Pro's of rooting my N1

[tizzl10]

what are some of the pro's of rooting the N1? what can a rooted device do that a non rooted one cannot do?

[Iggy82]

I haven't rooted mine because I can't see any advantages unless your a mega-geek who wants to explore all the root access (more options!) of the phone. I can't help thinking that rooting is for control freaks!

However, rooting does help sometimes, don't get me wrong! For example, by rooting the HTC Hero, you can install and test ROM's with newer OS's than that currently released. You could also install ROM's which were more stable and performed faster.

As the Nexus is awesome already, I don't have any requirement to try and improve it, so thats why I'm not rooting at the moment. There's also no newer OS which I'd be interested in having a look at!

[tizzl10]

thanks for the response, iggy..i guess ill hold off for a while then.

[Iggy82]

Its up to you mate, and don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with Mega geeks but as a enthusiast I'd say its not worth it yet, especially as no-one has worked out how to "un-root" it back to the original software yet!

[tizzl10]

thanks..im suprised that there is no way to back out of rooting if needed. so if the android firmware gets corrupted, there is no way to restore it?

[Zephyron]

one advantages is multi touch on your applications. its already done for the stock browser, only a matter of time before it extends to gmap and other things.

[tizzl10]

found this on another forum
________________________________________________

am assuming you know how to use ADB and Fastboot as well as some basic OS knowledge be it DOS, OSX, or Linux.

This will do the followings to your Nexus One:
1. Reset your system files to the original system files.
2. Reset your kernel/boot image to the original shipping boot image.
3. Reset your recovery to original recovery (if you wish).

This will not relock your Nexus One. Once you unlock your phone, you are stuck for now.

This is for those of you who decided to flash a few different ROMs and want to restart from scratch.

You may get the Original Shipping Image from HERE or thru Modaco HERE. [22607 build]

As before, if you mess up your phone or your computer, you are on your own. I take no responsibility on what you do with your phone or your computer.

Step 1. unzip the original shipping ROM and put it somewhere you can find.

Step 2. Plug in Nexus One with USB to computer (enable usb and debug modes)

Step 3. adb boot recovery

Step 4. from recovery console, Wipe => Wipe data/factory Reset.
< You may also do step 3 and 4 from Nexus -- Do a search -- Google has it in their FAQs >

Step 5. Reboot phone. As soon as phone boots up, get to fastboot mode by pressing trackball.

Step 6. Confirm fastboot connection fastboot devices

Step 7. Go to the directory that you stored your unzipped files.

Step 8. fastboot flash boot boot.img

Step 9. fastboot flash system system.img

Step 10. Skip to step 11 if you want to keep recovery. If not fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

Step 11. fastboot reboot

Step 12. You are done. Enjoy.

[TheMadMan]

the rooting of the phone itself is relatively straightforward and does not alter the actual looks of the phone. All it does is allow you, in the future, to install custom ROMs and perhaps 'install' (I think they call it 'push') custom apps onto the phone. As already mentioned, one advantage would be to have a multi-touch browser. I know that there is now a multi-touch stock N1 browser available that can be 'pushed' onto the N1. To do this you'll need to root the N1.

Once you've rooted, I don't think you can un-root it. What you can do though is revert back to the stock N1 OS and you'll never know the difference.

I had a Magic (I think it's called the Dream in the US) before the N1 and I rooted that phone and installed ROMs on it. Some of the ROMs were great and gave my phone extra functionality, and had apps on it that I would have had to pay for from the app market. Some ROMs were crap - they really slowed the phone down.

I don't think there are any actual full blown ROMs out for the N1 yet. As somebody has already mentioned, the N1 is currently great as it is and I feel that I don't need to flash it. Some people may want to root it just for multi-touch, but I'm not to bothered about multi-touch so won't be bothering. I'll be keeping my eye out though as ROMs get released.

For more info on this goto this forum (hope it's allowed to reference other forums here!):

Nexus One - xda-developers

The nexus one android development sub-forum is where all the 'geeky' stuff is talked about!

[TBird1]

Do you have to root the N1 in order to install apps sourced from places 'other than' the Android Market ?

[Iggy82]

Originally Posted by TheMadMan

I don't think there are any actual full blown ROMs out for the N1 yet.

Paul @ MoDaCo has made a custom ROM for it, he's also made a "kitchen" for it where you select which components of the ROM you want and the "cook" it. So in a way its like a custom, custom ROM!

There will be a point when you can revert to total original software like most other unlocks (Hero for example). Most of the time, the phone is hacked my making a special version of the recovery image which allows you to load on a custom ROM. Normally, the standard recovery image is there to help you perform a master reset if you have a major issue with the standard ROM, it basically just wipes the phone and re-writes the standard ROM. The drawback of hacking the recovery image to flash custom ROM's is that you also need a way of re-writing the old standard recovery image back to make it truly un-rooted. They'll get there eventually!