Benefits of rooting your Dell Streak
So the one-tap root method proved to be too tempting and you finally went ahead and rooted your Dell Streak. Now what? You looked around and except for the new Superuser Permissions app that got added to your device, everything else looks the same. What gives?
If you're new to rooting, then you might not see what all the fuss is about. People who expect to reboot their rooted device and magically be greeted with a new version of the operating system or a bunch of new apps will be understandably disappointed when they see that everything is the same.
And while it's true that everything will look the same at first, looks can be deceiving. There's actually a lot going on under the surface that makes rooting worthy of all the hype.
Note: Rooting your Streak is always done at your own risk and could void your warranty.
Freedom. Just because Android is an open-source operating system doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with the Streak right out of the box. All you can do with a stock Streak is what Dell and your carrier let you do. Rooting the Streak gives you complete control of the system, which gives you the freedom to do anything you want to do, including what Dell and friends don't want you to do.
App removal. One example of the aforementioned freedom is being able to remove the stock apps that appear to be permanently installed on your Streak (e.g., Amazon MP3). With root access, you can get rid of just about anything.
More apps. There are a lot of awesome apps out there that only work on rooted phones. You've probably seen variations of "root only" or "root required" notes in app descriptions on Android Market, AppBrain, and elsewhere. With a rooted Streak, these apps are no longer off limits. You can install great stuff like ShootMe, Root Explorer, Quick Boot, and countless others.
Free WiFi hotspot/tethering. This is one of the "awesome apps" alluded to above, but it definitely deserves its own mention. With root, you can turn your Streak into a mobile hotspot using apps like Barnacle Wifi Tether or Wireless Tether. And you can do it for free!
Custom ROMs. A custom ROM is a modified version of Android that's "better" than a stock ROM in just about every way. Talented developers cook up all kinds of custom ROMs that are cleaner, leaner, and meaner than anything pushed to you by Dell or your carrier. There's nothing other than MoDaCo's ROM to choose from right now, but there should be a bigger selection soon. And you can't flash a custom ROM on your Streak without root.
More customizations. Although a custom ROM is already the ultimate in customizations, it's not the only way to personalize your rooted Streak. You can also overclock the CPU, replace the boot animation, and apply a theme.
Complete backups. Anything done with your Google account is backed up to the cloud and there are ways to backup some of your apps and other personal information, but the only way to create a complete backup (Nandroid) of your Streak is by having root access. Creating this kind of backup is similar to cloning/ghosting a computer's hard drive; you get everything.
Pretty compelling reasons to root, don't you think?
A modified version of this post was originally posted on Good and EVO, one of my other sites.
