Rooting android phone

[Maineman]

I know nothing about rooting. If it is illegal, please delete posting.

Need to delete bloatware to free up memory and increase battery life.

Found this on another web site. Want to make sure rooting is safe and will not kill the phone.


Hello. I just bought a Samsung Gravity Smart phone and I love it so far. But I just recently started getting a message that the memory storage (not my SD storage) was getting close to being full. How can I uninstall some of the factory apps that already came with the phone? Some of the apps I really could care less for..just wondering. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks. By the way, I did buy it online on eBay and the person who sold it to me had reset it to the original factory settings. But I only have the phone and charger, nothing else..no usb cords, or software. Did not know if that played a factor.

Well best thing you can do is root your phone, partition your SD card with a 512mb Linux ext2 partition, setup Link2SD and link apps to that partition. It will free up ALOT of memory on the phone. Once your phone is rooted you can delete apps or better yet get the update file that is on these message boards that have a lot of the unnecessary files removed already.

Rooting is very simple and pretty safe on your phone. There are lots of posts and tutorials about it on the internet. You will need a USB cable to do this though. They sell them at Walmart.


Any thoughts?

 

[Maineman]

Just saw the article "How and Why to Root your Android: 15 Worthwhile Apps
8:00 PM - August 25, 2011 - by Eric Geier" on rooting an android. Will follow that and post if I have questions. What I want to do is just delete unwanted apps to save memory and increase battery life. Not interested in replacing the "image" so the phone works differently than what the manual says. This is my first smart phone and need the manual to figure out some functions not included in the quick set up guide. Does anyone know if the above article will allow me to just delete the apps I do not want?

 

[ssddx]

you can root your phone without touching the stock rom. all rooting does is "unlock" your phone so you can make changes you otherwise wouldnt be able to do.

rooting can be done with one click of your mouse with a program called unrevok3d. its much safer nowdays and you really have to screw up to brick a phone.

there are ways to delete different "bloatware" apps without using a different rom, however sometimes doing so can cause bizarre behavior and/or stability problems. unless you know what you are doing... i wouldnt suggest this.

a program called autostarts can control what automatically starts up and runs when you turn on the phone. worth checking out.

how many apps do you have installed? i never had more than half of my ram being used up on my incredible. how many apps are running? running too many can cause memory issues as well.

APP2SD can work to free up space but keep in mind it will not work on certain app types such as those with widgets. widgets require apps to be local.

if you want better battery life then you might want to look into roms such as cyanogenmod. sure its going to have a different feel but most stock roms are pretty bad for battery life. adding a rom is a piece of cake if you use titaniumbackup to backup everything and rommanager to install the new rom. it literally takes 4 minutes.

personally i prefer using MIUI (which is getting a 4.0 flavor soon!) since it offers such things as free wifi tethering and notification pull down controls. however miui is only average when it comes to battery usage. still one of the best roms available (second only to cyanogen probably, but cyanogen has less options).

smartphone guides are trash. burn it and figure it out by playing with the phone. you will learn more. if you have questions ask. the manual provided does more to confuse than explain.

since you are new to android you might wand to forum search (or click on my name and see my previous posts) to find my other android topics i've commented on. i listed a good deal of information and on at least one some apps to try out. good source of information for a newbie.

 

[Maineman]

Thanks, I am getting a better understanding of what rooting is. I had a Samsung Gravity Smart from T-Mobile but returned it because I could not delete bloat wear and synchronize the phones calendar with Google Calendar. I know rooting the phone will get rid of bloat wear but if I find another phone and root it can it then be set uo to sync with Google Calendar? I think yes, just would need an Andriod app.

Replacement phone needs to use a SIM card. Anyone know which carriers use SIM cards in their phones? What are SIM card phones called? Think the term is GSM.

 

[ssddx]

it is better to get a mainstream phone if you can... like the nexus, galaxy, incredible 2, etcetera. buying a cheap or non-mainstream model will make it harder to either find the rooting tools or to get model specific help.

i thought any android phone can link to google calendar? i've never tried transfering back and forth myself...i just edit locally on the phone.

you can get rid of bloatware by rooting and then deleting the specified applications off but at your own risk. also certain bloatware apps you can not take off due to stabillity issues. getting a custom rom which doesnt include such things from the start is always a better solution.

you will want a phone that works with your carriers particular antenna band. for instance just because a phone in the usa has a sim card and and gsm does not mean it will work on a europe gsm band. also keep in mind some cdma phones have sim slots (global ready phones) for use in foreign countries when traveling.

providers of gsm in america...i know att is one.

 

[isamuelson]

Get the application Titanium Backup. The free version allows you to do what is called "freezing". What this does is "freeze" the installed app in question so it doesn't load into memory and you can't run it. This doesn't free up the internal memory where the app itself is stored since it's still on your phone, but at least you can try and see if freezing it causes any issues with your phone not working correctly.

If after awhile you find that the app isn't necessary, you can use Titanium Backup to force remove it. But, remember, once you do this, if any OTA (over the air) updates are pushed out, they may not work since it will see your phone has been modified. However, I would suggest before removing an app with TB, you first back it up with TB. I have the paid-for version which allows you to do batch operations and I believe you cannot remove nor backup system apps without using the paid-for version, but you can still freeze with the free version. You can however backup user installed apps with the free version, albeit one-at-a-time since batch mode is not available in the free verzion.

If you freeze the app, you can unfreeze it and it will be back to normal.

Of course, in order to do all of this, you must be rooted first.

 

[ssddx]

upon doing a "backup all" with the free version of TB some system apps such as calendar, store, phone, etcetera are in the list so i'm guessing that it does allow you to back them up.

not a bad idea to make a complete copy of your rom image using rom-manager as well. that way if you screw anything up you can go back to stock!!!

oh and back up all your apps as well before you go doing anything like installing custom roms or deleting system apps.

 

[Maineman]

Thanks for all the good replies. My son gave me an old iPod touch that does everything but it is not a phone so will use that and my cell phone for now.

Plan now is to get an inexpensive used name brand GSM phone, root it to get familiar with the process without risking a good phone and get an iPhone 3GS in the $150 range that can be rooted.

 

[ssddx]

rooting is an android term. jailbreaking is the iphone term.

what i just said applies to android only. you will have to get familiar with the iphone equivilent yourself if you choose to go that route.

rooting really isnt much of a risk anymore. it can be done with one click of the mouse often enough. buying a phone just to test is a waste of money to me but i can see why you would be cautious.