So I’m rooted, Now what?

Rooting is the first thing a geek does to his Android phone. Some don’t even wait for the warranty period to get over before flashing their ROM with a custom one. Jumping on the bandwagon, you root your phone. But you can’t figure out what’s the big deal with rooting anyway. Your phone had all the apps you needed anyways. What’s so special about your phone now?

Rooting is the process of gaining superuser access on your Android phone. That means your phone sub-system is no longer a black box for you. Here’s a list of things you can do after rooting:

Install apps that give you a better experience with your phone

Most of articles I came across after rooting my phone just told me to download apps. That’s it. As if I rooted my phone just to download more apps. There are a few apps that work best after rooting your phone.

• Titanium Backup Pro – The awesome app that lets you backup and uninstall pretty much everything on your phone. It even runs batch jobs that can be scheduled. If you are going to mess with your phone without losing data, Titanium is a great addition to your arsenal.
• Ad-Free – This not so well-known app blocks ads that occupy valuable real-estate when you are playing games.
• ES File Explorer – Allows you to navigate your phone’s memory card when not rooted. And gives you access access to the phone’s file system after rooting. What more do you want.
• NinjaMorph – Change all UI components of your phone’s UI. Read a Beginners’ tutorial here.

Uninstall apps that came with the phone

When you first switched on your phone, you must have noticed a lot of apps already installed on your phone (My Samsung Galaxy Y was bundled with GTalk, GMail, YouTube, Samsung App store and what not). The Samsung App store had nothing to offer but could not be removed. Once I was rooted, it was the first to be kicked out of my phone. Removing useless carrier-provided apps gives you more memory and disk space for your coding shenanigans.

Try out new ROMs

If you are rooted and you know it, you would have ClockWorkMod Recovery on your phone. It allows you to install custom ROMs on your phone. Custom ROMs are created by members of the Android community. All of them are intended to take the user experience to an entirely new level. Some simply provide an awesome UI (Hybrid ROM for Galaxy Y makes the interface look like HTC Sense UI. Radical!), others are aimed at performance enhancement and would contain changes to source code. All in all, if you are satisfied with your stock ROM, you have no idea of your phone’s capabilities. Of course, you can install custom ROMs without using CWM. (I did!)

Learn tinkering with your phone

BusyBox is an app that adds Linux commands to your phone. Although available on the Play Store, it isn’t exactly an app, but more like a bundle of commands that can be executed by other apps. If you download something called Android Terminal Emulator, you’ll realize the power of Linux and Android. The Terminal Emulator looks like a Console with a command prompt. Running ‘grep’ for the first time on a 3 inch screen is an experience that cannot be put into words.

Save progress

Once you have root access to your phone, you’ll learn the importance of Nandroid backups. They are a complete backup of all apps+data+settings on your phone and are pretty useful to recover your precious data after epic fails (like flashing a new ROM and soft-bricking your phone in the process). Again, Nandroid backups can be made only after rooting the phone. ClockWorkMod’s ROM Manager (mentioned above) also creates Nandroid backups.

This is, in no way, an exhaustive list. There may be a lot more things that can be done after rooting. Feel free to share them in the comments.

Related articles

• Rooting My Samsung Galaxy Y (wditot.wordpress.com)
• Android – Morph it, Ninja Style! (wditot.wordpress.com)
• Five Best Android ROMs (lifehacker.com.au)