Is rooting something for basic users?

EDIT: Moved from here to avoid getting off-topic.


I believe many users initially rooted the phone because of a single missing function, but once they got root they often learned about the many great benefits and are using it much more.

Obviously.

You can add your request to the #featurerequests::tag topic. But be aware that the Fairphone devs are atm busy working on releasing Marshmallow and will probably not make a lot of changes to Lollipop anymore.

Well, “many” rooted their phone, what does “many” means ? A few dozen ? A few hundred ? Even a few thousands would only mean a very little 2 or 3% compare to the soon to be reached 150’000 Fairphone users. And those few % are, like I said, definitelly no “home users”. So I insist that it should not be a need to root a phone to get access to such evident basic function as controlling the flight mode.

But anyway, thanks for the information about #featurerequests. I’ll open the topic.

With “many” I was referring to “of the people who rooted their phone”.

That is probably true, but consider this: Baring in mind that you are the first one who asks for this function the percentage of people missing it are probably even lower than 2% (not counting those who don’t know they are missing it and would use it if it existed).
And of those who are missing such a function probably a much higher percentage will root their phone to get it. And I’m sure among them are many basic users as well. Rooting a Fairphone is very easy and there are great guides here on the forum.

Come on paulakreuzer, please be serious :slight_smile: you cannont say that “rooting a phone” is easy for the majority. It is maybe easy for peoples like you or for the ones reading such a forum. But if we ask our parents “mum, dad, please go to root your phone, everything is explained on the forum”, you will wait months and probably 99,9% won’t have been able to do anything about it. Same with most of our friends and children.

And I did not yet spoke about the risk, and the disadvantages (loss of compatibility with google products and services) you get after rooting the phone…

So no, rooting is definitely not an option to get basic functions in a modern 600€ smartphone !

And “not counting those who don’t know they are missing it and would use it if it existed” it is like not implementing SMS function in the 90’s with the reason that people don’t know they are missing it.

1 Like

I have never heard that Google’s apps and services will stop working after applying root.

But it is true that some apps will not work with root: That “Pokémon Go”, some banking apps and some corporate apps (for BYOD).

1 Like

tofra, there might be issue with Google services as you can read here where it is clearly said: “…companies like Google and application developers of security sensitive applications (e.g. banking apps) require a non-rooted device.”

No. Google services don’t care about root. Only Google pay, many banking related apps and some other apps, mostly related to enterprise functionality

1 Like

Google requires a non-rooted, unmodified device to grant official support.
But like @lklaus said, most google services don’t care.
Only the google anti-service safety-net cares, which is responsible for apps like pokemon go not working on Open OS without a complicated workaround.

2 Likes

“most google services don’t care”…

That’s nice to hear but this is only the situation today. And since Android has a constantly changing policy it is absolutely not guaranteed it will be like that tomorrow. For instance for many years google also “didn’t care” if your phone was rooted or not for granting the control over flight mode. Until one day they decided to do not allow this access anymore. And from one day to the other ALL the apps that where using this function simply did not work anymore !

So, what is the safest way to handle the need for a function ? Implement it as a standard and comply with the Android norms, or try to find complicated unsupported do-it-yourself workaround ?

Personaly I’m not talking about a toy here and I don’t care about the possibility for playing Pokemon with my phone. I’m looking for a RELIABLE and SIMPLE working tool. A smartphone that can wake up itself in the morning without the need for me to first press a few buttons, and a phone that will work also next month or next year even if Google change some policy again.

This topic was automatically closed 182 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.