Root or Rooting is one of the highly used Android terms in the Android community especially among geeks. It normally leaves majority of regular Android users wondering what it means or what one achieves with it. I’m here to make the regular normal Android user understand what root or rooting is without throwing around more geeky terms.
A phone in itself in terms of software is composed of layers. We have a layers composed of files that the phone depends on to function and the top layer that allows users to do some minimal customization and let them install apps (“third-party apps”). The former is the system layer. It is the layer at the base of your phone. Typically you can not access and modify it’s files. Take an example the boot logo and animation and all applications that come pre-installed. Those system files, you can’t touch or modify out of the box.
All those files are at the base of the phone system, the phone relies on them, they are at the root of the phone.
Rooting as you can now make out is the process of attaining full access to those files and have the ability to modify them. And yes, there is a lot of risk trying to do so. Same reason it’s advisable to do so if you know exactly what you are doing. The device depends on them to function as expected and if changed wrongly, unexpected errors are bound to occur or the device itself may be rendered useless.
For the most part, rooting has proven to be more advantageous and majority of users just want to root their phones to get the most out of their devices and most importantly have full control over how their phones function. People root their phones for various reasons for example:
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- To remove/uninstall understand apps that come pre-installed (bloatware)
- Increase internal space for low-end phones and allow app installation on SD Card
- Replace unwanted system files like bootanimations
- Allow many useful apps that need root access. Apps like Xposed: to add extra functionality to system elements, Greenify: to speed up slow Android phones, Adway: to remove those annoying ads to flash on screen, Titanium Backup: to bring advanced backup options… etc
- Make desired third-party apps system apps
- Install custom recovery
- Install custom roms
Those, among many others.
Now, you may be wondering how to archive root access on your phone and frankly there is no univesal way to do so on all Android phones. Many Android devices even from the same manufacturer have different ways to allow users gain root access. Those ways are provided by individuals and not from the devices manufacturer. So, the best way would be Googling how to root your particular phone model.
However, there are ways that apply to majority of phones and this is normally done by Android and PC apps that can be used to grant root permission. Some of the apps that can be used include KingoApp, KingRoot, Towelroot (For Samsung), SRSRoot, iRoot, Root Master… among many others.
