Rooting Take 2

I

ing.matt

New member
Ok, I opted to start a new thread about this specific rooting question rather then resurrect one of my earlier rooting threads.

Basically people believe google allows (perhaps may be even encourages) rooting provided they are aware of and except the risks.

Now that being said, its seems at the very least HTC seems to be trying to stop rooting to some degree. Here's why I think this may be the case, please chime in if I'm off base however.

The desire, incredible and now even the EVO either had a difficult time with getting root access or in the incredible's case, no rooting yet. The EVO was rooted fairly quickly but it looks the OTA patch that fixed the storage issue closed that rooting process off.

Personally, I'm happy with my Nexus and Google's approach to let me do what I want with the phone provided that I accept the risks. HTC seems to be making it more diffiicult.

Is that a fair assessment.
 
I think your onto something here..I was wondering the same thing, tyring to figure out if it's HTC with the sense UI..or if its the carriers(verizon/sprint) that are making rooting difficult I too would like to hear what others think about this..
 
It's the carriers and handset manufacturers. Android itself doesn't have any restrictions on rooting.

The Nexus One is unique in that it was built to spec for Google, launched and sold by Google. So their stance on rooting (allowing it) made the Nexus One easy to root.

Compare that to your normal handset manufacturers and carriers...

What would a manufacturer gain from allowing rooting? A tiny fraction of their customer base (probably well under 0.1%) would ever even consider rooting, so you're not going to get many more customers by allowing it.

What would a manufacturer lose by allowing rooting? A whole bunch of returned phones that have been bricked by rooting. Damage to their reputation by people saying they've had problems with their phones, when in reality it was down to untested/unreliable custom ROMs. Reduced security of rooting allowing malware, rootkits, and eventually viruses to spread, further damaging their reputation.

So the networks... what will they gain? Nothing? I can't think of anything.

What will they lose by allowing rooting? Well, they'll have a customer support nightmare, with people calling to ask how to root, how to fix their bricked phones, asking for support for things that aren't available in the default ROMs, complaining they haven't had updates because they didn't realise custom ROMs stop OTA updates, and all the points I made above about the manufacturer too - anything bad about the handset will reflect on the network too. They're often the ones who will have to deal with returns, etc.

By restricting rooting, you end up with a balance that helps them somewhat... Who would attempt to root their HTC Desire, for example? It's quite a difficult phone to root. The only people who will attempt it are geeks who know what they're doing, or people who have researched it very well, know the risks, pros, and cons, and are comfortable doing it. These people are likely not to mess it up and brick their phone, or will know how to unbrick it. They are not likely to call support lines, ever, because they probably know more than them.
 
I have to disagree with you Extorian. I realize you have an anti-rooting slant, but I think the percentage of folks who want to root is more then you think. Also the risks of rooting mean you lose your warranty so calling tech support is a no-no.

I'm not saying that everyone should embrace rooting but rather android based phones enjoyed the ability to fairly easily root them. Now HTC seems to be moving away from that, and I think its a poor decision. Those that don't want to won't, those that do should be allowed.

This is why I'll probably keep my N1 over an incredible.
 
I don't have an anti-rooting slant - I don't care whether other people do it or not in general, and I'll be rooting my G1 when I get a Desire (or whatever) in a couple of months. I do, however, disagree with people running into doing anything like rooting without being aware of all of the facts. Rooting is really great on the surface, but has some hidden drawbacks that people seem to rarely seem to mention.

It's hard to work out a percentage of people who root. I was wildly guessing at 0.1% based on who is likely to root. I would imagine most people over 40 wouldn't care, most people under 10 wouldn't dare or know how, most of the remainder either wouldn't know about rooting, never want to, or be too scared to.

Still, let's look at some facts. Cyanogen boasts here that based on his updater app he has around 30,000 users. According to his Wiki he has ROMs for the Dream, Magic, Nexus, and Droid. For these phones, I doubt anyone would argue that Cyanogen is by far the most popular ROM.

So, according to Wikipedia and Google there are around 2.2 million Dreams/G1s sold, 1.8 million Magics, 150,000 Nexus Ones, and for the Droid... well there were 3 million when Android 2.1 was rolled out to it.

So being conservative here, 7 million phones that are capable of running the most popular custom ROM. Bear in mind this figure I've rounded down, and the stats for these phones are months old in some cases, so there are likely far more than 7 million. Yet only 30,000 Cyanogen users. That's 0.42%.

Sure, not everyone will use Cyan's updater app. Sure, there are more ROMs out there than just Cyan's. But conversely the number of phones is an under-estimate. Even being generous and saying we're not even half way accurate and all other ROM users on those phone models add up to just as many as the Cyan users, that's still only 1% of people rooting.

In terms of calling tech support if you've messed up a root... well think about it... you only void your warranty if you flash the radio (so I'm told), which is optional (so I'm told). Also, most people who mess up rooting probably didn't research it very well, so are probably entirely unaware they have voided their warranty, and will call tech support anyway. Even some of those who knew fine well it would void their warranty would still chance it and plead ignorance - we've advised people on this very forum many times to do exactly that.
 
Lol - yeah but I'm generalising. I didn't say "all", I said "most". Judging by the people we get here, the vast majority seem to be University age students, for example.
 
Just messing with you. I agree with what was said, It's not for most people. If you like to tinker with computers and your phone it's right up your alley.
 
Sorry for the mis-characterization. You came down pretty sure on why its not a good idea for rooting, except on certain narrow reasons, so I must of read into that.

As for HTC or others making it harder, one reason why I think android is doing so well, is because its open. Apple works hard at the walled garden approach, they bend over backwards to try to stop people from jail breaking and with every release its getting harder and harder. My point is why should HTC emulate that behavior and embrace the openness.

The risk of rooting is such that people need to be aware of it, but by the same token the vendors don't need to make it nearly impossible to root.

btw, I'm 45 so I kind of knock one of your generalizations on its ear

No big deal, I was noting an observation.
 
Sure - I agree with what you say.

Well, maybe the age generalisation wasn't that good. It's just in my experience, most people on here who give any clue to their age who are asking about rooting also talk about "school", which would, for most people, put them in an under 25 bracket. A common one is that rooted ROMs allow access to enterprise WiFi networks, as used in many schools and universities.

I certainly do come down pretty sure on why rooting can be a bad idea, but I have also been known to recommend rooting. It just depends. I'm usually not first at replying, and hence there are often several replies already recommending rooting, so I balance that. Often people come out with all kinds of reason for rooting but don't realise they can achieve their goals without rooting. Tethering is a common example. I've been tethering with a free app on a non-rooted G1 since I got it. Yet there are still many people who think you need to root to do that, or that if you're not rooted you have to use a paid app.
 
Back
Top