Rooting 101 - Everything you need to know about rooting

In the Android world, there is a term known as "rooting". For those first time Android users, rooting is a very high reward-low risk hack you can do to your phone.  It's fairly simple, and reaps many benefits to your already incredible Android smart phone. I will list a a few pros and cons to rooting, to help make your decision easier.

PROS

1. Extend Battery Life Significantly
Rooting your phone gives you control over things you normally wouldn't be able to control. One of the things you gain control over is the ability to control the speed of your CPU. Imagine your phone is like a car. Most cars have a governor in them that only allows them to max out at a certain speed. The same is with an Android device. A non-rooted device is preset to only allow the CPU to hit a maximum speed. For example, lets say you own a Droid RAZR. A droid RAZR has a 1.2 Ghz dual core processor. So, in a non rooted phone, at any point in time, your processor could be running anywhere from 300 Mghz to 12000 Mghz. However when a phone is rooted, you can control and set the maximum and mininum speed of your phones CPU. For example, my own personal phone (Droid RAZR) my CPU  is set to run from 300 Mghz to 1200 Mghz when my screen is on, but when the screen is off, the CPU will only max out at 300 Mghz. Essentially, a non rooted phone with its screen off's CPU is consuming 4x as much power as my own personal rooted phone when it's screen is off. This CPU control, along with Juice Defender (see previous post) can drastically improve battery life.

2. FREE WIFI HOT SPOT (with 4G LTE/3G)

1. Another big bonus of rooting your phone, is the ability of turning your phone into a hotspot for your computer/tablet/xbox/anything else that uses internet to connect too. Now I know what your thinking.. "Why would I root my phone, when I could just pay an extra 30 dollars a month and get it from my phone service provider". The answer to that is quite simple, why pay 30 dollars a month (30 dollars a month x 12 months x 2 year (typical contract length) comes to a grand total of 720 dollars spent on the ability to have wifi tether. Now i will leave you with this question, which is cheaper, free wifi over two years, or 720 dollars of wifi over two years? :)

http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/downloads/list

^ that is a list of the app used to get free wifi, its not in market anymore

3. ABILITY TO FLASH CUSTOM ROMS

Flashing custom roms is a very distinct feature that android has over the iOS. It is the ability to pretty much customize your phone, anyway to your liking. One of the coolest features of Android is the ability to customize the phone to your own liking. Every single iPhone is exactly the same. Every single Android is different. And you can take that many steps farther when rooting your phone. Whether it be changing your notification bar, to changing the icon that measures your battery, you can literally almost change everything. Here is a small forum explaining more in detail how this is all done...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=591329

CONS OF ROOTING

Well, there are a few cons, but they arent very likely too happen, and there are alot of people out there who can help you fix whatever problems you encounter. You may brick you phone in the process (highly unlikely) (bricking means what it sounds like... your phone becomes a brick)

I realize I put much effort into the CONS, but there really arent enough reasons to not root your android device. Every droid i have ever owned has been rooted, and i have yet to regret it to this day. I hope this helped, feel free too comment any questions or concerns.