Rooted cellphones...learn me!

I've always been curious about using appliances in different ways (the original Xbox as a computer, etc) so the idea of a rooted phone made me curious when I first heard about it. I've had this Samsung S5 for about 1.5yrs and after a few big Android updates, there's so much crap installed I will never ever need that I can't get rid of.

And worse, apparently they run in the background on their own because I have never ever opened "Peel Remotes" to somehow use it as a remote control, yet I get notifications about how great it is.

Anyone using a rooted cellphone? Care to enlighten a noob on how to go about it, preferably the easy way?

I've done it, several times. Youtube often has very clear videos on doing it for whatever specific phone.

Sometimes it gets hard, to almost impossible, particularly if you use a CDMA type (Sprint & Verizon). My latest Motorola all but can't be rooted because of this.

For most people, the big thing you gain by rooting is the ability to put more apps onto the SD card, freeing up the phones internal memory and letting you install even more apps onto the phone and card. This is superuser and partitioned SD card stuff.

It also lets to tweak the heck out of the operating system if you want. Dangerous and a whole lot of the other systems aren't worth a shucks. But hey, it's an available option.

Personally, I think it's a worthwhile thing to do most of the time just from the freeing up of phone memory aspect. Beyond that, while I've done the different operating systems before, it's almost never been a worthwhile experience. Too many bugs and such. I've done a little overclocking and such, but again, the gain was minute and it wasn't worth the trouble involved. So I guess that makes me a light weight rooter.

Samsung phone? Install Package Disabler Pro to stop those apps.

In reply to foxtrapper:

I'm mostly just interested in removing 90% of the preinstalled apps to free up memory and maybe cpu bandwidth? I seem to have a lot of photos/video and almost filled up the card and phone memory. (Only 16gb card, wonder if I could use a 32gb?)

Oh yes, it can take a much larger card. 256 gig apparently.

Pulling pre-installed apps can be good, but can wreak havoc as many are inter connected, and I'm not just talking about the Google apps. I wrecked my contacts list functionality on one phone by doing something with the pre-installed apps.

But that said, root it, install a super user, then a link2sd app (there are several). Buy a bigger SD card and partition it (split its memory into two).

Using the link2sd app you move all the apps possible onto the card, and trick your phone into thinking they are still on the phone (called linking). It can be slower starting up those apps, because they are on the card. But if you've a good card and balance the apps you place there on the card, like can be grand.

Btw, sorry, I didn't catch you've got a Samsung Galaxy S5.

It's useful if you want to do heavy mods to the OS, or even change to OS to something like an AOSP-based Android "distro" or GNU/Linux on some devices.

You probably don't need to root the phone to remove all that crapware though. BTW, you could argue that CPUs have "bandwidth" in how much data they can pass to the northbridge, but you're probably talking about CPU usage

Rooting and then making use of Titanium Backup could help alot. Instead of deleting entirely, it will let you freeze apps so that arent running anymore, less risk of a hiccup. Rooting also allows the use of good ad blockers, so that's always a good thing.

Every android I've ever owned has been rooted within an hour of me getting the phone, but I have a ROM of choice I like to run, as well as my ad blockers, and certain customization options.

xda developers forum is a boatload of information and help. Kind of a PITA to join and ask questions, but odds are you only need to do some searching there to find any answers/help

Jerry wrote: I've always been curious about using appliances in different ways (the original Xbox as a computer, etc) so the idea of a rooted phone made me curious when I first heard about it. I've had this Samsung S5 for about 1.5yrs and after a few big Android updates, there's so much crap installed I will never ever need that I can't get rid of. And worse, apparently they run in the background on their own because I have never ever opened "Peel Remotes" to somehow use it as a remote control, yet I get notifications about how great it is. Anyone using a rooted cellphone? Care to enlighten a noob on how to go about it, preferably the easy way?

With an S5 you should be able to uninstall most unwanted apps, and disable the rest, no rooting required.

Look in settings for the application information section. For each app, there should be an information sheet with an uninstall or disable button. Uninstall is pretty safe. Exercise care with disable. It's generally safe to disable an app with a known function that has no connection to the core functions of your phone. So, disabling "smswrkrproc" bad, "AT&T Navigation" probably OK.

In reply to Mike:

I'll give that a look tonight. Stuff like Verizon's own music, directions, etc can go I think. The Peel Remote control app definitely. Anything music or magazine related. I'll try that first. (And see if I still have the 32gb card that was in the dashcam that I removed.)

GameboyRMH wrote: BTW, you could argue that CPUs have "bandwidth" in how much data they can pass to the northbridge, but you're probably talking about CPU usage

Ill go with that. My techno geek computer days are so far behind me I tend to mix up the terminology.

RevRico wrote: xda developers forum is a boatload of information and help. Kind of a PITA to join and ask questions, but odds are you only need to do some searching there to find any answers/help

^ This.

I've rooted 2 phones, I used a program called Odin to get a firmware "patch" called Superuser on my phone, which then gave me root access, and I could then fix, or further ruin things to my heart's desire.

I've had no ill effects from uninstalling bloat ware, but I can understand the potential issue.

Learned everything I needed to know searching on XDA Developers forum.

Sort the apps by size and look at them. Many of the bloatware apps are actually pretty durn small and have little impact. Its the likes of Chrome browser, Facebook, Playstore, etc that have a large footprint.

Don't neglect looking at and probably clearing the phones cache. That can get quite large with use.