to follow their instructions. Seems they're pretty open about letting people unlock the phone at my own risk. My phone is long out of warranty anyway.

I am on AT&T and there seems to be good support for rooting my device on this network where as there appears to be more troubles for Verizon users.

 

[Handruin]

A bit unrelated to rooting but it's nice to see the Android development studio has switched to Intellij over Eclipse. It's a very slick change and I haven't used their studio in a while. Maybe now I'll have to try dabbling a bit more.

 

[Handruin]

3+ hours later and I still don't have a working rooted phone. I've been able to add in a customer recovery manager TWRP, added SuperUS, I've S-OFF'ed my phone, updated firmware (which required S-OFF), and now I'm trying to get [RUU] M8 Google Edition Conversion. 5.1 LMY470.H9 onto my phone. I'm now slightly more familiar with HBOOT, fastboot, and adb. It loads and then gets stuck on a screen requesting for updates and doesn't do anything. It finds my Wifi AP and says it'll take 5 minutes to download 620MB update but there is no progress bar and no way to skip it.

I've learned a bunch about rooting my phone but it's a pain in the ass so far. Hopefully it'll be worth the effort in the end and I'll have a better user experience with the updated OS and less clutter.

 

[Handruin]

Well...a little googling of the right terms found me this. Seems I just have to wait to get scheduled for the download which could take 15 minutes, not 5.

 

[ddrueding]

The G4 root is kind of awful still.

Another warning I have for you, dd, as a person who breaks his phone a lot: I still haven't managed to get a 100% functional replacement screen for mine. I've tried three so far, and none of the replacements has let me use tap-to-turn-on, something that is as far as I can tell is tied solely to the display assembly.

Yeah, I hope to not be worrying about that much. Even the S4 was a PITA; no heat-gun necessary, but a full tear-down and the touchscreen rarely worked after. Blah.

I've downloaded the files for a G4 root. Do you mean that the process is a pain, or that the result is unsatisfactory?

 

[Mercutio]

I've downloaded the files for a G4 root. Do you mean that the process is a pain, or that the result is unsatisfactory?

The result is mildly unsatisfactory since it's a complete replacement of the maintainable system image from LG. I'm basically betting that the guys releasing the rooted image will continue to make system images as the phone needs them.

 

[ddrueding]

The result is mildly unsatisfactory since it's a complete replacement of the maintainable system image from LG. I'm basically betting that the guys releasing the rooted image will continue to make system images as the phone needs them.

Yeah, I was aware of that, and it is mildly unsatisfactory. For me it isn't as big a concern as I typically kill phones before others, so they will have a need longer than I do. Shame we can't run phones like computers (stock Android download, install drivers and utilities, have a functional phone).

 

[Santilli]

I looked into rooting my Mega about a year ago. It was not easy, nor was it perfected by any means. I would look into what sort of reviews your particular phone gets on being rooted. I passed a year ago on rooting, since the process was an ongoing progression.

If I had a cutting edge phone, I might wait until the process has the bugs worked out, by others, first.

 

[ddrueding]

The argument against waiting is that the manufacturer tends to block the exploits used to root in future updates. An update that came out about 6 months after my S5 shipped prevented any of the existing root methods from working.

 

[Santilli]

You have a point. I'm using Chainfires' files
https://autoroot.chainfire.eu/

To do a basic Root, and they work very well. However, certain phones are not yet supported.

Kind of wondering why you didn't go with a Nexus 6, and google's network you suggested?

 

[ddrueding]

I run a company account of phones, about 300 total. Verizon has excellent online tools for managing huge numbers of phones that Google doesn't have yet.

 

[Handruin]

So...what exactly do i need to do to get a music player app that can be Bluetooth controlled? Now when I connect my phone to my car via Bluetooth I can play the music but my car can no longer control the 3rd party music players I've tried. Previously I used the included music player that came from HTC.

 

[Striker]

I've always used Google Play Music and I've been able to control it from the car's radio interface.

 

[Handruin]

I've always used Google Play Music and I've been able to control it from the car's radio interface.

I'll give that a try. I didn't think it managed my local audio content but I see I can switch off the online stuff. Hopefully this works.

 

[Santilli]

Mixzing Pro might do it.

http://download.cnet.com/MixZing-Music-Player-for-Android/3000-2139_4-75332369.html

I use it because I can delete songs I don't like that I've loaded on to my SD card.

 

[Handruin]

The Google play music app works perfectly so far with my car. I wish I knew this before that it worked with local music. My bad for not investigating before now.

 

[Striker]

What I like about Google Music is you can point it to where you store your MP3s on your computer and then you have access to all of it for streaming on your phone. In addition to that, if you create a playlist, you can then tell it to store those songs from that playlist locally on the phone so that it doesn't need to stream them when you're playing them; yet you still have access to your other music should you decide to break out something older that you haven't listened to in awhile.

 

[Mercutio]

Thing that drives me nuts about Google Music: It seriously, hard-core mangles file names with non-English characters in them if they're uploaded via Music Manager. Also, Google Music Manager does not implement support for multi-disc albums. You have to re-name tracks after the fact if you want the track order to be correct.

Other than that it's pretty cool.

 

[Handruin]

I only used the app on my phone in my situation. I don't have any utilities on my desktop for managing the music on my phone. I just copied all my mp3's over to my 64GB SD card.