Reasons to Root your phone?

Striker

Learning Storage Performance
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I noticed the other day they have some web interface for adding music from your computer. I don't know if it handles that stuff any better or worse, but at least it appears you don't have to run Music Manager on your computer. Of course you would need to manually upload any music as you got it instead of it watching your media folder for you and doing it automatically.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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If we were given open access to our hardware, rooting wouldn't be necessary. This is the same problem OSX has with its current rootless UNIX and cheap Wintel machines have because of UEFI.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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Trend Micro sucks. Don't ever install it. That article is bullshit.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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Also learned you can get stuck in Rom Toolbox Pro and end up deleting a lot of stuff, and not being able to get out of the program.
Using Titanium Backup to try and get all the stuff back that was deleted.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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Rom Toolbox Pro has a bunch of 'features' that don't work on my phone.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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I was a root user without Supersu, which makes you sort of not a root user, and, limits program functions, maybe.

Somehow, in the Rom Toolbox loop, Supersu was deleted.

It's now been replaced, so we'll see if RTP actually works to restore the functions I lost from the system. Noteably I can't set my home screen background, and the top pulldown menu is gone.
RTP restore doesn't work, for some reason, in batch mode, and I have paid for it to work.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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Fun with rooting.

I deleted a few functions I liked through RomToolbox Pro, and wanted them back.

So, since I was having a hard time finding a stock replacement Rom, I went down to my local SR Sprint store.
I told the manager what had happened, and he said a factory reset would fix it.

We did that, and I now have a brick, or had at that time. Missing keyboard program, somehow.

I asked him to download a stock rom from Sprint, and install it.
He told me that Sprint locks their store computers so they can't download roms.

So you just bricked my working phone, and now won't fix it? REALLY?

So, home I go, to really get into this thing. Problem with a bricked phone, is even if you back up to your pc, you can't get access to the phone to unbrick it, and load the copy onto the phone.

So with a bit of websearching, well, a LOT of websearching, I found this:

http://www.ionmm.com/comment/5#comment-5

This gentleman has linked to two stock roms. To get them this century, you have to sign up for a Mega cloud drive account:
Mega limited NZ
that done, I could quickly transfer the files I needed to the cloud drive.
http://www.android.gs/install-philz-touch-recovery-on-galaxy-mega-6-3-using-odin/
Philz Touch is unreal. You put zip files of the items you need on your memory card.
You boot into Philz Touch recovery, similar to booting to download mode. It then allows you the options to load whatever zip you have on the phone, provided you can find it.
I first unbricked my phone by opening it with Odin, putting PTR on it through Odin. Rebooted with proper drivers, and the phone came up, and I could copy the zip files to my SDcard.
Then back into PTR, and load to start, 4.4.2 KitKat, which worked great.

After being happy with that result, I backed up all my apps.

So, after that, I decided to try and load Lollipop 5.1.1 onto my phone.
I followed the instructions, and used PTR to wipe, and load 5.1.1.

The program recovered my programs that were paid for, and on my phone, and installed them in 5.1.1.

So far, I'm delighted. A few things to get used to, like no gallery, but My Roll is near identical, or better.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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As a matter of some interest to people who might want to root their phone to remove stupid apps, some kind soul at XDA Developers has created the Debloater, a tool for disabling and hiding third party applications that does NOT require root.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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Uninstall uses root access but, it is better at letting you know what you can get rid of, and can't. Plus it hasn't bugged out, and deleted a bunch of stuff in a loop.

To be real, aren't that many apps that you can get rid of, safely.

Turns out rooting is better for extending battery life, and being able to install 5.1.1 is huge. Brings it up with the current super phones. It's got a huge screen, 5.1.1 runs faster then 4.42-4 on it, and
EVERYTHING works. So I'm probably going to get 4 years out of the phone.

I'm not sure if 5.1.1 will support 128 gig SD cards, but that becomes the only reason to upgrade now, if my Mega won't see the 128 gig SD cards.

Tool Box Pro's freeze feature has caused a number of programs to be screwed up, and not able to unfreeze. You have to delete and reinstall to get function.

When you really look at what you can uninstall, and it's actual cpu use, it's almost a question if you want to. Yes, it looks bloated and ugly, but the major consumption stuff
you can't get rid of, and most of it is in the OS to begin with.

Also Samsung stuff, and Sprint stuff, on their network, are not great stuff to uninstall, and rarely does any of that stuff hammer battery or cpu useage.

It is annoying that certain, key programs, even after being shut off, turn themselves back on.

That is what BatteryDU is good at, turning off key programs that turn themselves on periodically, and use battery, and some bandwidth.

After playing with it, it looks like you would be better off starting with a Nexus phone and adding stuff, but, unlike my phone, you would end up in two years with a phone that has no expandable storage, and no way to replace a failing battery. So ammortize your 700 dollar Nexus phone, and it sort of works, then plan on buying the next best and greatest.

I'll keep my old phone, and, if worse comes to worst, buy a new battery, or new/old battery.
With this size phone Mugens 6000AH battery looks like a decent fit...
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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MMGR did a LOT of work, and knows far more then I do about Android phones, and made all this stuff work on my model phone. Awesome work!

If for no other reason, that is a reason to root your phone. To take advantage of experts in the field that know what they are doing, and do the work to make stuff happen that
the phone companies don't want you to do.

Sprint has not, and will never, release 5.1.1 on a Mega.
They want you to upgrade your phone, 700 dollars, for free software. Well, not free, since I'm sure MMGR has a ton of time invested in this, or not.

Google gives you the software, and then puts it on a phone that will be dead in two years due to a non-replaceable battery.

While I've had some really bad moments, the journey has justified the end...
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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Of course.
The ideal would be to start with what I have, a pretty much stripped down version of Googles' near latest operating system, then add items as you need them.
The best way to do that would be get a phone from Google, and run it on Fi. The problem is the limited phones they offer both have no memory slots, and fixed batteries.
At least last time I checked.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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You could always just boot a custom ROM that does what you need it to do. That's the next step after rooting and unlocking the boot loader anyway. Everyone likes CyanogenMod, but you can also play with something like SlimROMs or BlissROM if you want something a little less vanilla.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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That's what I"m doing. If you look at the links, I've installed CyanogenMod 12, with Lollipop 5.1.1.
 
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