Is rooting an Android phone good or bad?

[Lesto]

What do you think? Is it a good idea? And why? 

[Yamly]

Rooting has many advantages but you can brick your device in the process of rooting 

[tsupersonic]

I used to do this in the early days of Android (Froyo, Gingerbread, and anything below Kitkat) where I'd root and load custom ROM's. I need a reliable phone these days, and haven't found a need/reason to root (I also want to retain Samsung/Android Pay w/o tinkering)

[Brandon H Supervisor]

depends on what you want to accomplish

 

root is good if you want to do things like:

• Ad Blocking through the HOSTS file
• low level customizations
• custom kernels
• full system backup/recovery
• switch to a AOSP or Custom ROM
• ect.

 

If you don't need any of that then it is not recommended to root as you DO run the risk of bricking the device; though that chance is low on most devices any more.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

3 minutes ago, tsupersonic said:

I used to do this in the early days of Android (Froyo, Gingerbread, and anything below Kitkat) where I'd root and load custom ROM's. I need a reliable phone these days, and haven't found a need/reason to root (I also want to retain Samsung/Android Pay w/o tinkering)

my current phone doesn't have NFC so can't test myself currently but from what I've heard as long as you're not using XPOSED modules then the Magisk root manager is able to successfully hide the root status from the Android/Samsung Pay apps now

[Louisifer]

You can always unroot when you've finished, I had to root to add a virtual gyro for a game years ago and once unrooted android pay was happy again.

[adrynalyne]

You are compromising the security of your device. Otherwise...*shrug*. 

[PsYcHoKiLLa]

Rooting is perfectly fine, it depends what you want your phone to do, how much you want to customise it, whether you want custom roms or are happy with your manufacturer's rom.

Sadly, after P root is required for custom substratum themes (for now).

[techbeck]

I always root my phones.  Never ran in to an issue at all.  Some of the apps I use require root in order to work.  Plus, I like to be able to tweak my phone a little.

22 hours ago, Yamly said:

Rooting has many advantages but you can brick your device in the process of rooting 

Very difficult if not impossible to hard brick your phone these days.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

3 hours ago, techbeck said:

Very difficult if not impossible to hard brick your phone these days.

I've heard Kirin based devices are rather easy to brick on accident but you are correct on any other; SDs are especially stable now a days

[adrynalyne]

4 hours ago, techbeck said:

I always root my phones.  Never ran in to an issue at all.  Some of the apps I use require root in order to work.  Plus, I like to be able to tweak my phone a little.

Very difficult if not impossible to hard brick your phone these days.

Not really. Knox makes it damn easy to do so. 

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Rooting has it's pros and cons, really you should be asking yourself what do you need root for that you can't do without?

 

As my phone hasn't got updates for over 2 years now I have a custom rom flashed, that requires me to have Magisk installed so my device can pass Google's safetynet and use apps which require the device to pass safetynet checks.

 

I only really use root to make backups with Titanium Backup.

[cork1958]

Personally, I saw absolutely no advantages to it when I did that on a couple previous phones. Never have used my phone for much more than a phone/texting, but just wanted to say I did it!

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

I think rooting is good if you want to revitalise an older device.

 

For example I have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus which still works (with it's original battery too -- no idea why they bothered making it replaceable ?) and popped LineageOS onto it. Just figured I'd get more out of it.

[Elliot B.]

If you choose to root your phone, you'll lose access to most banking apps.
 

It's one of the only reasons my phones are no longer rooted.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 9/29/2018 at 7:10 PM, Elliot B. said:

If you choose to root your phone, you'll lose access to most banking apps.
 

It's one of the only reasons my phones are no longer rooted.

Magisk is pretty good about hiding root from these apps now. the only thing that breaks the Magisk safety net check is if you install Xposed framework as well