How to root your handset

It’s a little-known fact that modern smartphones are capable of far more than they’re permitted to do.

Manufacturers strike a balance between performance and battery life, but being able to adjust this balance might benefit people who need high performance or long gaps between charges.

The Google Play and Apple App Stores reject thousands of apps every year. Many of these programs have genuine merit, but are excluded for a variety of (often spurious) reasons.

The endless bloatware pre-installed onto phones can also be incredibly annoying. It takes up storage space, often runs automatically, clogs up menus and can’t be deleted.

Manufacturer settings may feel restrictive, with aspects like screen resolution, fonts and the functions of physical buttons beyond alteration while the handset remains unrooted.

For these reasons (and many others), it can be tempting to root your handset – a process known as jailbreaking on iPhones.

The word ‘rooting’ can be used for any smartphone, though it most commonly refers to Android handsets.

A word of caution

Before delving into the specifics of how to root your handset, we should point out the risks.

Firstly, you’ll automatically invalidate any warranty on your device, even if you subsequently attempt to rollback or undo your actions.

Secondly, the murky waters of unapproved apps include numerous applications harbouring dark secrets. These are often malware in disguise, designed to compromise or destroy your phone.

You’ll need genuine technical acumen to proceed with rooting or jailbreaking, and adjusting the clock speed could make certain games unplayable or prevent specific apps from working.

Worse, damage caused as a result of post-rooting activities may be irreparable. There have been cases of rooted or jailbroken devices being so badly compromised they had to be discarded.

If you still want to root your handset, read on…

Can’t kick up the roots

To begin with, ignore tethered or semi-tethered options, which respectively allow the device to be used while it’s physically connected to a computer or until it’s rebooted.

Untethered is the way to go, allowing you to use the phone wherever and whenever you wish.

This is often accomplished by installing a restricted application from a computer and activating it remotely, allowing you to dodge the Android or iOS firewalls.

Another option is to download an app which will help you to bypass these restrictions on the phone itself.

Before starting the process, back up every file and folder on the device to either the cloud or a portable storage device. It may also be advisable to remove the SIM card.

Check web browser bookmarks will transfer onto a freshly-wiped handset – Google tends to remember bookmarks and login credentials across all Chrome interfaces, for instance.

Download your chosen app, or connect your phone to the computer which has the appropriate rooting files installed, and follow the software developer’s instructions.

The physical process varies by platform, and can take some time.

When it’s finished, restart the device and download an app such as RootChecker, to ensure you have ‘superuser’ access (often abbreviated to SU).

If you do, you are effectively the master of your handset, able to tweak and edit everything from the bootup graphics to the clock speed (how quickly the handset performs tasks).

And although restoring the handset to factory defaults (unrooting it, in other words) won’t undo damage or restore a warranty, it can be accomplished with apps like SuperSU.