Should I root my phone or not? This is a question Android geeks have in mind all the time. Rooting an Android smartphone unlocks a whole new world but it comes with its fair share of troubles. But are the troubles worth it? Well, we are here to answer that question. If you are looking for good enough reasons to convince you to root your smartphone, here are 12 reasons why you should go ahead and take the plunge.
Reasons You Should Root Your Android Device in 2020
1. Custom ROMs
Most people root their Android smartphones so they can easily go ahead and install their favorite custom ROMs on them. Custom ROMs offer a lot of advantages like giving users the hope to install and use the latest flavor of Android when the OEM isn’t rolling out an update. Along with that, custom ROMs bring to the table a variety of features & customization options. There are plenty of great custom Android ROMs available such as LineageOS, Paranoid Android, Resurrection Remix, and more — you can choose to your liking.
2. Customize Everything
Once you have rooted your Android device, the doors to customization heaven are wide open and you can go ahead with changing each and every aspect of your experience. It may sound crazy but that’s one of the key purposes of rooting and thanks to systemless root tools like Magisk, you get access to a number of modules like Xposed and more. All these modules allow you to completely change the theme, boot animation, fonts, audio experience, and a lot more to suit your needs.
Moreover, you can make system-level changes and change almost everything including the navigation buttons, lockscreen, quick setting, notification shade, status bar, launcher and much more. There are several tweaks available for display, media, power saving, and hardware keys. Along with modules, there are also a ton of apps like GMD Gestures (download), Substratum theme engine (download), and Spectrum (download), among many others which let you personalize the OS to the hilt.
Talking about Substratum in a little detail, it’s a theming tool that makes it possible for users to apply system-wide themes. It’s found to work flawlessly on Android 8.0 Oreo – with or without root, but if you’ve updated to Android 9 Pie, then rooting and installing Substratum app on your device is your only hope. You can find plenty of great themes, which give you the power to change the look and feel of your device, right here.
3. Be in Control of your Kernel
If you didn’t already know, the kernel is the core component of an Android device. The kernel serves as a communication medium between the hardware and software, enabling better system resource management. Each OEM bakes the device with their own default kernel, but you can’t control its working.However, when you root your device, it gives you the power to install a custom kernel like ElementalX (visit) or Franco Kernel (visit) and be able to adjust whatever you want. You can choose to overclock the Gold cores when you’re gaming or possibly rendering videos on your device, underclock them for improved battery life, or recalibrate the vibration motor to your own liking.
Well, no one wants to jump into the kernel dashboard to tweak the settings when they’re about to kick-off a certain task, so you can set CPU Governors to handle the same. It’s an essential component of the kernel, which measure and regulates the frequency and you’ll be able to set policies to adjust the performance of your device based on the work you’re undertaking.
4. Boost Performance
Now that you know how to manage your kernel, well, you can use them to give your old rooted devices a performance boost. Android is regularly criticized for its inconsistent performance and while it’s in better shape now, there’s still scope for improvement. We would like to point out some of the apps, that when used along with custom kernels can provide day-to-day better performance.You can use an app like SetCPU to overclock your device’s CPU for a more snappy performance. Overclocking basically means increasing your processor’s frequency for better performance. While this does boost the performance of an Android device, battery woes are a part of it.
There’s also the option of using custom kernels, which bring features and options that might not be officially supported on your device like the ability to control CPU, GPU, screen, battery, sound, RAM and more. You can go ahead and check out apps such as EX Kernel that supports many different kernels and let you tweak advanced options from the app. Also, there are dedicated apps only for rooted devices that speed up the performance. There’s Booster, which speeds up your device by emptying memory (works okay-ish) and GLTools, which offers advanced options for better GPU performance.
5. Explore New Features
One of the best things about rooting your device is that you gain access to tons of new features to play with and I absolutely love this part. For instance, both Magisk Module and Xposed framework bring a myriad of modules that bring along features like multi-window, detailed app permissions, native clipboard, better audio performance, YouTube background playback, boot manager and a lot more.
If that isn’t enough for you, well, apps like IFTTT and Tasker also bring a lot of awesome features if your device has root access, essentially handing down the ability to automate anything on your smartphone with ease.
6. Access More Apps
There’s no scarcity of apps for non-rooted devices. The Google Play Store is flooded with over 2.5 billion apps. But there are certain cool apps that can only be accessed by rooted users. Apart from the apps we have already mentioned, there are many more great apps for rooted Android users such as DriveDroid (download), Substratum (download), DiskDigger (download), Migrate (download) etc. which make the best use of root access to bring you some great functionality and control.
Further, Magisk makes it possible for you to install the VIPER4Android (download) app to upgrade the audio experience and it’s a boon for audiophiles like me. You can also swap the styles of emojis you want on your device using EmojiSwitch (download) app. If you’re looking for some of the best Android apps for rooted devices, do check out our list by clicking on the link.
7. Improve Battery Performance
Android is fragmented and a lot of users can always be found complaining about the poor battery optimization on their devices. Well, if you are one of those users, you should root your device right away as there are apps & mods that totally refine your Android’s battery performance. Greenify (download) is arguably the best battery optimizer app for rooted devices, which brings cool features like auto-hibernation mode that hibernates the apps that are heavily consuming your battery.
Then there’s Naptime (download) that takes Android’s inbuilt Doze feature to the next level. It’s an aggressive implementation for the same and kills battery-hungry apps when your device is idle. The non-root app is pretty decent but you get more features after rooting the device. As we discussed above, you can also choose to underclock your CPU using Franko Kernel for improved screen-on time and longer battery life. This could also help you reduce any considerable lag or jitter to offer a more refined experience.
8. Remove Bloatware Apps & Ads
System apps and bloat apps from device makers can cause a problem if your device does not have huge internal storage. Well, rooting brings along the ability to remove any system app or bloatware. There are various apps that remove bloatware, but we quite like 3C Toolbox (download) because of its advanced app managing features. The app enables you to remove system apps, but that’s not all, you can also remove updates to apps, move an app to the SD card along with other advanced options. If you are looking for something a bit simple to remove bloatware from your device, well, you can install NoBloat (download).
Ads too can be particularly annoying, especially the full page ads some apps bring to the table – like the ones we see in MIUI often. Root users can install AdAway (APK file), which is the best ad-blocker app on Android. It’s easy to set up and blocks ads in both apps and websites you visit. You also have the ability to whitelist/ blacklist an app or website if you want to be generous and add to their revenue stream.
9. Backup Everything
While Android provides a backup feature to non-rooted users, it’s no match against the abilities of popular backup apps like Titanium Backup (download). There are various apps for rooted devices that let you take a complete backup of your device, but this is the best one out there. You can use the backup option available in TWRP to make a complete NANDroid backup, which includes all of your device’s data, quite easily without any additional tools.
These tools allow you to backup everything including all the apps, app data, files, settings along with external data which might be part of your SD card. You can then save this backup on your external storage, SD card or even in the cloud to be recovered when needed. So, if you ever lose or brick your Android device, you can easily restore a Titanium or Nandroid backup on the new device and feel like nothing happened.
10. Enable Camera2API
With the craze of Google Camera, everyone wants to install the latest GCam on their smartphone. However, there is a bottleneck that stops users from using GCam and that’s the Camera2API support. On older devices especially which were launched with Nougat and Oreo, Camera2API is natively disabled and OEMs have still not shown any interest in enabling the API. In such a scenario, you do not have many options other than rooting your Android device. You can easily root your device and enable Camera2API through the Build Prop or by installing a Magisk Module. We have written an extensive guide on how to enable Camera2API so head over to the linked article and enjoy GCam on your Android device.
11. Access Pixel Features
As we all know, Pixel devices are the first in line to get the new features on Android. And it takes months– in some cases, more than a year– for Google to bring those features to all Android devices. For Android enthusiasts like us, that is simply unbearable. So if you want to taste the Pixel-exclusive features on your Android device right away then rooting comes to your help. Most of the Pixel features are not hardwired to the OS and it only needs a couple of changes in the Build Prop to access those features. You just need to rename your device to one of the latest Pixels and bam! There you have it. For instance, Google Assistant 2.0 is available on Pixel devices (as of now, only in the US), but it does not seem that it’s going to arrive on other Android devices anytime sooner. However, with root and Build Prop change, you can taste the Pixel goodies right now.
12. Override System App
For me, this is one of the main reasons why I root my Android device. Say, there is an app that offers a sought-after feature — Google Feed on OnePlus launcher — in other countries except for your region. If you want that feature then you can’t install the particular APK from the compatible region because of the same package name. And since it’s a system app, you can’t uninstall the app either without root. But if you have the root privilege, you can simply override the system app with another app having the same package name. This way, you can enjoy the official app with new features and at the same time, having access to seamless updates. How awesome is that? So if you want new features, rooting is essential.
Found Enough Reasons to Root Your Android device
These should be good enough reasons to root your Android device, don’t you think? Come to think of it, a rooted Android device does have access to way more features and options than a non-rooted one. But rooting doesn’t come without shortcomings. So to get a full picture, you should know the disadvantages of rooting your Android too. Click on the link to read that article and then make an informed choice.
Abubakar Mohammed
