Teach me about rooting my phone

billwill

I have a Galaxy Nexus and I would like Android 4.1 when it comes out.

However, I am on Sprint, and I don't know if because of that it will take a little longer instead of receiving it when it's officially released the middle of this month. If so, I would like to install the ROM myself.

The only thing is, I've never rooted and I have no idea how to do it, or what any of it means.

Can someone give me a quick run-through of what exactly rooting does to your phone and how to go about doing it? Thanks.

L Ron Howard

Sprint is, in my experience, about 6 months behind when doing the update. I hope that kind of helps. I don't know how long you've had it, but Sprint is kind of slow.

Daenris

I believe the nexus phones can receive their updates directly from Google so you shouldn't have to wait on sprint for anything.

zerzhul

Daenris wrote: »

I believe the nexus phones can receive their updates directly from Google so you shouldn't have to wait on sprint for anything.

That's true for GSM nexus phones, not so much for CDMA/LTE

billwill

Yeah, I read it was different for the CDMA ones.

So if it is indeed another few months, I'd rather just flash my phone with a custom ROM. (whatever that really means xD)

Rderdall

This will likely be the best place for you to go. ([url="http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1336[/url])

Each Android phone has different procedures, and the guys that generally know the most about these things go to the XDA forums. I've rooted, and installed custom ROMs numerous times with the information available on this site for my Samsung Infuse 4G.

The basic gist of it is to do anything advanced to your phone, you need to root it. To do that, you need to install a rooted kernel, and from there, you can install any ROM you want. Most ROMs available are custom made for each phone by independent developers, but some ROMs are taken from other phones, and adapted to work with your particular phone (these are called Ports).

I cannot stress enough the need for you to research as much as possible before taking the plunge, as doing this has its benefits and its shortcomings. The custom ROMs are often optimized to increase performance as well as battery life, but I've noticed that not all ROMs have full functionality. Some are missing Video output, some are missing Bluetooth capability. Trial and error is needed before you find a ROM that you are happy with. Every time you install a new ROM you'll be looking at about 4 hours of your time to download, install, and then re-setup your phones settings and preferences. Not to mention, playing around with all the features and customization options

Hope this helps,