To root or not to root...

[ttaylor0024]

Ok, I have the motorola Droid. I have been researching rooting it the last couple days, but have some questions first.

1. What are the major advantages of it? I have jailbroken my iTouch before, there were millions more things I could do. Is this the same with rooting?

2. People say rooting it makes it faster. How is this possible? What makes it do this?

3. When 2.1 comes out, will I be able to upgrade easily and get rid of my root?

Please list as much info as you can please. I would love to know.

Thanks

[smcannon]

Ok, I have the motorola Droid. I have been researching rooting it the last couple days, but have some questions first.

1. What are the major advantages of it? I have jailbroken my iTouch before, there were millions more things I could do. Is this the same with rooting?

2. People say rooting it makes it faster. How is this possible? What makes it do this?

3. When 2.1 comes out, will I be able to upgrade easily and get rid of my root?

Please list as much info as you can please. I would love to know.

Thanks

I rooted to obtain wi-fi tethering.

So whether you root it or not really depends on what you want to do with it. Upgrading to 2.1 won't be a problem. However, anything you have rooted, will no longer be available and you'll need to figure out how to obtain root access to 2.1.

[KZIWarrior]

Ok, I have the motorola Droid. I have been researching rooting it the last couple days, but have some questions first.

1. What are the major advantages of it? I have jailbroken my iTouch before, there were millions more things I could do. Is this the same with rooting?

Yes and no. You can do 'more' in the fact you can make you own theme (or use themes from other people), use other ROMs, re-clock the CPU and Wi-Fi tether ect. But in all honesty most of those can be done effectively by other means (not the CPU or tethering of course). If your main concern is the look and 'feel' of the device you might, very easily be able to get what you want using apps and Home-Screen replacements.

2. People say rooting it makes it faster. How is this possible? What makes it do this?

You can reclock the CPU to the 600Mhz it was designed for. Performance increases vary according to who you talk to (and what you are doing) but it comes at the cost of battery drain (again, depending on what you're doing)

3. When 2.1 comes out, will I be able to upgrade easily and get rid of my root?

That's not 100% known yet as noone has seen the actual 2.1 OTA. You will be able to put your device so that it does NOT accept the OTA if you choose to wait an see. As far as if the OTA will update your device correctly, again until the OTA is seen we don't know. It will also depend on just what you've done to your device. The safest bet at this time would be to (if you're wanting the OTA) is to have your device stock when you accept it (if it ever comes out...)

Please list as much info as you can please. I would love to know.

Thanks

Personally I would recommend spending some time and see what exactly you are wanting to accomplish for/on your device and see how much of that can be done w/o rooting. Then go from there.

[nkcavs23]

^^^ interesting

ill probably wait, im pretty happy with my droid as is right now. if the 2.1 update (or any update 2.0.2 :P) doesnt come out for a little while ill probably root

[reefguy]

i guess for those who recently got there droid, i can see that its not so critical since were still getting use to it. but for those who would like to take it to the next step, from being acustom to the droid and like to see more of what it can do. i can see that in a month or two..

[tats_06]

I would love 2.1 to be released SOON so I could avoid rooting as long as possible...although, besides voiding warranty, there are no other downsides to rooting.

[natediddy1120]

its really not that big a deal to root the Droid...i mean if the 2.1 OTA starts to come out then just unroot and revert back to stock. if you can root, and install ROMs, then you should be able to revert back to stock. and if not, then you shouldnt be messing with it in the first place...its not that hard