what does" rooted phone' mean?

[androidhoho]

hey, newbie here, and need help: what is a rooted phone?

[paul roberts]

it means you have root access/admin rights to the operating system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superuser

[InsightGoalie]

Its from a Unix/Linux term. Android is built on top of Linux and by gaining root access you have the highest level of privileges. In Windows its called Administrator. Once you are root, you can modify any file you want (even if that means destroying the whole operating system "rm -r /").