10 reasons to root your smartphone today

1. Delete preinstalled apps

If you have a Samsung, for example, you know that the brand is a champion of preinstalled apps on Android. Although some are useful, if you don’t use most them, you’ll find yourself wasting storage space with them. These apps, that are often referred to as “bloatware”, are simply impossible to uninstall because the manufacturers rely on you using them.

Preinstalled apps are not a problem in themselves, it’s the inability to uninstall them and the space that they take up that cause problems. Rooting allows you to delete bloatware: how to uninstall preinstalled apps.

2. Improve your battery life with rooting

There are various apps that allow you to manage your battery and use root privileges. If you reduce the clock frequency of your processor, you’ll save energy and, therefore, you’ll save battery. For some devices, this can be very efficient. Obviously, if you have a modest processor, you won’t notice a great difference, otherwise, you’ll notice reduced performances. Here's an article which will show you how:

• How to (really) improve your Android smartphone’s battery

3. Install new apps

Rooting allows you to use apps that do amazing things. I’m thinking of Tasker here. It allows you to control everything from your smartphone: from turning lights on at a certain time to automatic calling depending on location. 99.9% of your smartphone’s functions are affected, it’s a major help to keep you from ever forgetting anything: putting the device into silent mode, sending messages to mom to say that you arrived safely, etc. Tasker does it all.

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4. Back up everything, absolutely everything

Backing up and saving, it’s the same thing. Rooting offers the possibility of saving much more: data for entire apps, user preferences, but in particular, it allows you to back up NANDroid. These are system images that allow you to restore a device to its brand new, default state in case of a problem with flashing, for example.

More information:

• What is a Nandroid backup?
• How to do backups on Android
• The best backup apps for Android

5. Overclock: improve performance

We already mentioned No-Frills CPU Control in the battery section. This allows you to reduce the processor’s clock frequency to save battery. The reverse is also possible, you can push the processor to give the best performance. So, be careful, it’s not about overheating it and damaging it. It’s about renewing an old device. It’s ideal for a tablet that has an underperforming battery and can’t be used as a mobile device, and transforming it into a multimedia station. Check out these tips for speeding up your smartphone, too.

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6. Retrieve photos deleted on Android

Rooting allows you to recover photos that had been deleted from your Android device. The app DiskDigger is particularly easy to use: it scans, looks at a preview of the image and decides whether you would like to recover the image or not. A big plus: you can send it directly to your email address without recovering it.  

7. Change systems with a custom ROM

This could be the main reason why most users root their Android device: flashing a custom ROM. In fact, for a smartphone that doesn’t receive official updates, this is ideal. CyanogenMod or even ParanoidAndroid bring the latest Android versions to devices that haven’t had the latest updates.

• All about custom ROMs for Android
• Best custom ROMs for the Nexus 5

8. Personalize your phone

Without going as far as flashing a complete custom ROM, you can personalize your Android device through rooting. The Android customization tool is called Xposed Framework. Although it requires technical knowledge to use it, once you’re familiar with it, you’ll never go without it!

The app isn’t available on the Google Play Store, you can download the APK on the official site: Install Xposed. You can modify the booting animation with it, meaning the animation that appears when you switch your device on or off.

9. Increase your Android device’s memory

This says it all! The tutorial is a little long, but once you have done it, you can install many more apps than before. The idea is that your external microSD card can pose as your internal memory through rooting, and Android won’t know the difference! Need more space? Root! The last section of this article will tell you how.

Root your Android for fun!

All joking aside, rooting is a great first step into the passionate world of Android. You’ll discover terms like bootloader, root, kernel, etc. And if you’re truly passionate about it, you can go even further! Stick with us, you’ll find a mod or root tutorial on AndroidPIT.com that works for you!

Don’t forget, rooting is a serious thing and verifying app permissions is very important. The security risk becomes much more apparent on a rooted Android! What are app permissions?

What is the first thing that you do with a rooted smartphone? Personalizing, increasing performance or securing your data?