why root a Droid 4?

qurk

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After I got my Droid 4 from a pretty nice feature phone, I did some reading about rooting your phone and roms. And every advantage I read about rooting was already there in stock Droid 4 now. Why would you possibly want to root this phone? Not being sarcastic, just genuinely curious. I'm the dude who ran his nokia n810 from a microsd so I have no problem with trying to squeeze everything you can out of your device.
 

nsideguy

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After I got my Droid 4 from a pretty nice feature phone, I did some reading about rooting your phone and roms. And every advantage I read about rooting was already there in stock Droid 4 now. Why would you possibly want to root this phone? Not being sarcastic, just genuinely curious. I'm the dude who ran his nokia n810 from a microsd so I have no problem with trying to squeeze everything you can out of your device.

For the little things: getting rid of verizon's adware (many other ads for that matter), being able to tether, overclocking the processor, more choices to customize your lockscreen and other functionality. There's plenty of reasons to root your phone and I can't think of any reasons not to.
 
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qurk

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I can see tethering is a good reason. Overclocking I have no idea why, drain battery faster? Lockscreen - if the 4 choices you get aren't enough? Ads? I just remove aps that introduce ads, I'm like F.U. Tethering is a valid point. I used to tether my n810 to my feature phone via bluetooth at work to browse google reader. But Droid 4 has a better google reader app. So unless you really need to tether your laptop, which is valid......what additional functionality are you speaking of that makes it worth it to root it. Thank you for your time, in responding.
 
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qurk

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Well, if you can overclock you can underclock. I could see trying to save battery life that way.
 

GigaJake

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There are certain verizon bloatware apps that can't be removed. Being rooted also allows you to browse the file system structure and make changes you wouldn't normally be allowed to (my caps key is a shift). Being able to install roms means you could easily be two or three versions of android ahead of everyone else on verizon and you'll find the phone will run smoother and with a better battery life.

The stock Motoblur on an unrooted Droid 4 is not it's full potential by any means.

Sent from my XT894 using Tapatalk 2
 

Bremen

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I have just recently got into the world of rooting and flashing roms. The tether is a great feature. Also I have Google Now flashed on my device and I absolutely love it. It's also a lot slimmer. Half of the crap that is never used is gone. As being a far from advanced user I would recommend rooting and flashing a new rom.
 

kenji91

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I have just recently got into the world of rooting and flashing roms. The tether is a great feature. Also I have Google Now flashed on my device and I absolutely love it. It's also a lot slimmer. Half of the crap that is never used is gone. As being a far from advanced user I would recommend rooting and flashing a new rom.

It takes almost no time to root a D4 now, thanks to various tools that are out there.

For me, it was... plug the phone into the PC, run the batch file, hit 9, hit enter. The end. :)
 

ninjadan9

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It takes almost no time to root a D4 now, thanks to various tools that are out there.

For me, it was... plug the phone into the PC, run the batch file, hit 9, hit enter. The end. :)

What method did you use to root your phone? I would like to root mine as well.
 

Prodiem

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Reasons for rooting and further trying ROMS are personal, and since there are Risk like:
Voiding Warranty (Don't ask Verizon to fix it if say bluetooth, Wifi, GPS is broken)
Bricking the Phone (Rare, and not dead)
Killing the Phone (Yep it could happen)
Getting Fired/Reprimanded (Did work pay for it? Business Plan, My Boss is fine with it, but I pay to replace the thing)
Annoying your spouse (often)

Options with rooting, Baby steps.
Option 1
Rooting, and only staying Stock
Run utilities, Like Titanium Backup. (Purchased edition saves to Google Drive, Loose phone, recover later, My #1 Reason)
Hide or "Freeze" apps. (Don't delete them, doing so will lock you out of Official updates)
Control options that are locked out, hidden, or apply tweaks to fix annoyances.
build.prop tweaks!

Option 2 -Play with ROMS
FYI: I lurked on this forum for over a month catching up on all the posts and information before I Played with any of the ROMS. I suggest the same to everyone, get an idea of What is in the ROM, current issues, tweaks, etc. I have personally "Bricked" my phone 5 times because I missed something important, and although not fun at the time. The reward has been the Most stable and properly functioning Smart phone I have ever had.

Prep. Backup SD Card, and internal Flash (8GB) and have the Phone Reformat it. (Some ROMs have either problems with SD formatted with Microsoft FAT32 versus Open FAT32 or Media Players that Index the SD card, causing battery issues. After Loading the ROM It indexes nothing then when you copy media back it indexes on copy. PITA but worth it in my eyes)
Rooting and Backup App Data only.
Restore to Full Stock and Root again -=Prepped for a clean backup with few tweaks, Ready for OTA update if desired=-
Install SafeStrap 3.11 or Latest,
Make another backup of the Non-Safe (Stock) ROM within SafeStrap (nandroid)
(I Delete and recreate the Rom slot every time I make a change, Reusing the Slot has strange issues almost everytime)​
Now play with ROMS
-=SLOT 1 Only Size 1GB=-Playground-Start with Hashcode's CM10.1/JellyBean Rom (Missing key features, Camera, Bluetooth, GPS lock issue, but way cool)
-=SLOT 2 Size 3GB=- Daily Driver-I recommend Myfishbear's Eclipse 1.5.2 (Pre-tweaked 99% stable, All Features. Android ICS, has SD card index issue), and Google Now v6.
Don't overclock yet, play with default kernel first, nothing worse than having a problem and not being able to know if it's the ROM of the CPU flaking out ;-)

Anywho, That's my 2 cents.
 

Big D

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Tethering works exactly the same with Foxfi on an unrooted phone.
 

Prodiem

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Thank's, I remembered I tethered before I rooted but forgot how! So technically, moot point on tethering.

Also if your interested in staying stock but just want a different look there is Go-Launcher and the Go-"Tools" and other home screen, SMS, replacement tools.
 

bean1975

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It'd be hard running the Droid 4 in Canada with a Canadian SIM (or any country) without rooting :)
 

cron666

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first off, foxfi sucks now.
you are limited to 1gb of data or some****.

next, verizon cant stop you from tethering anymore. FCC came down hard on them.
last week i was using the stock tether app while unrooted. it was fine.

third, im now on the official AOKP jellybean 4.2.2 rom and its fantastic.
only problems are car dock sensor not working and some screen tearing.

my 4g signal is so much better now. it was fast before, but it seems to wake up faster so pages start loading sooner where before there was a 2 or 3 sec delay before they would even begin to load. i can use 4g in the elevator at work where i couldnt before.

i have not used a good rom before official AOKP, its close to perfect.
 
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