Soullighter’s

I am not much of a phone enthusiast over the years. My first phone was Nokia 3310 back in the early college days which was phenomenal for its time. Its still kicking around back with my parents and still quite usable for its age. After the 3310, I have only changed phones every 2-3 years. Not that my last phone has died or something, but I finally saved some money and got interested to get a smartphone.

I realise that IPhones seems to be the rage nowadays with each new iteration of the model getting soldout reviews and sales. I can’t say I’m not impressed with the iPhones. They are capable and functioning devices but somehow the whole fanfare and hoohas about it just put me off. That’s when I first discovered the birth of Android OS from from Google. I have dabbled a bit with the early versions of Android but what strucked the chord was when Google Nexus One was announced. Issues with imports didnt manage to get me to try to buy one though. Not until its HTC equivalent, the Desire was released last year.

Right the HTC Desire! I finally got it! The Desire is essentially a HTC branded Nexus One with few changes and addons such as proprietary UI HTC Sense. I am actually quite late in the game, as the Desire’s new iteration has just been released, namely the Desire HD and Z. The current price and early adapter issue made me go for the original Desire though. I ordered it through Mobicity.com.au and got it delivered yesterday.

So, what do you do when you have an Android powered phone? Root it! Although plain vanilla Android and in my phone Android supplemented by the Sense interface is fine by itself, I like the fact you can do further tweaks and improvements to it. To do that though,you must actually unlock the superuser permissions in your phone first.

Basically, in a normal Android phone, you’re running as a basic or guest user that has limited administrative access and permissions. Similar to to the concept of the superuser in Unix/Linux environments, rooting allows system level changes and allows script executions normally blocked by the normal user permissions.

Rooting an Android phone is by far not a very hard process. It used to be that it has to be done manually, but as the Android modder community matures, one-click solution has been introduced to allow fast rooting to be done. It is s however still a bit of a daunting process. You have to be confident and calm as it has its “Eeek!” moments. The end-result? You have a perfectly capable phone Android phone that can be modded with custom features and tweaks.