6 Things they don't tell you before you ROOT your phone.

[TonyMoreno23]

1) Multi-Touch/ ZOOM is limited to the browser, and a few applications demonstrating multi-touch capability.
(it does NOT work with saved picture files!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

2)Auto Rotate doesn't "turn" like you'd imagine it would.instead it only orientates half of the way.
yes, with the keyboard closed the phone will orientate itself
when you hold it on it's side.... but, only on the same side the phone would have orientated itself if the keyboard were open, Normally!
( it does NOT Rotate 180°!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

3) Saving Applications to the sd card doesn't free up the phones internal memory in massive proportion. It's true, one may save his or her applications to their SD card, but there are still CACHE files, and information from applications that remains on your phone in order to actually load that app to the phone.- get it-?
( Doing this will not give you back the 192 MB DDR you began with!!!!!!!!)

4) Downloading custom built themes is not care-free.
It IS possible to flash themes to your Phone, and it is easy,but it's not carefree-
meaning you have to pay close attention to the modded version of 'JF' in which a particular theme was built for, or else you'll 'Soft Brick' your phone to where it wont load your homescreen.
which by the way is easily reversible, and the information to do so is readily available by many people here in the Android Community,
but, to put/Flash a theme onto your phone, in most cases it involves renaming the theme to 'update.zip', saving it to your sd card, and turning your phone off.... ( get the picture?) feels like your reading the steps to modd your phone all over again...

5) if you don't know what linux code is, or how to apply linux code in a string of commands, then expect to be co-dependant on people who do in order to have full control of the administrative potential over your phone.
( to be a programmer or not to be... that is the question!!!!!!)

6) in the event that T-mobile/Google/Android
decides to send an OTA (over the air) update to your phone, lets use the rumored "Cupcake" update as an example, you won't get it!...
now, they've come up with a solution to this by providing an 'updater' service to the utilities section of the android market, but again "expect to be co-dependant on others" for the legitimate update to be modified to so that you may receive it like everyone else!



The point in writing this thread is not to discourage people from rooting their phones, it really isn't...because there are features like tethering that just amaze some, and if thats your intent then by all means booboo, get yours!
but people should know what their getting into, or lack thereof. Many come here on this forum seeking to upgrade their phone to a super beast that can cook breakfast, and tell you when you have a smudge on your shoe, but the truth is..
THE G1, is an amazing phone as it is, even without all the tweaks! The Control one has over this phone surpasses that of any other smartphone out right now!~ even in it's stock state~
besides most of the features people rooted their phones for in the initial stages of it's release,
were made available through past OTA(over the air) updates, anyway.

( correct me if i'm wrong)

[texas_born]

then by all means booboo, get yours!

good write up and thanks for my laugh of the day

[DaYuMu6ft7]

Who is booboo!?????




(filler filler)

[DaYuMu6ft7]

( correct me if i'm wrong)

Are you rooted!?

[Logic]

1: when the multi-touch browser was released JF wrote and this is a direct quote " This version contains... *drumroll* multi-touch support! Thanks to lukehutch, zinx and ryebrye, this build allows android applications to receive multi-touch events. The built-in browser now supports multi-touch zooming! It also includes an "Auto-Rotate" setting that you can enable, to allow it to change screen orientation, based on the orientation of the phone. You can turn on auto-rotate in the browser settings (it's off by default). "

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=475381

nowhere does it say that everything was going to become multi-touch, but it will allow someone to write a picture viewer that uses multi-touch possibly.

2: auto-rotate isn't something that interests me, but considering steel the first auto rotating browser already did this as well I thought it was pretty much given that that's what auto-rotate would do. I can see how this could lead to confusion though.

3: I guess I could see your point, but of course it doesn't move everything related to the app to the sd card, the app itself isn't written to store everything on the sd card and it needs to use processes from the OS which can't be stored on the sd card without slowing your app down drastically. I remember seeing this all discussed in threads when they came out ( too lazy to search right now )

4: usually themes come with warnings that you can brick ( not in the sense of other phones, basically just an initialization loop that a reflash of the default theme or rc 33 or whatevever will resolve ) your phone and to use at your own risk . Never heard of it being described as carefree , just easy which it is.

5 : You're not going to have full administrative abilities over your phone unless you root anyway. For the most part you don't have to touch your command line unless you want to do something you're not supposed to do on the phone anyway ( move caches/apps to sd, tethering I believe haven't tried personally , running Debian , etc ) You don't need to be a linux " coder " to do any of these things anyway . I personally couldn't code if my life depended on it . I'll admit I've used Linux for a couple years though and the command line doesn't frighten me .

It's not really about being dependent anyway , we have somewhat of a community here yeah granted your not going to know what to do with the CL right off the bat but there's more than enough people out that have shared there problems that anything you want to do is searchable. If it's a new issue people are glad to help as well .

Using the CL is never going to go away either, windows 7 is even supposed to have a more powerful shell from what I hear, but yeah I digress

6: I was running rc 33 before anyone around me had it anyway, so what if I had to download it to my sd card, power off my phone, hold home and power when I rebooted and it alt s to install .I was playing with google voice search days earlier for minutes of work .

I understand where you're coming from but for the most part all these things are found by doing a little digging yourself. I know not enough people look into something before diving into it anymore and maybe your post will help them make up their mind or not. It's true people do talk about rooting like it's nothing and I personally had one hell of a time doing it myself and I had actually read up on it quite a bit before hand as well . I blame my issues on trying to do something computer related without sleep, it never ends well lol . But as I said with just a few forum posts you can find out any and or all limitations to what you're trying to do .

Anyway I like that your posting on some issues and maybe clearing things up but I felt it could of used a bit more detail which I hopefully filled in . If anyone else has anything to say feel free to contribute

Yeah this is a bit long, guess I was bored and felt like typing lol

[providence]

rooting is not for everyone i guess.
I rooted my G1 and I love it. At least now I can use advanced task manager to close all my apps. And the auto rotate, it does work, although there are still some issues with it, i guess its fine for now.

[deserttopping]

i don't understand who the "they" are, that would be "telling" you.

"reading" and "asking" is probably the best way to approach an unsupported modification of your phone.

[DaYuMu6ft7]

i don't understand who the "they" are, that would be "telling" you.

"reading" and "asking" is probably the best way to approach an unsupported modification of your phone.

Exactly!

I'm thinking to myself...

WHY is he even giving his unwanted advice to others, when he's probably not even ROOTED himself.

[JohnnyLicious]

goood job on this.

[mckoy]

Exactly!

I'm thinking to myself...

WHY is he even giving his unwanted advice to others, when he's probably not even ROOTED himself.

It's a publicity stunt!!!