What is Android Rooting?

Introduction to Android Rooting

Android rooting basically means gaining unrestricted access to your phone's operating system. Through this process you can access Android's subsystem which allows you to run certain apps you couldn't normally run, modify settings within your system and basically do whatever you want and weren't able to do before. Most of the people use this in order to replace their current operating system with a custom one, to remove unnecessary apps that cannot be uninstalled (bloatware) all of which lead to a better optimized memory, CPU and battery usage . However all those restrictions were put there for a reason, so keep in mind that you do this with the risk of losing your warranty.

It's all about the details

When you buy your phone, it becomes yours, but it's not like you get unrestricted access to commands. Some of them, including altering system files or removing certain applications that come pre-installed, have a special status and cannot be accessed. Unless you root, that is. In doing this, the Superuser app gets installed and sometimes in order to change your Android ROM you have to unlock your device's bootloader verification.However you do not need to perform this operation in order to run apps not found in the Google Play Store. Android has the "Unknown sources" option and the "Android debug Bridge" to permit this. In turn, modifying system files will be possible alongside performing activities and using apps which need this kind of access.

So how is it done?

The process varies from device to device, but there are some key steps found every time, like exploiting bugs in the device's firmware, copying the su binary to a location in the process' PATH variable while giving it higher permissions with chmod. Chainfire's Cf-auto-root is the most popular rooting tool in the development world.At the beginning, the whole rooting business was not really looked at carefully. Not many companies cared. Over time there were even moments when some companies removed user's abilities to gain root acces. Nowadays, Samsung, alongside many producers actively promote this type of development.So one cannot give an universal instruction in order to provide rooting but we hope that this article is a first step for you. There are many guides on the internet for many types of devices. Would you guys root your device? Would you stick to stock configuration? Let us know.