To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade

Taking a moment away from the more typical “tutorial” type articles, we’re going to spend a minute and address a common question most people ask…”should I upgrade my devices’ operating system?”  With iOS 5 hitting Apple devices recently and Android 4.0 (i.e. Ice Cream Sandwich) coming soon, this question is more relevant than ever.

The question always comes up…should I get the lastest version of my phones operating system (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry OS, etc).  There is no simple answer but let’s look at a few questions to ask yourself before you make this decision.  First off, take a look at what the features are that you’re getting in the upgrade.  Often times the upgrades are marginal or impact aspects of the device that are irrelevant to you based on your usage.  In those cases, no big worries in not getting the upgrade.

The next question is…at what cost will I get the upgrade.  By this we mean what negative aspects are there in upgrading.  Again, this depends on the type of user you are.  If you’re someone that likes to tweak and mess with your phone (jailbreaking your iOS device or rooting your Droid) then you probably don’t want the latest version.  Typically, new versions are released to block users from doing things that the mother ship frowns upon.  For example, when the jailbreak method for the iPad 2 was finally released by hacker Comex, Apple immediately released an update to the operating system to block the jailbreak.  They added virutally nothing else other than the block and because it came out so quickly following the release of the jailbreak, the majority of iPad 2 users were left with an (as of yet) un-jailbreakable device.

The same holds true for Android.  While Google says it doesn’t take as active a role in trying to block rooting as Apple does against jailbreakers, new versions of Android are typically not compatible with current root method.  This means you have to wait until an enterprising hacker or software developer comes up with a new method and sometimes those new methods aren’t quite as simple as the older ways.  This also holds true for certain apps that, for example, allow you to turn a rooted device into a wifi hotspot.  These features may be disabled on a newer version.

It’s always nice to have the latest and greatest and sometimes the upgrades genuinely do warrant the drawbacks or sacrifices one must make.  All we suggest is to not take the idea of an upgrade as always being just that.  Quite often an upgrade is nothing but a downgrade.

Let’s Get Rooting

Before we begin learning how to actually root an Android phone, it’s important to remember that all phones are different and because of that, some of these methods may work for you and some may not. Some phones are easier to root and others are a pain. I’m going to try to share several different ways so hopefully one of them will work for you.

The first we are going to look at is a very simple method using a program called Z4Root. The interface is extremely simple and straightforward and it usually has a pretty high success rate for most phones.

At the time of this post, Z4Root was not available on the Android Market so I’m providing a direct link for the download…

Click here —> Z4Root

Before you hit the link, make sure you have your unknown sources box checked to allow non-android market apps to be installed.  (For help, see this post about setting up to allow Unknown Sources)

Now you have the file downloaded and installed. When you launch the app for the first time you will see 2 buttons…Temp Root and Permanent Root. Temp root will root your phone until you turn it off and turn it back on again, at which time the root will be wiped out. Permanent root will keep it rooted regardless of turning your phone on or off. Don’t be scared of this, though, because even if you do permanent root you will then have a very easy way to unroot later if you want (we will cover that later).

The screens before and after you root your phone

So now you’ll press Permanent Root and you will see a spinning wheel and some text at the bottom of the screen telling you what it’s doing. If all goes well, your phone will probably be like this for a few minutes and then it will reboot by itself.

Now we’re going to check to see if the root worked. Pull up your App Drawer and scroll down until you should see something called Superuser. This is an app that basically acts as a guardian protecting your phone from giving up root access to programs that you don’t want to have that access. It’s a security feature and its a good thing it’s there.

The permission box that pops up when you run a rooted app for the first time

From now, all your regular apps will run completely the same as they did before. The first time you run a new program that does ask for permission to access your root folder, a box will pop up from the Superuser app asking if you want to allow it. There will also be a check box that will remember your selection so you only have to do this the first time. Just click Allow and you’re good to go.

Now let’s say you want to remove the root for whatever reason. Just launch Z4Root again and now you see an Unroot button. Press it, let your phone do it’s thing similar to when you rooted it, and that’s it. You’re unrooted. Easy, huh?

There you go…You’re rooted and now ready to run all kinds of cool apps. If this didn’t work for you, don’t worry. I’m going to have more posts in the future with other methods of rooting and hopefully one of them will do the trick. If this did work for you, please leave a comment below mentioning that it worked and what kind of phone you did this on.