Rooting your Android phone

[Neville Bailey]

I was wondering how many of you, that own Android phones, have rooted your phones and installed custom ROMs (operating systems) on them?

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4, and I have just installed a custom Android ROM from CyanogenMod. What a pleasure! It is pure Android without the bloatware that Samsung puts on top of it. My phone runs much faster and it seems a lot less cluttered.

Of course, in the process of rooting my phone, I have voided my warranty, but that's ok with me, as I like tinkering with technology, just to see what's possible.

[adrianh]

I am certainly going to give it a try, thanks. I also get annoys with all the junk on the phone.

[Neville Bailey]

Just picked up a glitch on my custom ROM. The Bluetooth does not work with my headset. This is a deal breaker for me as I use my phone a lot while driving. Guess I will need to revert back to the Samsung version...

[adrianh]

I never use Bluetooth so it doesn't matter. I still haven't been able to install it, the installer says that I need to install it manually. I've downloaded the manual installation zip file and I'll give it a try later.

[Dave A]

Just picked up a glitch on my custom ROM. The Bluetooth does not work with my headset.

Shoot - that's a bit shoddy. Damn near critical functionality, I would have thought.

Definitely no other solution?

[tec0]

wired headset I use them all the time works well.

[Chrisjan B]

Just picked up a glitch on my custom ROM. The Bluetooth does not work with my headset. This is a deal breaker for me as I use my phone a lot while driving. Guess I will need to revert back to the Samsung version...

That's the reason my phone does not yet have a custom ROM albeit its rooted.
It's almost impossible to check everything beforehand and there is always the possibility to brick it.....
For my daily driver I won't risk it.

That said I have bricked my tablet in such a way that it had to be sent in for repairs - I have some experience....

[adrianh]

hhmmm...I certainly don't want to brick the S4....better I give it a miss.

[Chrisjan B]

I've had a weak moment and installed Omnirom on my Samsung Galaxy S3. Use it daily. Fast and smooth. Don't know if bluetooth works...

I did firstly get a backup in the form of a Moto G though...

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300TG using Tapatalk

[irneb]

It's apparently a known bug with CynogenMod & the S4: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Known_...e_for_jfltetmo

However it seems they're busily working on it. Some people have installed the nightly builds (read Alpha stage testing) and found that some of the more recent ones have fixed this issue (to a point): http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/topic/8...uetooth-issue/

Oh! And BTW, Samsung's again made some voicing that they're trying to move away from Android in favour of their collaborative open source OS called Tizen: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/...erating-system

And since all these phones (including even bitten fruits) are simply the ARM platform, chances are that there are many Linux/BSD derivative OS's which you can try (other than Android/iOS which are themselves simply derivatives of Linux/BSD respectively):

• http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/
• http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android
• http://maemo.org/
• http://www.hpwebos.com/us/
• https://www.tizen.org/
• And many more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...rating_systems

Though I'd advise you to backup your existing ROM before replacing it. Many of those tuts on rooting and rom'ing also state and show exactly what to do for this. But more than that, personally I first check such OS out on my old phone (Motorola Milestone 2). If it runs fine on that, then it should be screaming on my Note2. Very rarely would I simply try-out a ROM on my daily phone before doing lots of research on others who’ve tried it before.

[Neville Bailey]

I've had a weak moment and installed Omnirom on my Samsung Galaxy S3. Use it daily. Fast and smooth. Don't know if bluetooth works...

I did firstly get a backup in the form of a Moto G though...

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300TG using Tapatalk

I've read some very positive reviews on Omnirom and, when I have a few spare hours, I think I will give it a try.

Any negatives on your side so far?

[Chrisjan B]

Small niggles - no SMS app but solved that by downloading 8SMS from play store -otherwise the dialer one must get used to but the smoothness and speed more than makes up for that.
Every function I use works, bluetooth I don't use......
IMHO opinion worth a try if you are able to get back to stock ROM if it does not work for you.
At the moment I cannot see myself getting back to Samsung TouchWiz again

[Slow Blow]

I got caught "rooting" my Android the last time I was in Australia, I was let off with a caution and six months suspended for three years