To root or not to root

[droidxjr]

My droid-x recently randomly bricked itself and I'm struggling with the debate to root or keep stock the new phone. I originally rooted to get wi-fi tethering which is no longer supported in gingerbread and not really necessary now that you can enable and disable the $20 feature right on your phone (I don't use it often). Here's my question.

Does bloatware really run down the battery? This seems to be the main reason for rooting.

Is there any other reason I'm missing (other than overclock which worked for me but was always a bit spotty).

If I do root, I've gathered that z4root on strock froyo, then loading pre-rooted gingerbread seems the way to go vs OTA to gingerbread and using gingerbreak. I'm curious if I'm wrong on that one as well.

[Kasey Krehbiel]

There are many benefits of rooting, not the least of which are removing the bloatware and getting rid of the stock ROM.

You can't use gingerbreak on the X with stock GB. It's not rootable, so you do have to root stock FroYo and install the 2-part rooted GB files. I also recommend installing a good ROM. I prefer the Liberty ROM:
[ROM] Liberty Gingerbread

I wrote a step-by-step guide to SBF back to .340, root, bootstrap and installing the 2-part rooted GB and the Liberty ROM in this post:
From Liberty 2.0.1, Stock, Apex, CM7, etc. (ANY ROM) to Liberty GB

If you don't want the Liberty ROM, just don't install the LGB 0.x zip at the end.

Oh, and you can use wireless tether on GB. You just have to download this:
android-wifi-tether - Wireless Tether for Root Users - Google Project Hosting

Install it and set device-profile to Motorola Droid X (CDMA) in settings, then google this file:
TBH_DX_Tether_Patch_1.0.zip

flash that in clockworkmod and it should work.

[droidxjr]

Thanks for the reply and the quickness. There's some good (and 'new to me' information there).

what about the robustness of the rooted ROM's and the libery ROM vs the stock gingerbread ROM? I certainly don't blame being rooted for the ramdom bricking of my phone, but have always wondered if there's some benefit to the stock version. Part of me thinks that it would be more fully tested and put through the ringer, but that may be wishful thinking. I'm curious your thoughts.

[Kasey Krehbiel]

Thanks for the reply and the quickness. There's some good (and 'new to me' information there).

what about the robustness of the rooted ROM's and the libery ROM vs the stock gingerbread ROM? I certainly don't blame being rooted for the ramdom bricking of my phone, but have always wondered if there's some benefit to the stock version. Part of me thinks that it would be more fully tested and put through the ringer, but that may be wishful thinking. I'm curious your thoughts.

The problems I have with Liberty are the same problems built into stock GB. It reboots now and then (I think twice since I installed 0.9 when it came out a month or so ago.) It also will lose its 3G/WiFi connectivity and make you reboot your phone to get it back. Both of these are problems my wife has with her fully stock GB phone, so they're baked into the kernel.

If you use corporate email/calendar, I might steer clear of LGB for now, but if you don't use those, it's a clear choice as far as I'm concerned.

[droidxjr]

Thanks for the note about corporate email/calendar, which I do use. I was using gingerbread 596 rooted and de-odexed. I've never really messed around with themes so I'll probably use the odexed version this time. It did work for corp email/calendar although every now and then I had connection problems. It seemed intermittent enough that stock has the same issues, but if you have any comments on that I'd appreciated.